Stop Motion Reflections
Creating a stop motion animation with Alinta, Michael and Joanna went pretty smoothly. We came up with a number of ideas to begin with, but eventually we agreed on an idea that Michael came up with. The general outline was that some Lego men go on a balloon flight, and while in the air the balloon pops, and they use bubble-gum to fix the puncture.
We decided to use Lego men as the characters as it would save us having to make them from scratch. Joanna created a back drop for the scene and Michael provided the Lego men. Using her camera Alinta took the photos. We had a few issues to begin with, and eventually managed to get hold of a tripod that helped immensely.
We came up with more of a plot as we took the photos. We created some characters to be the antagonists, who were not invited on the balloon and threw a spear at it as pay back. As well we decided to add some humour by making one of the characters "bail" when he realized the balloon was falling.
We drew different expressions on the back of the Lego men's heads so that we could give them different expressions by turning their heads, which helped to tell the story much better.
I went on the internet and began to search for some music. We wanted to make our animation reminiscent of a silent film. I managed to find some royalty free music that suited it well enough though I had hoped to find something with a bit more of a dramatic part in the middle. I created the script on separate frames, like the silent movies. I made the characters speak in modern slang, to contrast the 'silent film' idea and hopefully add some humour.
Alinta put the video together, and the process was pretty smooth although we had to adjust the time on certain frames (the script for example) to suit the storyline.
The animation is pretty successful in my opinion. If I could do it again, there is one particular scene where the balloon is falling that did not work as well as I'd hoped, as we decided to move the clouds in the sky rather than move the balloon, but it didn't really work. The scene of the ghost jumping from the balloon was my favourite and I think it worked well, and was pretty funny.
In all I think the animation went pretty well. Our group worked well together and we managed our time well, if we'd had more time I would have liked to make it a bit more polished and add elements that we didn't get a chance to do.
