Stop Motion CRAFT SKILLS FOR MODEL ANIMATION

STOP MOTIONTHIRD EDITION CRAFT SKILLS FOR MODEL ANIMATION



STOP MOTIONTHIRD EDITION CRAFT SKILLS FOR MODEL ANIMATION SUSANNAH SHAW Boca Raton London New York CRC Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group 6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300 Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742 © 2017 by Susannah Shaw CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business No claim to original U.S. Government works Printed on acid-free paper Version Date: 20161201 International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-138-77931-0 (Paperback) 978-1-138-62878-6 (Hardback) This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use. The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced in this publication and apologize to copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not been obtained. If any copyright material has not been acknowledged please write and let us know so we may rectify in any future reprint. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, please access www.copyright.com (http://www.copyright.com/) or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-for-profit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of users. For organizations that have been granted a photocopy license by the CCC, a separate system of payment has been arranged. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com and the CRC Press Web site at http://www.crcpress.com

Contents xi xiii Acknowledgments Author 1 1 1 5 Introduction: Playing God 8 What is stop motion? 9 Nature and caricature 9 What this book is for? 10 10 2 10 Getting Equipped 11 11 What do you need? 11 Choosing a camera 11 13 Webcam 14 Smartphone or tablet 15 Digital single-lens re ex 15 Lenses 16 Focal length 16 Animation software/frame grabbers Tripods 17 Lighting 17 e animator’s toolkit 18 Recording sound 18 Editing 20 Glossary 3 Getting Animated Animating familiar objects as a rst approach Setting up for the rst time Color correction File naming and storage v

vi CONTENTS 23 24 Notes on movement 25 Timing: Single frame or double frame? 28 Squash and stretch 28 30 Air resistance 31 e X-sheet 32 Planning 33 e old ones are the best 33 Glossary 34 35 4 35 Keep it Simple: Developing Your Story 36 36 Idea–script–treatment 36 e script 36 36 Find a good editor 37 Treatment 38 Planning your shots: Basic lm grammar/composition of shots 38 Aspect ratio 39 Plan 39 Film grammar 39 How to set up your shots and give them continuity? 41 Camera angle 41 Motivation 41 Continuity 45 Crossing the line 45 Reverse angle shots Camera move in a shot (pan, tilt, zoom, track) 47 Focus 47 Sound 50 e storyboard 51 Visualization 54 Editing: Animatics and story reels 54 58 5 69 Coat Hangers for Armatures: Making Your Own Model Character design Staying upright Working with modeling clays Making your own puppet Simple wire and Plasticine puppet Durable clothed puppet List of materials used to make this model

CONTENTS vii 6 73 Advanced Model Making 75 76 e maquette 77 Ball-and-socket armature 79 80 Making your own ball-and-socket armature 83 Humanoid joints 83 84 Rigging points 88 Replacements and 3D printing 88 89 Replacements 89 Rapid prototype or 3D printing 89 Mould making: Hard and soft moulds 90 92 e sculpt 92 Textures 94 Undercuts 94 Seams 94 Making a hard mould 95 Plaster moulds 101 Resin moulds 107 Making a soft mould Silicone moulds 109 Plasticine press moulds 109 Casting 109 Model making masterclass: ScaryCat Studio and the Duracell bunny 110 Glossary of model making materials 110 113 7 114 Four Walls and a Sky: Sets and Props 115 115 Research the look 116 Design and building of sets 118 119 Scale 119 e base 120 Creating landscapes Buildings Interior sets Practical lights Exterior sets Forced perspective Making props Rigging Glossary of materials for sets

viii CONTENTS 123 124 8 125 Sound Advice: e Voice Track 126 126 Pre-production 126 Recording dialog 127 131 Voice techniques 133 Recording Sound breakdown 135 Lip sync 135 A rough guide to mouth shapes: Look in the mirror 135 Music and e ects copyright 135 138 9 138 e Mechanics of Movement 139 Studies from observation 140 Using live reference 140 e invaluable muybridge 142 Posing the model 143 Balance 144 Line of action 148 Timing 148 Weight 149 Lifting a heavy box 149 Creating a sense of weight 149 Anticipation, action, and reaction 150 Hands and feet 151 Follow-through 151 Snap 151 Breaking up the movement 151 Walking and running 154 Rigging 154 Relaxed walk: 16 Frames 155 Fast walk: 8–12 Frames (one full step) 155 Run: Six frames (four steps per second) 155 e illusion of speed Animal and bird movement Four-legged animals Lizard Birds’ walk Birds’ ight

CONTENTS ix 10 159 e Performance 159 Character animation 162 Comedy and comic timing 163 Eyelines 165 Blinking 165 More than one character 167 Subtle character animation 171 11 171 Ready to Shoot 171 172 Lighting 172 Measuring light 174 Calibrate your monitor 174 Color temperature and lighting gels 174 Lighting the background 174 175 Health and safety issues 175 Setting up the shot 176 177 Camera position 177 Shutter speed 177 Depth of eld 177 Camera moves 178 Motion control 182 Blocking out your shots 182 Your own welfare 183 Shooting 183 Shooting with a rig 184 Chroma key or green screen 184 Checkerboarding 185 Using glass 185 Special e ects: Tips and hints 186 Fire and explosions 186 Camera shake 186 Rain 186 Footprints in the snow Water Smoke Fog/mist Wind

x CONTENTS 186 186 Motion blur 187 Consider the editor 187 Final checks before you hit that button Glossary 189 189 12 191 Post-Production 191 192 e picture edit 193 Compositing 193 Sound 193 Mixing together the layers of sound to make the nal soundtrack for the lm 195 Titles and credits 195 Exporting your nal lm 196 Glossary 196 197 13 198 Getting the Job: e Business of Animation 198 200 Know where you stand 202 Di erent work, di erent studios 203 Commercials 204 Series 204 TV specials Features 207 Case study: Creature comforts 207 Applying for jobs 208 Your showreel 209 Festivals 211 Sending proposals to commissioning editors 212 215 14 220 Animation Masterclass: Teresa Drilling 225 e model On what creates a character First position e extreme downward position Beginning the upward move Slowing down at the top of the move Settling into nal position Index

Acknowledgments Enduring thanks to Gary Jackson and Cat Russ of ScaryCat Studio Tristan Oliver and Loyd Price, who so kindly gave their time to make this book work. anks also to Tony Guy; Ian Mackinnon, Neil Sutcli e, Sara Mullock, Peter Saunders, and Christine Walker of Mackinnon and Saunders; Barry Purves; Je Newitt; Guionne Leroy; Chris Randall at Second Home Films; Timothy Hittle; Helen Nabarro; Nick Hilligoss at ABC; Ange Palethorpe, Glen Holberton, and Emma Bruce at Loose Moose; John Scho eld at bolexbrothers; Blair Clark at Tippett Studios; Lionel Orozco of Stop Motion Works; David McCormick; Helen Garrard; Jamie England; Bob orne at Artem; Anthony Scott; Trey omas; Richard Goleszowski; John Wright at John Wright Modelmaking; Miguel Grinberg; Brigid Appleby and Mark Hall of Cosgrove Hall; Jackie Cockle; Sarah Ball; Barry Bruce at Vinton’s; Nigel Cornford; James Mather; John Parsons; Helen Brunsdon; Luis Cook, Nick Park, Sharron Traer, Dave Sproxton, Gareth Owen, Dan Lane, Tom Barnes, Jan Sanger, Martin Shann, Ian Fleming and Michael Carter of Aardman Animations; Chris Webster at UWE; Rick Catizone; Chris Grace at S4C; Mary Murphy; Teresa Drilling; Johnny Tate; Linda McCarthy, Daniel Templeton, Simon Jacobs and Dragonframe, DZED Systems LLC. Model making and animation sequences for Chapters 5, 6, 9, and 10 created and animated by ScaryCat Studio. Model making for Chapters 2 and 3 by Johnny Tate. Illustrations by Tony Guy and Susannah Shaw. xi



Author Susannah Shaw has been the CEO of the Curzon Cinema & Arts in Clevedon, North Somerset since November 2014, a unique independent cinema that has run continuously from 1912. Previously, she was the director of Animated Exeter, a lively annual animation festival. In 1996, she founded the Bristol Animation Course at the University of the West of England, supported by Aardman Animations. It was this course along with several years working on and o at Aardman in the camera department that resulted in her rst Stop Motion book. Shaw has also directed radio and television programmes for the BBC, having worked at BBC Bristol as an assistant editor and in the distant past, an assistant animator on the series, Animated Conversations, the BBC’s precursor to Channel 4’s LipSynch series. xiii



1 Introduction Playing God You want to captivate people. It doesn’t come with just technique, it’s about putting yourself inside that character. It’s like slowing down your brain and all of a sudden you are that puppet and you move how that puppet moves. Guionne Leroy Animator on Toy Story, Chicken Run, and Coraline What is stop motion? If you want to make great animation, you need to know how to control the whole world: how to make a character, how to make that character live and be happy or sad. You need to create four walls around them, a landscape, the sun, and the moon—a whole life for them. But it’s not just playing dolls—it’s more like playing God. You have to get inside that puppet and rst make it live, then make it perform. Animation is animation, whatever the medium. Whether you are drawing on paper, Plasticine modeling, or moving a couple of matchboxes around in front of a camera, to become an animator you will need to understand movement and how to create emotion. You can be a cartoonist or an artist on lm, a moving image maker, and there are many beautiful and hilarious examples of this, but they do not necessarily ful ll the de nition of animation that this book sets out to demonstrate. is book is written for someone wanting to take the rst steps in creating three-dimensional (3D) character animation. Methods for two-dimensional (2D) animation have been documented for a long time. Since the for- mation of the Disney Studios, their vast commercial output meant they had to nd ways of passing on their skills to a large body of workers who needed to know the house style. e top animators started to analyze what they were doing as animators, and began to identify rules and guiding principles by 1

2 STOP MOTION which they worked. Most of these principles apply to model or puppet animation as well as—as they are derived from the scienti c study of movement—the e ect of gravity, friction, and force on masses. One of the greatest books to read about the development of 2D animation is Ollie Johnston and Frank omas’s e Illusion of Life (1997), and a brilliant reference book for animation generally is Richard William’s e Animator’s Survival Kit (2001). You will have seen early computer animation that seems wooden and sti or the characters glide and swoop about as though gravity never existed. is is simply because, in this relatively new medium, the majority of early practitioners were originally from a computing background and had learned the com- puting skills but not necessarily the animation skills. Director John Lasseter was a successful 2D anima- tor before applying his skills to the computer-generated Tin Toy, Knick Knack, and, more famously, Toy Story and Monsters Inc., giving Pixar some of the best computer-generated characters seen so far. Not everyone can handle both skills that well. Nowadays, animators are recruited to work on computer- generated lms from 2D and stop motion backgrounds, and it is recognized that training for computer graphic (CG) character animation should follow the same traditional principles of animation. In Europe and Asia, puppet animation has grown out of a tradition of storytelling, fable, and legend. Most practitioners developed their own ways of working in isolation, many reinventing the wheel, but in very few cases were methods documented, and certainly no “principles” for model animation had been laid down in the same way as for 2D. However the basic laws of movement apply to any form of animation. For many years, Eastern Europe was the source of puppet animation; in the United States lm exper- imentation settled more quickly to making 2D drawn animation. But in Eastern Europe there was a long tradition of puppeteering; for some, lm was seen as a natural medium for the art. Puppeteers had to be able to breathe life into a jointed wooden doll in very much the same way as animators do. e design element of the puppet was very important to the storytelling process—they would need to com- municate a character over a distance to the whole audience. Jiri Trnka, the Czech animator, paid hom- age to this tradition with his beautifully made puppet lms of the 1950s and 1960s, the best known of which was an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (Figure 1.1). His colleague, Bretislav Pojar modernized the technique bringing fast cutting and lighting to add a realistic gloss. ere are many interpretations of model animation, stop motion or 3D animation. Two Americans working in Britain, the Brothers Quay, use found objects to imbue their lyrical and sometimes night- marish lms with atmosphere, for example, in e Street of Crocodiles and is Unnameable Little Broom. eir style derives from an Eastern European tradition of fairy tale and fable, and has been described as “bringing dead matter to life.” Jan Svankmajer, another Czech lmmaker, whose more surreal animation ranges from animating with clay to pixilation, has in uenced many lmmakers, (Figure 1.2) including Dave Borthwick of bolexbrothers, who directed e Secret Adventures of Tom umb as a combination of pixilated live humans acting alongside eight-inch animated puppets (Figure 1.3). Pixilation (not to be muddled with pixelation) is moving an object; it could be a human or a piece of furniture, frame by frame to create something that moves very di erently. Further examples of good use of pixilation are Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer, made at Aardman, Radiohead’s ere ere made at Bristol’s Collision Films, and another successful Aardman short, Angry Kid, but the best-known example is Norman MacLaren’s Neighbours.

INTRODUCTION 3 FIGURE 1.1 Scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia 1958 Source. Copyright Kratky Film. FIGURE 1.2 Still from Jan Svankmajer’s 1989 lm Darkness, Light, Darkness Source. Photo © Copyright Miloslav Spála.

4 STOP MOTION FIGURE 1.3 The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb by Bolexbrothers Source. Copyright Manga Entertainment Ltd. 2002. In the United States, a di erent kind of model animation came into being with Willis O’Brien’s e Lost World, made in 1925, and King Kong, made in 1933. O’Brien, and the assistant who joined him in 1948 to work on Mighty Joe Young, Ray Harryhausen, have probably been the greatest inspiration for today’s model animators. Harryhausen’s pioneering work with armatures and latex laid the ground for many of the techniques still used today. His animation had a more naturalistic movement than seen before, and his animation of the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts (1963) is one of his most enduring sequences studied by animators. Harryhausen’s work has in uenced most of the animators mentioned in this book, among them lmmakers like Phil Tippett, who has brought his skills to bear on a whole genre of fantasy and space- legend lms, such as Dragonslayer, Jurassic Park, and the Star Wars lms, and who is in turn in uenc- ing the next generation of animators (Figure 1.4). Several years ago the conversations in animation studios revolved around the advent of computer animation heralding the demise of stop motion animation. Now we have stop motion studios use CGI alongside mechanical animation because it gives them the freedom to use many more tools and develop their ideas with fewer constraints. Skilled model animators are able to translate their work on to the com- puter screen, as 2D or 3D. As always, it is creativity and imagination that harness the tools to the best e ect. e pleasure (and pain) of working directly with one’s hands to create a performance continues to seduce animators. Stop motion centers on that tension of giving a performance. As Guionne Leroy says at the start of this chapter “all of a sudden you are that puppet and you move how that puppet moves ….”

INTRODUCTION 5 FIGURE 1.4 Phil Tippett animating on Dragonslayer Source. Copyright Tippett Studio 1982. Nature and caricature Why don’t we just copy from live reference frame by frame? Surely it would save a lot of time and worry. Rotoscoping is used in 2D and computer animation in addition to motion capture techniques to get around some problems. is is literally copying frame by frame o live lm. Rotoscoping was originally invented around 1914 by Max Fleischer for Out of the Inkwell; he lmed his brother dressed in a clown costume and used it as live lm reference. Rotoscoping was also used extensively in Disney’s Snow White, for instance where Snow White dances around the well singing Some Day my Prince Will Come. It’s a technique employed to speed up the animation process, similar to motion capture in com- puter animation. But straight copying can look strangely lifeless because animation is an art, not just a skill. What the animator is aiming for is to create something more than mere imitation, to create a performance. Ladislas Starewitch, one of the earliest experimenters in puppet animation, astonished audiences all over Europe with his animated insects and animals in such lms as e Cameraman’s Revenge (1911), e Tale of the Fox (1929–1930), and e Mascot (1933) (see Figure 1.5). Starewitch remembered trying to animate a frog I had a lot of trouble making him swim in such a way that seemed right. At rst I did the move- ments exactly as they would have been with a real frog. But on screen it just didn’t work, so I ani- mated his movements almost caricaturally and it came out much better.

6 STOP MOTION FIGURE 1.5 The Frogs Who Wanted a King/Frogland/Les Grenouilles qui Demandent Un Roi by Ladislas Starewitch 1927 Source. Copyright L.B. Martin-Starewitch. Sometimes caricature is intrinsic to the characters’ design. Just like Trnka’s puppets, where the static faces have a certain eloquence, Nick Park’s dog, Gromit has an economy of design that allows a range of emotions to be communicated using only the brow. Brow up: happiness, innocence, worry, and enquiry. Brow down: suspicion, frustration, anger, mild annoyance, and determination (Figure 1.6). Extreme character reactions of the 2D style of the type seen in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? or Tex Avery (Red Hot Riding Hood) were not usually the province of the model animator. Working with Plasticine has certain restrictions and armatures cannot be stretched to express extremes of emotion. e use of replacements or substitutes in model animation allows plenty of “stretch and squash.” A model is made for each di erent movement, so that the animator replaces a new model for each shot. When shooting on twos (two frames per move) this could mean you are using 12 di erent models per second of lm. (Shooting on twos is explained in Chapter 3, p. 27.) Using this method means every- thing has to be very well planned in advance, but it does allow you to stretch a pose as far as you want. Replacements were originally employed by George Pal in the 1940s for lms such as Tulips will Grow and Home on the Range. With the advent of 3D printing, studios are using replacements to a far greater degree, and feature lms and commercials have been using rapid prototyping to create replacements, and without a doubt the look of stop motion lms now is so slick as to often make them indistinguish- able from CGI, to the extent that animators include thumbprints to try to regain the handmade look. Figure 1.7 Boxtrolls used 3D Printing throughout. Boxtrolls © 2014 LAIKA.

INTRODUCTION 7 FIGURE 1.6 Gromit Source. Copyright Aardman/W&G Ltd. 1989. FIGURE 1.7 Boxtrolls Source. Copyright LAIKA.

8 STOP MOTION What this book is for? Since writing the previous two editions, so much information about the craft has become available online through sites such as stopmotionanimation.com, StopmotionPro’s own site, and many oth- ers, that now there is a huge wealth of information and help for beginners. is edition keeps all the original tips and techniques, loses equipment and lm terminology no longer in use, and adds current methods of work ow. e aim is still to help those who want to learn the hands-on, tactile craft skill of model animation and by learning these hard and fast tips, you’ll then be in a position to be far more creative. As a student, you may not want to spend your precious three years developing complex armatures and models, but you can use elements of this book to guide you with your animation. You will learn about breaking down a script for animation, timing for animation, creating mood and emotion and get a good idea of the quality you can aspire to. Inspiration comes from people I’ve been lucky enough to work with or interview, and this book may be of use while you nd your route to creating magic. When it’s working you feel like an artist—it’s great. Getting there can be very di cult because it’s so time-consuming—it’s such a long period of time. It’s pure faith that keeps me going. I nd along the way people who want to work with me, lighting people, musicians. ere’s a handful who have the same love of creation that jives with what I’m doing. Nobody’s making any money—but we’re making something beautiful, for the sake of it. Tim Hittle U.S. animator, directed Oscar-nominated short Canhead, and worked on Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. CG animator on Pixar’s e Incredibles, Wall-E, and Toy Story 3

2 Getting Equipped I started trying to tell stories when I was young at home; I wanted to tell stories in some shape or form, and I was into drawing cartoons. In our house, none of the relations had lm gear or anything like that. So you try and get your head round it. “I want to make a lm … how’s it done?” How do you make a lm? I drew onto tracing paper, mounted those drawings into slides and projected them, and made a little recording to go with it. You try to make more of the story rather than think of the pro- duction values—because there aren’t any production values! You just try to do an entertaining something! Je Newitt Co-director on Aardman’s Pirates! What do you need? 1. A camera 2. Something to hold it steady 3. Something to record your animation and soundtrack onto In this time of unprecedented development in moving image production, I have endeavored to present coherent choices in this chapter, but as the mass of new software and kit continues to grow so fast I can’t go into enough detail to provide exactly the information you’ll require as a novice. I o er this as a rough guide to getting started. e time Je Newitt (above) talks about, in his youth, lming animation was a more complicated and slow process, but Je created the best way he could think of at the time to get the story made. Nowadays we have incredible choice at an a ordable rate. is chapter will provide some direction and information of what sort of equipment you’ll need and what choices you can make. If you are 9

10 STOP MOTION interested in the model making and animation aspects, you may easily be left cold by the technical side of lighting, shooting, and editing your lm. Most of this information can be easily found on online tutorials and by the time I’ve written this edition, even more useful information will be out there. For anyone interested in using lm (and you can still, just!) they will nd information in the rst edition of this book. And for anyone mourning the loss, it’s good to know, that for a small fortune, Bolex cameras can still be built to order at the Swiss factory: http://www.bolex.ch or bought second- hand for around £500. Choosing a camera As a beginner, you don’t want to go out and spend your meager funds on expensive cameras and lenses. Since the second edition of this book was published, the development of the smartphone, with image sensors that can capture multi-mega pixels, renders much of my previous advice super uous. When you are starting out any camera that you can have full control over will be useful. As you move on to wanting to show your work to the rest of the world, you may want a camera that will give you higher resolution, full frame, and interchangeable lenses. A digital single-lens re ex (SLR) camera will set you back a few hundred pounds/dollars but animating with inexpensive anima- tion software and a webcam or smartphone will at least get you started, and then if you nd that stop motion is not for you, you won’t have wasted a fortune. Webcam You can use any webcam that is supported by your computer. Logitech Quickcam and Microsoft Lifecam are both of good quality, with good optics and you can switch o autofocus. Focus and expo- sure can be controlled from your animation software (you don’t want to be touching the camera at all once you have it xed in position). Smartphone or tablet Here, we have the easiest and most accessible of all tools for stop motion animation. Not only are the image sensors on these cameras very good quality now, but there are also many stop motion apps that you can use with your phone or tablet to create your lm. Your phone or tablet will have built-in camera software that automatically sets exposure, but as this book intends to take you beyond shooting construction toy lms, you’ll need a decent stop-motion software that will allow you to control your exposure. As long as you have a secure way of clamping the phone or tablet so it won’t move, all you need is to download an app that suits your level of working. And of course, some tablets have front-facing and back-facing cameras, so you need to make sure you’re using the one facing away from you.

GETTING EQUIPPED 11 Digital single-lens re ex A top quality full-frame digital single-lens re ex (DSLR) camera can set you back £1000+ and that’s before you start buying separate lenses, but you can nd perfectly good cameras for much less. Newer DSLRs give a live view, which means that what you can see the “live” shot of your set on the back of the camera, or on your laptop when connected up. e features to look for are • e ability to override auto exposure, focus, and white balance • Live view • e ability to connect (tether) your camera to the computer • A camera that can be mains powered High-end cameras will have “full-frame” sensors that are 36 × 24 mm—equivalent to 35 mm lm size. e majority of digital cameras will have smaller sensors, which are still suitable to shoot on. Lenses e lens you want depends on what sort of shots you want to use for your lm. Starting out, a zoom lens will a ord you a range of shot sizes, but you may want to graduate later to a xed focal length or prime lens. A prime will give you one xed shot size. Prime lenses have good optical quality and can have a wider aperture (lets in more light) than zoom lenses. e choice of shot size is important to the style of your lm. Focal length A standard lens at around 50 mm emulates roughly what you’ll see with the naked eye. With a shorter (wider) focal length, your subject will ll the frame, with the background seeming to be further away. Examples of wide focal length lenses are 15, 20, and 35 mm. A long focal length means that your sub- ject still lls the frame but the background seems closer than normal. Examples are 85, 105, and 300 mm. is is generally much closer than you would want to be in stop motion cinematography. A zoom lens from 18 mm (wide) to 75 mm (CU) would give you a good range. Animation software/frame grabbers Up until the 1980s animators worked “blind,” not being able to see the results of their handiwork until the lm came back from the labs the next day or perhaps a week later. Inevitably, this caused stress and

12 STOP MOTION sleepless nights, but that was how it was, and some traditional animators would say it gave them an edge that’s been lost now that you can check every frame. Barry Bruce was Creative Director at Vinton’s, the U.S. studio famous for Claymation®, now no longer running. When I interviewed Bruce back in 2000, he maintained that the use of frame grabbers had slowed animation up. Working blind, he said, gave you a ow and a more instinctive feel for the animation that was unique to model animators. However, with all the other developments in stop motion there’s no denying that frame grabbing or frame capture software has been a godsend. It allows you to check your live image against your previously grabbed image, before taking the frame. is way, you can see how your animation is progressing frame by frame. You should be able to overlay your live image with your stored image (known as onion skin), and see exactly how far to move limbs, drapery, and hairs. You can go backward and forward frame by frame (known as “toggling”), or set up a loop, to show the animation in real time up to your current “live” image. Back in the late 1980s in the United Kingdom, animators were using tape-based video assist sys- tems with single-frame facility. e perception video recorder (PVR) made by the Canadian company Digital Processing Systems was a device for computer graphic artists to render onto and play back their animation in real time without the need for an expensive tape-based system. Cosgrove Hall and Aardman Animations had both waited many years for animator friendly software. David Sproxton, director of Aardman Animations, remembers We saw it at the Cardi Animation Festival, around 1990/1. As it recorded video on a frame-by-frame basis it seemed ideal for our needs. We had extensive faxes going back and forth to Canada describing our needs. Eventually, they sent a guy over to talk to us and things started to happen. e “Animate” system was really the culmination of our requests and others over the course of several years. is software helped create a revolution in animation by making the model animation process much more accessible, quick, and foolproof. e basic features you should have with your animation software are • Live overlay or frame toggling: is feature allows you to ick between your live image and your previously shot frame. You can set it to blink between the frames and a variety of speeds to see how you are progressing on the next shot. • Onion skinning: is shows you a “ghost” image of your current live position, so that as you move your puppet you can check it against the previous frame. It also allows you to take your model o the set to work on and replace it to match the ghost image. ere are many stop motion apps available for tablet or phone. e commonly used softwares are iStop Motion, Stop Motion Pro, and Dragonframe. iStopMotion was developed by Boinx for Mac users. Stop Motion Pro was developed in Australia for a Windows platform, although their latest version, Eclipse, is available for Mac users too. ey are one of the more popular softwares and have a range of great, simple to follow tutorials on their website. Dragonframe has been developed since 1993, when brothers Jamie and Dyami Caliri from the United States collaborated to create stop motion animation software. Dragonframe is the rst complete

GETTING EQUIPPED 13 FIGURE 2.1 Dragonframe software screen Source. Dog model courtesy of Johnny Tate. image capture and stop motion system to incorporate, as well as the animation toolkit, a lip sync sys- tem, motion control, and lighting tools. e whole package works with Mac, Windows, and Linux. eir website has a wealth of information for both starters and professional animators (Figure 2.1). ese softwares are used professionally, but are potentially a ordable for the independent lm- maker, although there are other stop motion softwares available at lower cost. Tripods Your camera has to be rock steady. Fixed to a solid tripod, which can, of course, have its feet glued into place with a glue gun, but if the legs are imsy it’ll let you down. For a phone or tablet, you can get small, versatile, exi-pods. But for a heavier camera, you need a tripod with, at the very least, a head that you can pan and tilt, and that locks o rmly. Most domestic video tripods come with their heads attached. e friction head, the simplest form of pan and tilt movement, is designed for live lming and cannot be reliably used for controlled camera moves. It’s perfect for “locked-o ” shots. e geared head gives you a controllable, smooth movement. is suggests that trying to create camera moves using the ordi- nary heads is not going to be easy, which is why professionals use motorized, computer-controlled rigs. As it is preferable, when making your rst lms, to concentrate on the animation rather than trying to

14 STOP MOTION create ashy camera moves, a locked-o friction head is the best bet. If you want to do a pan or a tilt, a Manfrotto geared head, on a sturdy tripod, gives you more control over your camera movements. If you want to track across or around your set, there are a number of ways, and some of them could be pretty expensive. You can buy/hire a small track to put alongside your set on which you can move your camera manually or there are motorized trackers that can be programmed to move as far as you want for the frames and distance you want your movement to be. Again, the cheaper the kit, the less likely it is to have the stability you need to ensure your consecutive frames are perfectly registered. If you are doing a tracking move manually, or even tracking in, you can control your moves by putting a strip of tape close to the track with the increments marked out, and attach a pointer to your camera that can come as close to your taped markings as possible, so that you can follow your measurements exactly. Motion control camera moves on a professional shoot are generally done on a computerized system that allows full three-axis motion control. DIY—of course, you can always experiment with a camera on a roller skate or similar moveable base, and build your own track. It’s getting the control to make a smooth movement that takes the time. Lighting Available light (as opposed to created light) is not an option with conventional stop frame animation— daylight conditions will change dramatically while you are lming and a ect your image greatly. So you need to create an arti cially lit set. e simplest form of low-cost lighting would be with articulated desk or anglepoise lamps. ese are ideal for setting up at the angle you need, so long as they can be locked or taped o tightly and don’t “drift” during your shot. is sort of domestic tungsten lighting, if used cleverly can create perfectly good e ects. And although they don’t give out a lot of light, the beauty of stop frame means you can hold the shutter open as long as it’s needed, allowing you to shoot in lower light conditions. You can also soften the light from your desk lamp by taping some di usion, which you can get from a photo- graphic shop, over the lamp. Other low-cost lighting options are available from photographic shops. Halogen lamps in the range of 150–300 W (known as “garage” lamps) are available from most DIY stores and are useful for a wide throw of light. For lighting smaller areas or a smaller set, mini re ector 12 V (50 W) halogen lights can be used with a transformer and a dimmer, again available from DIY stores. You can also get 6 V (30 W) spots that can throw a narrow beam, useful for back lighting or rim lighting. LED lights are cheaper to run than the tungsten equivalent, and there are options that will carry out most of the above tasks. LED lighting is low on energy and comes with a variety of color temperatures, which don’t change on dimming. I explain more about color temperature in Chapter 11. Basically, light is “cool” or bluer at midday, and warmer (more orange) at dawn and in the evening. If you’re using tungsten or halogen lighting, when you dim them, they become warmer (more orange). You can correct this with CT (color temperature) blue gels that you can buy from photographic suppliers. You can change the mood of your lighting with colored gels; you can also reduce the brightness with neutral-density gels,

GETTING EQUIPPED 15 which don’t a ect the color of the light but just knock back the brightness or hotness of the light, if you don’t want to move the light further away. A wide range of lighting is available from lm and theater lighting distributors. Dedo lights are popular, but expensive to invest in yourself. ey do a three-lamp kit from 100w to 150w with a dimmer facility with stands and accessories. Kino Flo produce lamps that are economical to run and don’t get hot. Kino are large, uorescent soft lights, Dedo lights are small focusable tungsten xtures. Sheets of white polystyrene or styrofoam board, or white card, are useful to re ect a soft light. For instance, placed opposite the main (key) light, they will re ect some light back onto the set, lighting and creating detail in the strong dark shadows created by the main light. The animator’s toolkit Apart from modeling tools, which are always a personal choice, you will need a comprehensive toolkit including G-clamps, to hold your world together, several kinds of pliers and screwdrivers, but prob- ably the most useful piece of equipment for the new animator is a stopwatch. Timing, the basis of all animation, takes practice. Imagine or observe the move, practice the move yourself, timing your speed; break the move down into actions and then time those actions. e more you do it, the less you will need to rely on the stopwatch. A hand-drill may be required for creating holes on your set for positioning the puppet’s tiedowns— these are bolts or pins xed to the puppets’ feet which t into pre-drilled holes in the set, and can be xed by a wing nut from below the set, and will stop your puppet falling over. A mirror is useful, to look at yourself, study how you move and look at your expressions. Always have a small mirror on your set—or a large mirror somewhere that you can study moves in. Another useful piece of kit is a hot glue gun. It’s a reliable and handy way of xing things down. It is important that nothing moves in each shot, or the story’s credibility is blown. e glue gun shouldn’t be used on a good oor or table surface for obvious reasons. Alternatively, there is always “ga er” tape or duct tape, for use instead of a glue gun; it’s tough and very sticky, useful for taping down cables that clutter the oor. Keep wet wipes on hand to keep your hands clean. ey should be lanolin free and as non brous as possible—the best type in the United Kingdom are Boots’ own brand. As your work develops, your ingenuity in devising tools will increase—stop motion animators are some of the most inventive of all creatives. Recording sound Dialog needs to be recorded rst, especially if it is to be synched with mouth movements, as you will work out your timings to your dialog track (see Chapter 8—sound advice). Whatever you record on,

16 STOP MOTION as with a camera lens, the important part is the front end: the microphone. And, similar to cameras and lenses there is a huge variety in what you can record with. e advice would be to use a good microphone, and this can be a mic with a USB connection straight into your computer, or a digital audio recording device that you can record onto, and then export the les to your computer. For more information and advice on choosing a mic, a good website is www.shure.com. e best recommenda- tion for recording sound is to look at recording in a professional studio—as there is a great amount of skill involved in a really good recording. To break down your voice track to facilitate lip sync, you can import your sound as a WAV le into a lip sync application, this may come as part of the animation software, as with Dragonframe, or comple- mentary, such as Lip Sync Pro for Stop Motion Pro. You can then see your soundtrack displayed as a wave form—a visual translation of the sound—allowing you to identify every accent down to a quarter frame. is allows you to break your dialog down into phonetic sounds so that you can work out your mouth shapes. Other than dialog, the music, atmosphere, and sound e ects can be created and added in the edit. You can add sound e ects, atmospheres, and music from sound libraries, but again, it is going to be a more individual project if you create the soundtrack as much as possible yourself. Editing Most animation softwares now have an editing facility or you can also export to iMovie or Windows Moviemaker that come free with Macs and Windows computers to edit and to add any e ects, titles, and music. Final Cut Pro (for Mac) is a professional editing package. For more professional work, After E ects made by Adobe is a sophisticated post-production package. Glossary X-sheets: X-sheets are used in the planning of animation. Also known as dope sheets, they help you plan the speci c timings of action, dialog, music, sound e ects, and camera instructions. ey are used in conjunction with the storyboard to map out and plan animation sequences in terms of storytelling, lmmaking, cinematography, and narrative. Bar charts are more speci - cally just for dialog. Ga er tape: Wide, tough, and very sticky fabric-backed tape available from electrical suppliers; also known as duct tape. LED: Very low on energy consumption, now being used in lmmaking. Mini-spots: Small lamps with a re ector, creating a narrow, focused beam of up to 200 W.

3 Getting Animated I began making lms as a teen on my own in the late seventies. I never attended any kind of lm school. I worked in Super 8 and managed over the years to make a series of short, rough and cheap lms. Learning to pull o good animation was my main motivation. I soon came to realize that it was important to make a complete lm, not just a string of pointless animation tests that no one would want to watch. en the clay characters became actors telling a story and it all was much more interesting. Tim Hittle Animator on Canhead and e Incredibles Animating familiar objects as a first approach Your ultimate aim may be character animation, or you may be animating objects. Either way, if you start from the very beginning thinking about giving a performance, even the exercises suggested in this chapter will become imbued with life. Performance is the key to character animation and will take the dryness out of any practice work that you do. e exercises included all have a practical basis, but in order to keep them interesting, think about giving the piece of Plasticine, or matchbox, that little bit of character that will bring it to life. is chapter doesn’t give speci c character animation tips; you will progress on to that later. My sug- gestion is that if you begin by thinking of exercises in terms of performance, you will get there quicker. First of all, before you attempt something more elaborate, pick some everyday objects and try to breathe a little life into them. Don’t give yourself extra work such as having to articulate “limbs” that op around and need sti ening, or overcomplicate things by building sets and constructing armatures. Inanimate objects are a good way of learning about animation and character. Take a matchbox and try to imagine it as a dog and then start giving it doggie characteristics. For instance, the dog wants you to throw a ball for it. So it’s panting, front paws down, back end in the air, wagging its tail, and jumping 17

18 STOP MOTION up and down. It quickly becomes apparent that it’s quite hard to do this or to make your matchbox look like anything at all, let alone a panting terrier. And yet, while you’re practising—and this doesn’t have to be lmed at this stage—what you are doing is imagining all the movements this dog is making, you are thinking about the timing of the movements and you are taking the rst crucial steps in the process. If you can start to get some recognizable “doggy” movements out of this matchbox you’ll have some understanding of the performance of animation, then think how much easier it will be when you are using a toy dog, or even an articulated puppet dog! Setting up for the first time As these are just exercises you won’t need elaborate lighting, if any at all. Although closing the curtains is a good idea, as you don’t want uctuating changes in daylight to a ect your work. Use a desk lamp to bring up the general light levels if necessary. Set a at table against a wall, then you can drape some plain paper from the wall to cover your table, so there’s a smooth background with a curve. is gives you a setup that will be suitable for some later exercises. en set your camera. Fix your camera on to a tripod and connect a USB cable from your camera to the computer. Make sure your camera is plugged into mains, you don’t want to be running on battery and then have to reframe when you change. Use Velcro strips or tape to tie in any trailing cable to the tripod or to the table leg. Once your camera is linked to the computer, you can launch the application you’re using and create your movie le, and where you want to save it. Here I’ve used Boinx iStopMotion. You’ll notice the preset options, if you open these and choose “customized” you can then set your image size, aspect ratio, frame rate, and export settings. Using software tutorials is probably my best recommendation, as there are di erences in the ter- minology of various settings. iStopMotion, Stop Motion Pro, and Dragonframe all have good online tutorials to guide you through setting up. But here are some basics. Now that you have a connection between the camera and the computer, click on Create to get started—then you can identify the source, that is, which camera you are using. e default will prob- ably show you your own face from the computer’s camera. Click on the camera you have connected to, then click on Live View. You can check it’s live by waving your hand in front of the lens. Set your frame rate—at this stage I suggest you set it at 24 frames per second (fps). ere are guides on the screen to help you see how much of your picture may be lost if transferred to TV. e outside line shows the “picture safe” guideline—keep your composition within this guideline. e inside line shows “title safe”—this gives you a guideline that your titles should not stray outside. Color correction Most cameras will have automatic white balancing, but you can set this manually as well. Most cam- eras have a drop down menu of color temperatures or you can dial in a speci c Kelvin value (see Chapter 11 for explanation of color temperature and Kelvin values).

GETTING ANIMATED 19 Most digital cameras have Aperture preview, it is the process whereby the f stop is automatically held wide open by the camera until the shutter is released. is is to allow maximum viewing bright- ness but leads to serious icker as the stop ring is opened and closed every frame with little accuracy. To overcome this problem, lenses need to be isolated from the camera, either by using an adaptor, hence the practice of using Nikon mount lenses on Canon bodies, or by taping over the contacts on newer electronically controlled lenses. e auto focus will chase the subject, which may not be what you want to focus on—and as you move in and out of frame the focus may not have settled before your frame is shot. Some cameras can be put on manual, overriding the autofocus, so that you can set your focus. Others don’t have that facility. is is what the screen would look like (Figure 3.1). is image has an aspect ratio of 16:9. e aspect ratio is the relationship of the width to the height of the displayed image. Older computer screens and standard de nition TV screens are 4 × 3. High-de nition TV and cinema screens use 16:9 (1.77:1). Cinema projection ratios can be anything from 1.77:1 up to 2.39:1 for super wides- creen. e most universal aspect ratio is 16:9. is is not to be confused with your image or frame FIGURE 3.1 Opening screen Source. Courtesy Dragonframe.

20 STOP MOTION size—which is the amount of pixels in your frame: high-de nition resolution or broadcast HD is typi- cally 1080 × 1920. ere are tutorials on Vimeo or YouTube explaining this. ere are guides on the screen to help you see how much of your picture may be lost if transferred to TV. e outside line shows the “picture safe” guideline—keep your composition within this guideline. e inside line shows “title safe”—this gives you a guideline that your titles should not stray outside. ese can be found in the cinematography workspace; select “view/composition guides”—here there are a number of choices (see Figures 3.2 and 3.3). Once you have your frame and the camera is focused, you can start by taking your rst frame. It helps sometimes just to shoot some still frames at the beginning of a shot to give your eye a bit of a run- up when you are looking back at a movement. A one-second hold is enough, and you can edit that out later on. File naming and storage Making a le for your frames, backing up, and proper nomenclature will help the editing process. Your software will prompt you to create a new scene or open an old one. Each time you create a new scene: FIGURE 3.2 Composition guide Source. Courtesy Dragonframe.

GETTING ANIMATED 21 FIGURE 3.3 Screen display with “picture safe” and “title safe” guidelines Source. Courtesy Dragonframe. 1. Enter a production name (or number) 2. Enter a scene name (or number) 3. Click OK and navigate to a folder on your hard drive where you want to save your project and save (If you need to rename a scene, you’ll need to make a duplicate within your software and rename and save.) Software like Dragonframe automatically create a le hierarchy as you create your new scenes, or tests, making it easier to nd your stored les. EXERCISE 3.1: EASING IN AND OUT An essential rst step in animating movement is to understand that a movement will start slowly, then accelerate to a constant speed, then, unless forced to a stop by something unexpected, will ease to a stop. To do these exercises you’ll either need to adjust your camera so that it is angled at 90° to your table top, or place a board at an angle on your table top, that the camera, on the tripod, can tilt to 90° to the animation surface (see Figure 3.3).

22 STOP MOTION 1. Measure out 24 evenly spaced marks (or increments) in a straight line approximately in the mid- dle of your screen. Using a coin (if you are on the angled board you’ll need to x your coin with sticky tack), just move it straight across your screen in 24 evenly spaced moves: one second. is exercise will give you a very quick whizz across the screen. You can now experiment playing this back at di erent frame rates to see the e ect it has on your animation. Try it at 12 fps and you can see that it looks a bit jerky—or at 30 fps which will give exceptionally smooth movement. Generally between 12 and 24 fps is acceptable. Further on I explain a bit more about shooting on single and double frames (see Figure 3.4). 2. Next, try easing it in with smaller moves for the rst few frames, increasing till at eight frames you are traveling roughly the same distance between frames as the previous exercise. en at 13 frames start to decrease your moves. Try di erent speeds of cushioning the move in and out and see what di erent e ects this has on the action. Give the coin a two-second move, that is, 50 frames, or longer (see Figure 3.5). FIGURE 3.4 Animation exercise setup FIGURE 3.5 Moving coin

GETTING ANIMATED 23 You’ll notice this is easier on the eye and looks more “real.” is is because this is how natural move- ment works. If you lift your hand, the movement will start slowly, then slow down again before stopping. Notes on movement e bouncing ball is often given as a starting point in animation training because it is a simple way of looking at movement and the forces that make things move. It brings together many of the principles of animation in one simple exercise and is all based on physics as de ned by Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion: • An object at rest remains at rest until acted upon by a force; an object in motion continues mov- ing in a straight line at constant velocity until acted upon by a force. • Acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on the object and inversely proportional to its mass. • For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s not necessary to understand these laws in depth, but when you start looking at things falling, or balls bouncing and hitting walls, or a car skidding around a corner, you start thinking about gravity and friction acting upon objects, and then you are beginning to understand movement. As a character animator you need to 1. Give weight to inanimate objects—you need to consider how long it will take for a rock or a leaf to fall. 2. Give weight and movement to a living creature—you want the audience to believe your puppet is a living, breathing, thinking entity in its own right, so it should have a “life force” of its own. By getting right back to the basics of movement, you can learn how to give weight, thought, and vital- ity to your puppets. If a ball is thrown into the air, the force throwing it is the person, the force causing it to curve and drop to the ground is gravity. e heavier the object, the more force is needed to move it, so when animating a heavy object, you would start the movement slower than you would for a light object. A movement has to be created by something, be it wind or some other force. e speed it travels depends on the force acting on it and the mass of the object. Once moving, it is gravity and friction that will slow it down and it would slow down to a stop unless it is interrupted by another force. If you roll a ball along the ground, unless it bumps into something, it will eventually slow down and stop. e force that puts it into motion is you, the forces that slow it down are gravity and friction (the surface of the ground). You can create a sense of weight by how much time you give a movement: very simply, a creature that moves slowly seems heavier—a dinosaur, an elephant, or a giant lumbers slowly along. A creature that moves quickly seems lighter—a scurrying mouse or a scuttling insect. e quicker a creature can gather speed, the lighter or younger it is; the slower, the heavier or older. For

24 STOP MOTION example, a heavy person will take longer to get up from a chair than a light person, but not necessarily be slower to sit down again, as gravity is helping them. If you were to animate a ball being dropped to the ground, the movements would be close together for the rst few frames and then, on each successive frame, the movements would get wider apart because the ball is accelerating until it reaches a constant speed. As the ball is not going to slow up before hitting the ground, there would be no decrease in increments. ere are situations, as in Disney’s Fantasia, where a hippo oats on a fountain of bubbles or an elephant gets trapped inside a oating bubble. You may not want things to move realistically, but understanding the rules gives your animation credibility and, having demonstrated that you under- stand them, you’ll get a bigger audience reaction when you break them. Timing: Single frame or double frame? e rst principle of animation is based on persistence of vision: the way your eye joins up consecutive still images to make a moving image, and the amount of di erence from one image to the next that the eye will tolerate and translate as a uid movement. Movies are projected at 25 fps. ese speeds were arrived at as being an optimum number of images per second for the eye to perceive smooth move- ment. In this book I am basing the animation on 24 fps, as it’s easily divisible. However, this does not necessarily mean that in animation you have to produce 24 di erent move- ments per second in order to create an acceptable ow of movement. You learn to calculate whether you can convey convincing movement by changing the move every two frames, more or less. Should you work in single or double frames? Ones or twos? It depends on the movement. Single frame is when you move your model on every frame, so there are 24 di erent shots per second. is creates a very uid, smooth movement. If you are shooting a very fast action it might require shooting on ones. Shooting on twos is quite acceptable. Nick Park prefers working fast and not getting bogged down by too much technique: “I don’t notice technical smoothness—that doesn’t interest me—that can work against a character sometimes.” However, that would not stop him from using single framing in certain situations. For instance, if you are lming someone running across the screen in six frames, very fast, you will need to shoot on singles, or the movement won’t even register with the viewer. Look at the coin exercise again at one frame per move, then see the di erence when you change that to two frames for each move—you’ll see the single frame looks smoother (see Figure 3.6). When you are studying the timing of a movement you rst of all break it down into seconds, then you break it down into frames. Use a stopwatch to help get used to timing. Get used to counting seconds, half seconds, and so on, tapping out the rhythms, so that when you make a hand gesture, or bounce a ball o the oor, count out the move. Anthony Scott, who animated Jack in e Nightmare Before Christmas, suggests: Say “one-thousand-one” as you’re acting out your motion. en use this to gure out frame count: one = six frames one-thou = 12 frames

GETTING ANIMATED 25 FIGURE 3.6 Moving coin: Easing in and out one-thousand = 18 frames one-thousand-one = 24 frames. I use it all the time, it’s a built-in stopwatch. As you get to understand animation, you learn that to hold for longer can convey certain movements or emotions or, if you are lming a fast action, it may be you need to shoot it one frame per move. EXERCISE 3.2: THE BOUNCING BALL A useful exercise when starting out is the bouncing ball, useful because you learn a variety of basic skills in a relatively simple exercise. You are learning rst about timing and, second, about using timing to create an illusion of weight. You can use the same setup here as for the coin exercise. For the ball you could use either a coin held in place or a at Plasticine disc that you can shape to make it squash and stretch (next exercise). Make some spares. e curve a ball makes in the air is a smooth parabola or an arc. e ball slows down at the top of the arc, so the moves will be closer at the top. You can plan this shape on your background or on your screen and give the ball a trajectory to follow, marking the increases and decreases in the speed of its movement. e accent is at the points where the ball hits the ground; the spacing of the ball as it moves through the air will give the smooth, naturalistic movement (Figure 3.7). Mark out where you think the ball will hit the ground rst and in the following bounces. e bounces will get smaller and closer together as the ball loses energy. Squash and stretch If you were to exaggerate the shape of the ball by attening it as it hits the surface and elongating it as it comes away from the surface, you are employing one of the rst tricks that start giving weight and movement in animation (Figure 3.7). Experiment with di erent amounts of squash and stretch. You could give it a sense of speed by elongating it on the fall or after the bounce of the arc. Or you can cre- ate more impact when the ball hits the ground, as if it’s been thrown down, by elongating the ball at the frame before contact with the ground (Figure 3.8). It’s easy to overuse the e ect and end up with your ball looking as though it’s made of soft putty, rather than rubber. e right amount will add life and spring to your ball.

26 STOP MOTION FIGURE 3.7 Bouncing ball parabola (ping-pong ball) Source. Illustration by Tony Guy. FIGURE 3.8 Bouncing ball parabola with exaggerated squash and stretch Source. Illustration by Tony Guy.

GETTING ANIMATED 27 Try out a variety of balls. Knowing that a ball will bounce in relationship to the force applied to it and the surface it is hitting, as well as the material it is made from, here are some examples of the type of bounce you would expect when di erent forces apply. Draw your arc onto your surface as a guide, and mark o the “increments” or measurements. Play back what you’ve shot and study it for timing. A ping-pong ball is light and therefore has very little resistance, and, when dropped, can go on bouncing for some time. It is rigid and would have no squash and stretch. It will come out of a bounce very quickly. Shoot this on singles; try it with two frames on the ground so that the contact will register. A football would be heavier and therefore have more resistance. If it is just dropped it will not bounce as high as a ping-pong ball or a tennis ball. A football is designed to be kicked. A foot kicking a football will slow up momentarily on contact as the force is transferred to the football—the football will squash a little in taking the force of the kick and then be ung into a parabola. A really heavy object will take more force to start it moving. To lift a cannonball into the air takes a powerful ignition, then once it is airborne, the momentum of that force is lost against the constant force of gravity, and the cannonball falls to earth. It will have a little bounce, rather like a bowling ball. Figure 3.9 illustrates the e ect that the force has on the cannon as well (it’s not necessary to create a cannon for the experiment). Make a square shape using the Plasticine. en animate that in the same way as the bouncing ball. Drop it in from the top of frame and decide how it’s going to bounce when it hits the oor. I was probably more in uenced by drawn cartoons: Tex Avery and Tom and Jerry stu , rather than Trnka and George Pal. Even though you would look back on that stu now and say “Wow!”—I wasn’t really aware of any of that as a kid. It didn’t grab me as much as stretch and squash. I suppose FIGURE 3.9 Cannon ring ball Source. Illustration by Tony Guy.

28 STOP MOTION FIGURE 3.10 Falling leaf or feather—use the line of the leaf stem, or the feather quill, to plan your line of descent Source. Illustration by Tony Guy. that came from Morph [Aardman] and Disney. e performances in the drawn stu had more life to it, rather than the wooden stu . at’s why I liked Morph so much—it felt more exible. It had more gags. And I suppose the style comes from just wanting to give it a sense of reality. Instead of a blob with two holes in it—you want to give it a bit more reality—or something more silly. Je Newitt Head of Character Animation on Aardman’s Flushed Away, and co-director on Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists Air resistance A balloon has very little resistance and is susceptible to a small force: the ick of a nger or a pu of wind. Air resistance will keep the balloon up in the air. Falling leaves are slowed up on their descent to earth by air resistance, but the ne edge of the leaf will cut into that resistance, causing an erratic zigzag descent (see Figure 3.10). The X-sheet Breaking down a movement is the rst stage in planning. You can use an X-sheet (short for “exposure,” also known as a dope sheet) to express your movement in a very visual way. ese are designed to chart timings, actions, and camera moves. Your animation software will most likely have a con gurable X-sheet (see Figure 3.11a) or you can nd examples to download online. e sheet is divided up so that

GETTING ANIMATED 29 FIGURE 3.11 (a) X-sheet. (b) Bar chart used for sound breakdown (a) (b) Source. Screenshot courtesy of Dragonframe. Example courtesy of HOT Animation. Copyright HIT Entertainment PLC and Keith Chapman.

30 STOP MOTION you can break your movement and dialog down to fps, as well as adding in any camera instructions you need. ere are also bar charts (see Figure 3.11b) which you can use; these concentrate more on sound, but you can mark out action on them as well. Planning To be really emphatic about the animation, it’s hard to describe, but if a st is slamming into some- thing—like a table—you don’t want to slow down. As the st gets nearer to the point of contact, the increments get bigger and bigger until it slams into the table. Plan ahead well so that you’re not left with a small increment when you hit the table. Plasticine is perfect for this. You can sculpt it and press it right into the table so that absolutely no light shows through, whereas a latex st will leave a little space, a little light—it’s almost impossible to get it truly at. Pete Lord Aardman Animations, director Adam, War Story, e Adventures of Morph, Chicken Run Working in 2D animation, you would plan every movement and divide it up into “key” positions, and then plan all the in-betweens. For obvious reasons, model animators don’t work this way. You start at the beginning and carry on going until you’ve nished. But you can plan out where you need to be on your set. UK animation director Barry Purves used a good exercise with matchboxes when he was teaching trainees at Cosgrove Hall Films in Manchester. e matchboxes were dodgem cars. Two dodgem cars are destined to collide. So the animator has to make sure that the movement is planned so that the collision happens at the right speed. If this shot wasn’t planned, the cars could end up chasing each other round in circles, and just missing—a frustrating experience! EXERCISE 3.3: DODGEM CARS is is a good basic exercise in timing and planning 1. Both cars start at the same time from standstill from di erent parts of the set. ey need to build up speed then the speed will level out. 2. Decide what direction they are traveling in and what their route will be. You can make little invisible marks on your tabletop, marking each movement out, or put the marks on paper that you can lay down between each frame, or mark it up using your increment editor on your software. 3. One car could take a wiggly route, the other could move in a smooth arc, but they both need to collide in, say, ve seconds. 4. Work out where the cars are going to bump into each other. 5. ere is no slowing down of the speed before they collide, so there is quite an impact. is causes both cars to react by bouncing back (action and reaction). So the increments should look as shown in Figure 3.12.

GETTING ANIMATED 31 FIGURE 3.12 Planning a move Source. Illustration by Tony Guy. As the car builds up speed, the increments start small and increase, and similarly the increments would become smaller and smaller if the car were slowing down to a stop, except in this case there is no slowing down: it has collided with another object. Another thing to take into account setting up this exercise is that you are not working on the 2D plane you were using for the balloon and ball exercises. Now you have two objects in a 3D world. You will need to keep both “dodgem” cars in focus. Check the focus of the cars at their furthest apart positions by zooming your camera in to each one. Give yourself enough light to reduce the di erence in focus between the two objects (for more information about lighting, focus, and depth of eld, see Chapter 11). e old ones are the best Try these exercises: the bouncing ball, matchbox/dodgem cars. All these exercises have been tried before by animators and the smart ones will refer back to them over the years. ey will be well received on a showreel, because they show you have wrestled with some of the crucial principles of animation. But try to think of better ones, and create some of your own, no more than 10 seconds long. And a word of warning—it’s easy to get caught up with exercises, and it costs nothing other than your precious time to go over and over your animation to improve it. ese exercises are valuable but don’t let them inhibit you in your progress as an animator. It’s quite a good idea to do an exercise once, then again to correct it—but then move straight on to another using what you’ve learned. Better still,

32 STOP MOTION implement these exercises in a short gag—then you’re improving your narrative skills. It’s easy to get bogged down in detail, which can get frustrating and hold you back. Animation is a slow process—you need to let your instincts help you where you can and not get caught up too much in the mechanics. I always admired Pete Lord’s work—with Morph and the early stu with Vision On [BBC chil- dren’s program initially for deaf children, which featured Aardman’s seminal character “Morph”]. I loved the ideas—the little sketches, Plasticine characters. ey would only last about a minute. ere’d be somebody hoovering [vacuuming] up and they would hoover up everything in the room. ey would eventually hoover up themselves. Just starting in one place and seeing where they ended up—without a script. I think I like animation where you are still aware of the medium it’s made in. Nick Park Creator of Wallace and Gromit Glossary Film or Frame Resolution: is is the pixel count for your frame. A basic webcam would give say: 320 × 240 (aspect ratio of 4:3) whereas full high de nition would be 1920 × 1080, with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

4 Keep it Simple Developing Your Story It’s normal for people to want to make something elaborate. I’d say—keep it really simple. Work within the resources you have and keep things as simple and intimate as possible—concentrate on giving a performance. Begin by giving an inanimate object some character. Even if it’s only a 10-second piece that expresses a simple idea, it’s going to mean so much more than if you say: “I’ve got this amazing storyboard” or “I started making this model but …”—where’s the lm? Je Newitt Idea–script–treatment It’s much easier to keep it simple when you have a really good idea. Sometimes the idea is great, but you can’t think of the best way of expressing it. ere are many di erent planning stages you can go through to give an idea a really good working over—then you will know after a while whether it’s the business. If you are trying to sell your idea, you will need to go through quite a few drafts before presenting it to a commissioning editor, and probably several after that stage as well! Always try to go with your instincts. Watching other people’s work has inspired me along the way. Bob Godfrey’s Roobarb and Custard was a big in uence on me. at disregard for technical slickness. It’s all about execution of ideas and humour and freshness and making that whole approach attractive in itself—the wobbly lines—and in fact he even used his own voice—a very handmade approach, getting close to the medium. Nick Park (Figure 4.1) e rst stage in developing your idea is to write a script and from then work out a treatment, where you need to start planning the look of the lm, the design of the characters, and, just as impor- tantly, the sound for your lm. Animation is a very di erent process from other lmmaking activities, the main di erences being that the voice track is recorded rst and that most of the editing is done in 33

34 STOP MOTION FIGURE 4.1 Nick Park Source. Copyright Aardman/W&G Ltd. 1993. the planning stages. Each stage you go through helps you to visualize more precisely how it is going to work. I recommend that you do go through each of these planning stages with your idea. It can seem painfully slow—but it is always worth it. No amount of set dressing and character design will make up for a weak idea. Unless you are very happy with your script, it’s not worth going to the trouble of building elaborate sets or the expense of model making. But if you have an idea really worth developing, then you need to plan properly. e script e main thing to remember is that you should entertain. And that doesn’t mean you have to be funny. Entertaining people is making sure that they have really connected with your idea—and they get some emotion from it. If your ideas are too obscure you will diminish your audience. is is not to say that you should create a lm purely to please people, but if your idea has clarity and focus, it can be weird but still entertaining. If your audience feel the hair raising on the back of their necks, then you know you’ve got them. However, you need to sustain that interest from beginning to end of your production, and that is where an experienced editor can help you. ere are many lm styles your idea may t into, or you may be creating something di erent. Film styles have always developed and changed, and some of the early techniques for narrative lm have been challenged by lmmakers such as Buñuel, Hitchcock, and Tarantino. Narrative lmmaking has

KEEP IT SIMPLE 35 also been in uenced by documentaries and commercials, and probably most dramatically by music videos—which veered away from narrative style to a more sensory style. e Internet, most impor- tantly, has challenged conventional lmmaking by allowing access to anyone with a camera. Find a good editor Running your ideas past an editor at the planning stage (someone with experience of editing dramas, especially shorts—or commercials, which are mini dramas) will help you. Editors are skilled in know- ing what works and what doesn’t, lmically. You probably know something of this yourself if you see a lot of movies (as you should do if you are planning to make one). Really analyze the lms you watch: what made it good—what made it bad? Were you gripped from the rst scene? Did your attention wander? It may have been a great idea but somehow the tension got lost and you started to think about other things. Editing can make or break a lm. e editor is usually someone other than the director. If the director is editing their own lm, it’s easy for them to get carried away by their own ideas and not always be aware of the impact they will have on an audience. So show your script to an editor and then later, when you have a storyboard, have that properly edited too. Editors tend to specialize in di erent types of work—documentary, feature, commercial—so someone with experience of cutting short lms would be the best bet. Give your characters a history. is will help your animation later, and help them develop as real characters for your audience. Giving them a history also helps in the writing. Nick Park commented on writing Wallace and Gromit scripts: Now that they exist, it’s much easier to write them, not just for me but because we feel like we all know them, so we know what they would do and wouldn’t do. If you put them into any situation, they sort of start to write their own story, because of how they would react to that situation. It takes a little nding out. But that’s what I nd is a good way to write the story, to ask “What do the char- acters want?” at any part in the story. Once you know what they want, you know what they will do. Otherwise you have them doing things that are just o the wall, not really motivated. You’ve got to have a good idea to start with. When I’ve been trying to think up new ideas for Wallace and Gromit lms—I can think of new characters that might come in, but these are more super cial, less important elements. What works is to think on the level of “What’s their dilemma? What’s their problem?” rather than think what new character you could bring in. ere’s nothing worse than thinking “Oh—you could have an anteater in the next one. Hmmm … what story could an anteater get up to?” at’s di cult because that’s starting with a blank piece of paper. It’s better to think, “What problem do they have where an anteater could intervene? Or mess things up! What’s their issue? How does the anteater make it more complex? How does an anteater invade that situation?” Treatment e treatment puts your script into a visual format, so that you are describing what is happening as each scene unfolds: “Fade up on a dingy rooftop, view of distant cityscape, gray, overcast sky and the sound of distant tra c. ree pigeons peck about and preen on the roof ledge. Sound of old voice