My story and Stop motion passion

 I have always found the media Stop motion quite mysterious and interesting. I have to admit when I were little I were a bit scared of it. I’m not sure the reason why, but there was something about it that frightened me. Maybe it was the materials they used or just me choosing the scary ones.

When I began at The Animation Workshop I saw ´Madame Tutli-Putli´, ‘Paranorman’ and ‘Fantastic mr. Fox’. They are all very well animated and I like the materials they use and the stories are great. There were something that caught my attention and I wanted to learn more. However, it was first when I as a 3D animation intern at Qvisten Animation that I really wanted to do something about it. At Qvisten they have a stop motion department and the work that they do are really good.

I decided that I wanted to try it and I found out that ‘Den Danske Filmskole’ was creating a stop motion short film, which I joined for couple of weeks. However, I did not feel I learned what I needed, so I applied for a spot at Open Workshop at The Animation Workshop and started making my plan. I mostly wanted to focus on short assignments.         

The problems arrived. I needed something to animate with. I am very much a perfectionist and I really liked the characters that Lika and Aardman make. Very high standards for myself – probably a bit too complicated. Yet, I made a sketch of the character I wanted to make and showed it to my supervisor. He said okay and we ordered an armature for it. Meanwhile, I borrowed another armature I could test. When the armature arrived I started building it and it was VERY difficult. I really admire the talented artists who know and make these puppets. In the beginning I wanted to see if I could buy one online, but that was not easy either.  I learned a lot form the building experience and what materials were good, okay or bad to use, but there where a lot of troubles with it. After I finished the armature I started animating. I started with a walk, because that was a fairly easy task for me to do in 3D, but I found out that wasn’t the same for stop motion. I know very little in regards of the media and it really helped me going through the mistakes that I made. Therefore, I began animating more simple actions, just experimenting with the puppet and figuring out how to move it. I animated for 2 months, and during that time I had to do some small fixes on the puppet as it slowly fell apart.

With all the problems, frustrations, exciting moments and hard work I’m now done with my stop motion selfstudy.    

The reason for this blog/site is to share my process, what I’ve learned and what mistakes I’ve made. In the following posts I’ll describe some of the different steps like puppet building, animation and much more. Enjoy.