For this week's homework, we were tasked to create two short stopmotion gifs that looped and used at least three of the 12 principles of animation.
Team members
- Tuan Huang
- Julia Lu
- Shirley Wu
Storyboard
When we were initially brainstorming, we had some ideas about tech eating each other, or having cute objects looking grumpy. But after looking around us on the floor (including a forage through the junk shelf), we decided to play with the chargers hanging from the ceiling and make them into Newton's Cradle.
Because for the first gif we aimed for 12fps, we thought we could do something interesting for the second gif where we record in 24fps—but half of those frames would be from the first gif, and every other frame would be "inserts" or "behind the scenes" that was making the chargers move. But we couldn't come up with anything interesting for that idea so decided to adjourn and sleep on the second animation (and also look around our apartments for potentially interesting objects).
Julia had a helping hands that had quite the personality, but we ended up using different colored leaves because I knew I was going to be in Central Park for a picnic. (Also I just wanted to document leaves changing color because this is the first time in two decades where I'm living somewhere with actual seasons.)
Recording
We used Stop Motion Studio for the desktop and their corresponding Remote Camera App for the iPhone (though I had some trouble with connecting my iPhone...). Julia and Tuan also checked out some lights and a tripod to shoot from overhead:
And here's what they looked like pre-editing:
Tuan also taught me how to batch edit in Aftereffects:
And the final edited versions:
The principles of animations we used:
- Anticipation (when the charger got to the top of the arc, there was a pause before falling)
- Arcs (the paths the leaves take)
- Appeal (the chargers' personalities)