APD - Week 1 - Play and Self

Method:

To make this stop-motion, I used the mobile app called ‘Stop Motion Studio’, that I used during my first week in Studio 1. I took about 153 pictures and played them at 11 frames/second to get the initial video. I then took the video into After Effects and added the text and played around with the time frame to get the speed that I wanted.

Context (Inspiration):

I wanted to do something different for the theme ‘Play and Self’. I wanted to get away from 3D animations and Unity for a bit and do something that I wouldn’t have done in a normal scenario. When thinking about the ideas and brainstorming, I came across this idea of putting feelings into a jar. I took that idea and thought about doing something that showed my life in a jar. And when thinking about the medium that I wanted to use, I changed my idea from ‘My Life in a Jar’ to ‘My Diet in a Jar’ and decided I wanted to do a stop motion animation (instead of an illustration), using a jar and anything that I could find in my kitchen (mostly things that I usually eat).

Response:

As the response to the theme of ‘Play and Self’, I created a stop-motion animation about what I eat on a general basis. I tried to animate a piece of most of the things that I eat and drink into the jar (dumplings, egg, bread, cereal, popcorn, and coke). I wanted to add more food and drinks to the jar, but I didn’t have everything laying around me when I made this video.

Reflection:

I enjoyed creating the stop motion animation and really loved playing with my food. This was my second stop-motion animation and I enjoyed it as much as the first one.

 I would change a lot of things if I were to re-create this or work on another stop-motion project. The only thing that I thought about before starting the shoot, was the light source. I shot the pictures at night, with one lamp to the side, to have similar effects and shadows throughout the video, which I believe I accomplished. I didn’t consider stabilizing the camera, which resulted in the picture angles varying a lot throughout the video. Finding a way to stabilize the camera would be something that I would work on first next time I do a stop motion animation among other things.

After this, I would love to try out more stop motion animation work and fix my mistakes along the way.