For our clip, Emilly and I used the infamous stop-motion technique using plasticine figures, known as claymation. This technique shot to fame thanks to a show called 'Morph', which was first shown on British television in 1977 for the BBC. The morph characters often featured in a programme with late illustrator and television presenter Tony Hart for such shows as Vision On, Take Hart and Hart Beat. The morph characters were created by a company called Aardman Animations, who are also well known for creating Wallace and Gromit.
Our short claymation clip begins with only the football being in the camera's point of view. The non-diagetic soundtrack then begins to play and we are introduced to our first morph character (A), who waddles over to wave at the audience. A then notices the football behind him, which causes him to make joyful gestures towards the audience about his new discovery. A walks over to the football and, surprisingly, kicks the ball. This then sends the ball flying into a new area of view, where our next character (B) is already standing. Minding his own business, B notices the ball which has landed right next to him and responds to his discovery just as A did in the previous frame. B picks up the ball and begins to play catch with himself . Whilst he is doing this, A walks into the shot and confronts B about having his ball. After a short squabble and a few pushes and shoves, the ball is knocked onto the floor where the pair race to retrieve it before the other. While racing, B trips up and lands on all fours, where A kindly helps him up. The two then become friends and happily wave goodbye to the audience.
The process to making this clip was relatively simple. Using a Logitech webcam to film the whole video, which was fixed with cellotape onto a prop to achieve the angle we used. The entire clip was created using a programme called iStopMotion, where we would take a photo for each frame we wanted to add to the final clip. The soundtrack was then added onto the final video by using Final Cut Pro.
This was a very enjoyable task, and Emilly and I had a lot of fun making it. Unfortunately, our first attempt at claymation was lost due to technical issues with the computer that we were using. However we were proactive, positive and continued to put our time and effort into producing a highly plausible and animated piece. Filming the animation was probably the most stressful part of the process, as it took a lot of time to create our chosen number of frames per second.
In hindsight, I think that we could have added some more special effects to the clip to increase just how animated the experience could have been. However, overall, I am incredibly happy with the outcome of our claymation animation.
