APD Week 10 - Play and Nature

Responding to the theme of Play and Nature I created a naturally generated animation following the spines of a series of leaves.

Context

My piece this week is a stop-motion animation that uses the curvature and direction of leaf spines to dictate the animation’s flow. I was inspired by the work of my peer, Vian Wang, and her stop motion animation having leaves depict various animals. I wanted to explore leaves and their structure and use their form to construct an animated piece.

Method

My first point of action was to collect enough leaves to animate. I didn’t exactly know how many leaves I would require, or how long each leaf would be displayed on the screen, but I am lucky enough to live in a particularly leafy area. I collected around 30 leaves and returned home where I set my phone up on a tripod to capture each leaf in sequence.

The ordering of the leaves was intended to be random, as I would pull each leaf out of a bag to decide which to use next.

To avoid disrupting the framing I set my phone to record an extended video, allowing me to focus on positioning the leaves. Later, I cut up the video footage and froze on each shot to give the appearance of a true stop motion animation.

Response

Leaves video: https://youtu.be/dw5BGCnvo7o

The result of this experiment is a unique looping animation that follows an entirely natural course. Each leaf leads on from the last, creating curves and loops throughout.

The most playful element of this process was the exploration of each variety of leaf and how they could all relate to one another. The act of watching the video feels playful too and almost meditative. You can relax and simply enjoy the intricacy of the leaves and their relationships.

Reflection

This piece is one of the simpler ones I have produced. Initially, I intended to look at corrosion and environmental forces and had planned to take advantage of predicted storms. I would have attempted to build sand or dirt structures in the pouring rain and recorded my creations as they came together and fell apart. However, the expected storms never truly occurred, and my recent vaccination forced me to stay at home for a large part of the week.

The end piece I have produced was only conceived a few days before the next class but feels much more relevant to the theme than my original idea.

References

• Vian Wang's response to Play and Nature: http://magistudio.net/work/apd-play-and-nature-week-10