Ideas Generation
Today I began writing down my thought process as I thought of an idea for my stop-motion animation. I decided that I wanted to do a pixilation as I feel most comfortable with this form of stop-motion. So I began thinking of what the story in my animation will be.
From this mind map I came up with 3 ideas. The idea I intend to use from this is the one where the main character has to navigate themselves through various doors and only 1 door will take them home. If they fail to find the correct door they will be trapped with no means of escape. Each door will take the character to random place and they will need to find the way back. However finding the portal back to the main area will not always be straight forward.
This idea stems from the TV show Takeshi's Castle. In this show, contestants play a variety of mini-games that they need to win if to advance onto the next round. There is a mini-game called 'honeycomb maze' where contestants have to navigate themselves through a maze whilst a couple of people attempt to stop them. Only one door will be the exit, the rest lead into water.
Takeshi's Castle - Honeycomb Maze
To help me out with various details of my animation I had a look a various animations. The first animation I looked at was one themed around 'Lost and Found'.
Lost & Found
Although I don't play to use puppetry for my animation this was still a decent piece of work. The animation was nicely done and there was a good consistency regarding the lighting. However what I liked most about this animation was the usage of camera angles. There were a lot of close-ups with a faded background as well as plenty of wide-shots. This is actually quite useful as it has got me thinking of camera angles I could potentially use in my animation. Also really like how they began the animation with a few establishing shots showing the area for the rubbish.
Lost and Found
This animation wasn't really too my liking as it wasn't executed as well as is it could be. The camera angles could have also been chosen better. However the usage of various methods of travel and exploiting what can be accomplished with stop-motion as a posed to live action footage has actually helped me. From phasing through a door to flying through the air there is a variety of methods of movement in this animation and it would be wise for me too use some of these techniques in my animation. I am definitely planning on using the flying through the air in my animation. I really like this method of movement in stop-motion and it is very easy to incorporate as well as execute.
Animation/Pixilation Short Film
This animation is really well done in my opinion. I really liked the concept and it actually inspired me to possibly create my own variation of using a similar idea. There was a good use of camera work during this animation, although I really dislike how erratic the camera is at the beginning of the animation. The lip-sync during the forest scene is also done very well which I could possibly try and learn and incorporate into my animation. Though this isn't 100% going to happen as it'll take time to get right and I'll need to practice this to see if I can actually do it.
