Stop Moation Walk Cycle

Stop Motions Walk Cycle

This is the first stop motion animation I ever made, and I am looking forward to animating!

The aim of this animation is to in groups demonstrate a simple walk cycle using a stickfas model.
The preparation of this animation was making the model to animate, setting up the lighting and camera and finding a way to attach the model to the set. Using Richard Williams’ the animators survival kit page 108 as a reference for our walk cycle we got to work animating, instead of taking a picture then moving the model then taking another picture etc etc, we had a walk cycle set out with the models we had between us, although we could only make half a walk cycle at a time we used the models not being photographed at the time to make the next pose.



Final Animation



Having fun with animation



As the Walk cycle didn’t take long to animate I started to mess around with the model making it brake dance then another member of the group thought to take pictures which we then turned into another animation which turned out to be a beneficial learning curve for us all.
During the dance I wanted the character to launce himself of his back onto his feet but as we got to this point in the animation we realised there was no way to suspend the model in the air without the supporting hand or rig being in the picture and therefore in the final animation, so as a group we had a quick brain storm and decided to try and suspend the model in the air with a hair we plucked from one of the group. This worked a treat, as the hair was thin enough not to be visible in the picture. The only problem we had with this method was keeping the suspended model still to get a clear picture.

This shows that messing around and having fun with stop motion animation is nothing but good, the sillier and more extravagant you try to make your animation the more problems you will come up against some may be more obvious than you might think but by finding these problems when its your own time is much better than when you have a deadline.

Brakedancing animation


Once we got started messing around with the models it was hard to stop. This next animation was made by a group of us wasting time until we could go home! We decided to create an epic battle between our hero and a gang of zombies. We each had our own model which we were in charge of animating which meant it didn’t take long to make, this was purely for fun but I like the final outcome.