I am going to start off by saying this isn't my best work and I am not proud of it; However, I have definitely learned a lot from it and I have been bitten by the "stop motion bug" and I look forward to many more stop motion projects in the future.
To save anyone the trouble from having to critique the project I will do it myself. I was originally planning on shooting 15 frames but I was shooting as though it was 4 fps. In the end it looks quick and choppy. I had set the camera I was using to manual focus and my lighting was consistent however I believe my camera was automatically white balancing or changing the color of each shot, so when strung together at the end, they appear to flicker. I was originally planning on a space themed stop motion using an armature and a cardboard background; however, the armature ended up not functioning correctly and would not hold positions which makes it quite difficult to create a smooth animation. When I switched to legos I had a whole story planned out and only ended up having time for two scenes though. I do not plan on finishing the lego story, instead, I plan on investing more time into creating a more pliable and rigid armature and creating a new stop motion.
As I have torn down my project enough, I would like to go into what I did well however tough it may be to see over the negative aspects. I utilized a multi-plane environment in the background of the car scene with 3 layers, the foreground or road, the mid ground which were blank grass tiles, and finally the mountains off in the distance. I tried to use ease in and ease out or at least was consciously thinking about it in situations such as when the female character turns the corner and her arms go limp and sway, and in other little parts like that such as when the male character lifted and lowered his arm. finally however choppy or quick the final project is, you can still tell what is going on which is a start.
The new Laika movie Kubo was a huge inspiration for me and I have spent a lot of time watching behind the scenes and videos about how they created all of their scenes. I also watched a few videos from other Laika movies but I mainly focused on Kubo. With the combination of watching professionals and failing on my project, I have learned a lot and anticipate a successful next stop motion.
They reference older articles or concept art. The articles strengths are that it is developed. It references previous work and how they went about that and then how they went through it this time along with different steps they took and what they used. Some weaknesses would be that it doesn't actually show all of the things coming together, it just shows the planning stage and final product. the author concludes that the final product really fit what they were going for. I feel like the article explained the process and regardless of if the main point is good or not it gave me an understanding in the subject.
At first I didn't understand what they had mean from Japanese wood block art; however, after research, I found out it is a traditional art where a block of wood is glued to a print and then the design is meticulously carved out and then it is like a stamp where you paint on the block and stamp it onto paper. From there I connected what the animator meant when he said they integrated the wood texture into the water. I thought this article was interesting and useful because it showed their whole process and the steps they take on the professional level
