Reading Reflection #6
I choose to write my summary on Chapter 10: Stop-motion Animation: A Survey of Techniques by Maureen Furniss. I really liked the wide variety of stop-motion techniques and knowledge.
She starts by emphasizing the fact that stop motion can be 2D and not only utilizing three dimensional materials. Something they I never saw before and intrigued me was using sand-like material to create. I had seen those live sand painting creation before but never thought about making a stop motion out of it. The works of Gisele and Ernest look stunning, explained by the process of multilayered sand (using glass layers). Gisele also explains how you should use very fine and pure sand to achieve the optimum effect.
Maureen then goes on to talk about Pinscreen Animation which actually seems very interesting. From the best I could understand, it is a board with thousands of pins on it that cast different shades of grey depending on how pushed in or not they are.
She then talks about Clay Painting techniques. Basically, it’s using clay as paint, just in a two-dimensional way (flattened out). Just like you would use cut outs just to color certain flat areas.
3D stop-motion animation is then introduced with folded paper techniques. Which is almost a metamorphosis from 2D to 3D (flat cut-out to added dimensions given by the folded paper). This could be closely related with origami.
She then talks about Brickfilms (made mostly out of Lego) which I was particularly fond when was littler (I even made a few). She mainly talks about the ease of maneuverability of Brick stop-motion which can lead to some fantastic pieces. The Lego bricks are so endowed in stop motion then when the company made a movie about Lego’s using CGI, it got a lot of criticisms.