Character Animation: Catch Me

Stop Motion Character Animation

"Catch Me"

By Alyssa Raven

              Even though the animation is fairly short, I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. The for the first stage of the process, I thought of what two "characters" I could bring to life. I saw several clips of previous students using clay and action figures, which were both pretty cool. Eventually, I that I wanted to have some fun animating a creature and plat around with some imaginary poses and actions that could possibly go with it. I remember as a kid, rolling my Beanie Baby up into a ball and pretending thats how it got around. I tried to play with the same principle in the planning stage as well as create a quick story with it.

              Once I had a rough idea of the characters and story, I started messing with the placement and camera angles until I found a position very suitable. You don't see it in the film, but I used tape on the walls and the carpet to mark where everything should be for the poses. At that point, I honestly just experimented. I tried flipping the character, having it do head nods, moving the arms and legs to see if it could support itself, etc. The "Hawkmon" figure was less of an issue, but keeping certain parts such as the tail and back up proved to be a challenge. To solve this I used Q-Tips for support. 

              Theres actually quite a bit of pictures I didn't use (had around 400) which is why you see the lighting change in some areas. Painting out the Q-Tips and my hand also took a bit. Overall, however, I'm really glad that I was able to get the "roll" off motion for the character. If I had to fix it though, I would definitely fix the ball roll at the end and add more in-betweens, but the skunk is about where I want him to be in terms of his character. I hope you all enjoyed the small clip and at least got a little chuckle or grin out of it!