Stop Motion: Lighting

When preparing to create a video using stop motion, it is very important to plan how you are going to light it; when creating a stop motion film it is key to have effective lighting, to ensure the video looks to a good and professional standard.
However there are many issues surrounding lighting, so it is important that they are acknowledged, and identified.
As Stop Motion is a very time consuming process, it is not a good idea to rely on sunlight as the light source, and using natural lighting will actually cause nothing but problems. It's important to realise that for 1 second of footage, you are required to take 24 seperate photographs, each including character or object movement.
It can sometimes take hours to gain just a few seconds of footage and even oin an overcast or cloudy day the sunlight will change drasically, effecting the lighting during the video. The only way to create and accomplish a good quality Stop motion animation is with complete control over the lighting sources.

I think that the most effective lighting to use is the 3 point lighting system:

The Key Light: 
This is the main light. It is usually the strongest and has the most influence on the look of the scene. It is placed to one side of the camera/subject so that this side is well lit and the other side has some shadow.


The Fill Light:
This is the secondary light and is placed on the opposite side of the key light. It is used to fill the shadows created by the key. The fill will usually be softer and less bright than the key. To acheive this, you could move the light further away or use some spun. You might also want to set the fill light to more of a flood than the key.


The Back Light:
The back light is placed behind the subject and lights it from the rear. Rather than providing direct lighting (like the key and fill), its purpose is to provide definition and subtle highlights around the subject's outlines. This helps separate the subject from the background and provide a three-dimensional look.


By using this idea, it ensures that the overall video will have consistent lighting, and this will also help to establish realism in the video.


http://www.mediacollege.com/lighting/three-point/

Tim Burton: He had to link some how!!

Okay so as most people are now aware I do have a slight obsession with the man himself Tim Burton, not that anybody should be surprised because his work is incredible and his animation stuff is fascinating! I have been studying his work, and come across his love for Stop Motion. From a young age Tim had this desire to animate his powerful imagination, but was never really a fan of digital animation. So he decided to play around with the art of Stop Motion, and it was then he really developed his passion and niche for it. He began creating shorts using claymation as the focus and whilst at disney in 1982 he made the short Vincent-based on the actor Vincent Price (whom Burton very much looked up to whilst growing up.)

Although after that Tim Burton never really got to do any more stop motion, as he focused on directing films such as Batman and Beetlejuice it was always on the back burner. Behind the scenes he was constantly writing The Nightmare Before Christmas, which in 1993 was turned into an amazing stop motion film. 

After that Burton continued to draw however it never came around again that he was able to create, or get a budget, to do another. However 12years down the line Burton releases The Corpse Bride (2005) which  is a movie of many firsts; it’s the first feature-length, stop-motion film edited using Apple Final Cut Pro, it’s the first feature shot using commercial digital SLR still photography cameras and it’s the first film to choose digital cameras over film cameras based on the image quality.

I swear though if you share the same love for Tim Burton as I do, and think the idea of Stop Motion is pretty awesome check out this link, its an article talking about how they made The Corpse Bride:

http://www.stopmotionworks.com/articles/cbrdstrpdbare.htm

Michael Bond-Paddington Bear!

It all began in 1956, Michael Bond was a camera man for the BBC, who began to write stories about a bear he had bought for his wife one Christmas that they had named Paddington.

Of Paddington himself Michael Bond says:
"The great advantage of having a bear as a central character is that he can combine the innocence of a child with the sophistication of an adult. Paddington is not the sort of bear that would ever go to the moon - he has his paws too firmly on the ground for that. He gets involved in everyday situations. He has a strong sense of right and wrong and doesn't take kindly to the red tape bureaucracy of the sillier rules and regulations with which we humans surround ourselves. As a bear he gets away with things. Paddington is humanised, but he couldn't possibly be 'human'. It just wouldn't work."
By 1958 Bonds Stories of Paddington bear was turned into a tv childrens programme created through the art of stop motion:

In 1965, after writing several Paddington titles Michael Bond retired from his job as a cameraman with the BBC, in order to write full time. The Paddington books have sold more than thirty-five million copies worldwide and have been translated into over forty languages.

Bond has also created other childrens Tv shows in the 1970's such as The Herbs, and featured the characters Dill the Dog, Sage the Owl and Parsley the Lion, the programme again was stop motion!

Oliver Postgate A creative genius

Children's TV programmes from the 1950s all the way through to the 80s were predominantly filled with stop motion animation.
Oliver Postgate who created shows such as Bagpuss (1974), The Clangers (1969-1974), Pingwings(1961-65) and The Pogles(1965). His love for stop motion allowed him to create over eight successful children's television programmes, his stories were creative and innovative and kept children from the 50's all the way through to the 80's captivated by his stories. The use of camera movement allowed the visuals to feel like a video, and took away from the stuttered movement of the animation.

Short Stories by Yuriy Norshteyn

Yuriy Norshteyn is a Russian animator born in 1941. He has directed 20 short stories created through stop motion, Norshteyn directed his first film in 1968 and made a series of short films notable for their attention to atmosphere and fine detail. Norshteyn uses a special technique in his animation, involving multiple glass planes to give his animation a three dimentional look. The camera is placed at the top looking down on a series of glass planes about a meter deep. The individual glass planes can move horizontally as well as toward and away from the camera to give the effect of a character moving closer or further away. In 1979 it was said his short film 'Tale of Tales' was the best animated video of all time. Here I have included some of his videos:

Stop Motion Techniques & Ideas By Will Kalif

I have found a website called: http://www.stopmotioncentral.com where I have come across this 'tutorial' of how to create two dimentional creations and how to create three dimentional creations. I have posted this so i can easily refer back to it, and also to share what i've been looking into:

"Two Dimensional Ideas Working in two dimensions gives you a lot of creative and inexpensive options. You can simply draw pictures on paper and erase then redraw them to show the motions you want to make. An alternative to erasing is to draw series of pictures on separate sheets of paper and photograph them individually. This can give you extraordinary results but is very challenging to make sure the images stay cleanly tracked without slippage which would make it very jerky and shaky. An excellent way to draw pictures is to use a dry erase board if you want to get some great looking animations and if you have some skill in drawing. Three Dimensional Animation Start is with clay or play-doh-if you don’t have any of these materials you can easily make some out of flour, salt and water. Another very simply yet very expressive technique is to use wire. You can easily shape it into figures and objects. It holds its shape well yet is easy to manipulate into simulations of motion.  Just about any three-dimensional object can be used in interesting ways. You can draw small eyes, noses, and mouths then attach them to any object and come up with an interesting anthropomorphic little project. You can even carve potatoes or apples and get some great videos. Some final tips If you really want to make your animations special you should move the camera as you take your series of pictures. You can do this by either zooming in or out or panning from side to side. This moving of the camera is the single best way to make your animations stand out. Just about anything in your every day world can be transformed into something extraordinary with a little bit of animation magic and a little bit of creativity." By Will Kalif

Drawn StopMotion

During my visit to the animation station I met a girl who was creating a short story using stop motion; she had created the story through hundreds of drawings each drawing altering the movement each time. I saw all her work and she had over 300 drawings, although the video was only half complete she showed it to me and it was incredible. I've looked on YouTube to find other people who do drawn stop motion to show an example of her work. This type of stop motion is creative and looks really effective, and would be something I’d definitely consider as my final major project.