APD Week 7 - Play and Object

Context

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdcN4BRpmGI

In this music MV, the wool replaces the protagonist to perform the song. The wool is perfectly combined with the singing, showing the powerful expressiveness and appeal of the wool.

Method

I use wool to transform into different patterns and record the process of their conversion. I want to use the form of stop motion animation, take photos first, and then use PR to synthesize the video. Because this makes it easy to combine any possibilities, but in fact the total amount of yarn is constant, because I want to have some restrictions on myself. Otherwise, the changes in the graphics may have no bottom line, which reduces the correlation between them and does not become a coherent animation.

Response

In the beginning, I wanted to try to make different animals with wool and to express the characteristics of the animals through exercise. But I found it difficult to make the conversion process interesting, and limited wool limits the ability to express animals (but I don't think it is a disadvantage to limit the number of yarns). I chose another way to make the process go smoothly. Like the example above, I need a theme to run through the animation, and I choose to tell a short story. The protagonist of the story remains unchanged and the surrounding environment is constantly changing. A flying fish, through the ocean, clouds, stars, and finally swallowed by the sun. When the sun sets, the moon rises and the flying fish is born again. There may be some abstractions that may be difficult to understand without a well-understood story.

Reflection

In the process of production, I have encountered many problems. In fact, the wool is not suitable for sketching the angular characters, and it is difficult to fix a single wool, so it is very difficult to make only minor changes. After some attempts, wire was added to help the wool to fix the shape, which had a slight effect on the texture of the yarn, reduced softness and increased stiffness.

I think this would be a very useful attempt to show different expressions - play with a single material. Maybe the yarn is not the best item, but at least it offers a possibility. And the real production process is simpler and faster than traditional animations (without complex situations), and most of the effort is spent on pre-production. And with the storyboard in mind, the shooting process is fast, because there is no need to consider other external factors.