Stop Motion Animation: A Toy Tale

For this project, Ambika, Emmaly, and I worked as a group to create a stop motion animation video.  We started out by brainstorming and coming up with a bunch of ideas.  We discussed possible topics such as:  recreating games or Iphone apps, building a house, a tea party, and toys coming to life.  We also debated what materials we wanted to use and had ideas such as:  toy cars, dolls, candy, people, play doh, pipe cleaners, sticky notes, and stuffed animals.


We finally decided to go with the idea of a stuffed animal coming alive when his owner left the room and he plays the "Snake" game on an Iphone.  The game ends as he hears footsteps of his owner returning so he goes back to his original position.  This story can be seen visually in the storyboard that we made.  We were originally going to play another game called "2048," but we later decided that would be too hard to recreate accurately.

 

This project proved to be a challenge.  We were a little too ambitious going into it because we didn't realize how hard it was to maneuver a camera so that it did not move positions and manipulating materials so that they stayed in place and moved how we wanted them to was also a tough task. If I could adjust anything, I'd work on the audio.  We were pushed for time towards the end of our movie, so we had to pick sounds and put them in quickly without paying much attention to the placement of it in regards to the frames of the video.  I feel like our animation could improve on how the story is depicted towards the audience, maybe we could have done more to narrate and move the story along with text or dialogue.  Overall, I am satisfied with our stop motion and all of the effort we put in.  It was fun working on art in a group!