I came across a stop motion studio outside London called A + C Studios, responsible for Animated advertisements for companies such as Harrods, Trivago, LEGO, British Airways, American Express and Sainsburys, to name a few.
They have two stop motion studios, one with an infinity cove, and I was interested to discover that they rent them out when they are not in production. They also have their model workshop and editing suite in the same building so their work ethic is very teamwork orientated and each member of the team has contact with one another while making thier own contribution to the production at hand.
From estimating a break down of my living costs as a student, I have worked out that I spend around £9973.20 annually. I am currently seeking freelance work during my studies and must have a suitable hourly and daily rate to quote potential clients with. To break even I must earn £831.10 a month. If I work at £13 p/h at 8hrs a day, I would have a daily rate of £104. At this rate I would work for 8 days a month to break even. Working at the same rate for the other 3 weeks in one month would I profit at 3x the income I would need to cover living costs.
This week some of my peers went to Manchester Animation Festival. Filled with envy and regret of not buying a ticket for it, I researched the work of some of the animators exhibiting there.
One short in particular stood out to me, Facing it, directed by Sam Gainsborough.
This is a mixed media claymation/live-action hybrid where the magic of animation was used to represent the feelings of people and how their perception of the world changes through time with experiences they have. It was interesting to see this literal take on visually representing the thoughts of a character we wouldn't see otherwise in a live action production. In an interview with Directors Notes, Gainsborough talks about the challenges they faced during produciton, 'we shot the film in live action and pixellation and then separately shot the character’s faces in the studio against a green-screen, almost rotoscoping the footage we had already shot. This meant matching the lighting by eye, tracking frame by frame in stop-motion,' he states that given the medium used in the animation it was very trial and error, but doing a small-scale prototype of the technique made them realise it was possible to do. Raymonde or the Vertical Escape is a stop motion Animation about a lonely old owl who longs for a life of love and of something bigger than her day to day gardening routine. The level of detail put into the set alone had me drooling. The smooth animated movements of the characters are so realistic and precise it makes it easier to watch and enjoy as the whole aesthetic blends nicely together.
https://film-animation.blogs.la-croix.com/cesars-raymonde-ou-levasion-verticale-un-film-tendre-et-profond-sur-la-solitude/2019/02/07/ These two examples use a mix of stop motion with either live action, or 2D animation. They have a reason for using these contrasting mediums; to show thoughts or feelings from the live action or 3D stop motion characters. They use the more life-like medium to show reality and the other to put a different perspective on the events. This would be interesting to experiment with, but it reminds me that there must be a purpose to the method of communication we use to tell a story.
Almax is an advertisement for a mannequin company. It uses a mix of live action film with stop motion, to give the illusion that the mannequins come to life when the sculptor has finished making them and has left the room.
I re-watched this looking at the detail of the shots, looking into how they transitioned from a sculpture life-size mannequin in the live action to the silicone puppets with armatures in them to animate with.
I quickly realised that the puppets were green screened and the animation of their dance was layered over the live action shots. It was through the illusion of the live action character touching the mannequins with close ups of him sculpting with clay, that tricks the eye into thinking they are life-sized.
A fault I noticed in this technique was that their feet do not touch the ground, although the rig is well edited out I could almost imagine it still there holding them up. This is something I should be very aware of if I am to create stop motion animation with puppets as the rig holding them up must be edited out well and when using a green screen I must create the same atmosphere with similar lighting to the set it will be edited onto.
Throughout my continuous blogging of research into the creative industries, I will be focusing on Stop Motion & 3D CGI animations and practitioners. I have deep interests in both of these types of animation and would like to investigate further into these in order to establish what I would like to specialise in.
I came across two animated stop motion shorts by a studio called Zealous Creative: Zero
The Maker
From researching the making of these Shorts I become more aware of the 3D stop motion production line, as before I was only confident in the 2D production line. For stop motion it is necessary to have 2D concept illustrations followed by 3D prototypes of character and set design so that the shape and size of the objects work well together and to ensure the figures are flexible enough to animate.
It was interesting to see how they made the prototype character body shapes out of clay to mould the final silicone puppets, adding texture with thread. This meant that the puppets were light but that their armatures were secure within the body and therefore perfect to animate with.
To achieve the smooth camera movements seen throughout The Maker, Mark Laganga made camera dollies out of recycled old objects. He used 35mm film as it is light and durable - withstanding tension, and also the inside of a scanner as it has a gear box to adjust the distance between each shot, which they found useful for smooth close up pans as they needed smaller gaps between each shot.
This made me realise the wide range of camera angles and staging possibilities you can create by inventing a track around your set, as before this I only imagined the camera on a still tripod. I hope to experiment with this when I build a set and shoot a stop motion short.
