Superman Stats

Wednesday 7 August 2013

Top Secret: Sketch-Motion



Top Secret

Sketch Motion

 

Welcome to the second edition of Top Secret

This post relates to my College project regarding stop-motion animation

First, What's Stop-Motion?

This is animation using photography, a certain object is taken photographs of after being moved slightly between frames thus creating the illusion of movement whence viewed all together. 



It can be done using any objects or live with yourself, any action can be done as long as there is only slight movements between frames.

My project ran for 1 week, discounting mine and my friends previous failed attempt, check out our Stop-Motion process below...


First Trial

The most common style of stop-motion is claymation.

Claymation is the animation of Clay objects through stop-motion techniques. 

Since its the most popular form of Stop-Motion, our group decided to try a hand at this.


Snack-Motion


I will be honest, in order to meet deadlines our attempt was half baked and rushed hence failed to become a true piece of work. 

The idea was also quite complicated;

I would walk and try to grab a piece of food (in reality white clay) shaped like a man, the man would wake up and run off.

Johnny Walker!

The snack man would eventually run off and reach the next room, here he would face the daunting task of climbing a table to reach closer to the window...


 Huh!! Finally I'm at the top of the world!!!

The snack man would eventually come face to face with two clay toys watching a toy wrestling set!


He's making him an offer he can't refuse, get it?! If you do...you win a Prize!

Once the white cookie gets done with the bullies, he runs of on top of a book and stepping on a phone (set at pause on a certain song) and prompting an entrance song to play for his entry into the Toy Wrestling Set (actually cardboard created set)


As you can see the pictures a bit blurry, one of the few reasons why our Claymation attempt failed 

Eventually the entrance would end up in the cookie getting confused and falling down the ramp. He would then face the wrath of the toy champion...BUT END UP WINNING!


 Jack fell down a hill and Jill left him after that


 A 5 rupee champion!


 Sneaky! Sneaky!


Finish Him! And that's a super kick, and he win the match! By god! We have a new champppiiiooooonnnn!!!
   
Unfortunately most of these parts were hard to do as the clay did not mold properly and we were in a bit off a rush.

NOTE THIS! Kids never fucking procrastinate!



 
So the next step was to create this project the right way through...


...Research

First of all I would like to thank my flatmate and friend Burhan Hakimjee for this one, your constant criticism of my character as lazy and whinny pushed me towards working much more harder (if still not hard enough) in working on this project properly. 

My research of stop-motion opened the avenue to a particular brand within called Sketch-Motion. 

One video really struck me (unfortunately I cannot seem to find it now). Here it had a boy sketched on paper seeing another girl sketched on another paper, he uses a book as a bridge between the papers to go to her. Eventually something or the other happens (cannot remember) and they have    to fight of a paper demon that can turn into dragons and whatnot.

The stop motion comes into play when the two characters are cut-out so as to interact with the environment around them.

This was an awesome idea and I thought of actually copying it but tweaking it as well (making it easier by being more based on the paper and allowing the girl to fight as well diminishing the damsel in distress trope)

The major crux unlike the other demon trying to steal the girl was, that the world around them was preventing their friendship from working or their love from blooming.

Still no point on dwelling in the past. Time constraints and the complication of the idea made sure that this work wouldn't see the light of the day.

Instead in comes in my aforementioned friend, once again I would like to say a massive thank you cause he basically saved my project and my ass.

He simplified the major crux of my idea, instead of doing all this why not shorten it.

Then he also added to the major sequence of the stop-motion by giving me the idea of flowers coming out from the broken heart rather than a man. I don't want to explain the story, so I would rather have you just watch it...

...but first some of the snapshots the projects cinematographer Vikrant Kamble took of the sketches done by the lead animator and designer Sneha Majumdar.













Frames are her just to show that the work was actually ours.


Finally the group editor Jitendra Kumar compiled the frames into a seamless stop-motion/sketch-motion.

The music is "You and Me" by Lifehouse, it's quite romantic and suits the story of the animated film.

For the credits we also did some fun filled stop-motion. The tune over there is a basic ringtone "Hard Beat Floor" Kitschi Cupid (from Samsung).

Enjoy mine and my groups work!




Apart from credit to my group, I would like to once again acknowledge the band Lifehouse and Samsung and Kitschi Cupid. 

I would like to once again credit my friend/flatmate Burhan Hakimjee as well as Batul Chherawalla for the initial design of the female character. My teachers Mr. Bankat and Mr. Sumit for teaching us the topics of stop-motion and video editing among other skills.   

And thank you to whichever one of you sweet idiots who spends their time indulging me by reading this blog especially this post.


'Nuff Said (Before I start tearing like I just won some big award)

Aneesh Raikundalia



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