Amination Assignment!!

The assignment for the Education Futures module gave us the opportunity to create a two minute stop-motion animation. In order to do this, myself and two other class members teamed up to do a re-creation of the Hungry Caterpillar, a story by Eric Carle. The aim of our animation was to re-create the piece using claymation.  Before we began, we sent him an e-mail, to ensure that he was happy for us to use his ideas in our work. We then set about making the props and background to fit our theme, using clay as our primary material. It took us approximately 2 hours to make the caterpillar and the various pieces of 'food' we would need for the story. We did find that there were a few issues with using the clay, as it dried out quite quickly, causing it to break apart when we were attempting to manipulate it for the filming of the animation. If I was to repeat this project, I would take careful consideration when choosing materials, ensuring that they are suitable for movement. After the clay models were completed, we went on to create a background set, using some cardboard, green foam and a ready-made background from the Zu3D animation pack. We hoped that with the right sound effects, the scene would resemble a leafy, countryside environment. For this project, we decided to used the Zu3D animation iPad app, and used the iPad camera to capture our shots.  Once we were ready to begin the production of the animation, we all took on different roles, myself and Andrea worked on capturing a series of images to create the illusion of movement, leaving Luke to work on the narration and sound effects.

The plot of the story incorporates the idea of metamorphosis, by suggesting that once the caterpillar is full of from eating all of his food, he then transforms into a butterfly. This story is particularly useful for younger children, to get them thinking scientifically, but in a concept they can grasp. It was not until we began capturing the shots, that we realized how time consuming this project was going to be. It was particularly difficult to keep the props in the exact position we needed them to be in, in order for the end film to flow consistently. We also had difficulties with the lighting during the project, as each time we came to film, the lighting would be slightly different. Each difficulty we faced set us back, and we did find that we had to keep deleted a series of shots and re-filming to get the end piece to flow correctly. Encountering these problems has allowed us to appreciate the difficulty behind feature-length animations, and allowed us to understand how we could improve if we were to repeat the project.

After all shots had been captured, and the final film was of the required length, we focused our time on putting narration and sound with our images. To do this, we recorded Luke narrating the story, and adjusted the speed of the film to suit the sound. The problem with doing it this way, which we found later on, was that in order for the film to fit the sound, the film had to be played at a fairly slow speed, reducing its effectiveness to the audience. Alongside the narration, we added a constant 'countryside' sound effect to add to the background theme, and a number of other short sound effect clips to give the film more dimension.

I feel that, if we were to repeat this assignment, I would plan everything beforehand, and test out a few ideas to find out which one would be best. With some planning and trial-error, some of the problems we encountered may have appeared, and we could have worked towards removing them, or re-thinking an idea to avoid it. Despite this, I feel that we produced an end product of a decent standard, which reflects the time and effort we put in to creating it.

And here it is! We hope you enjoy it!