Wednesday, February 15, 2012

How do you make a figure fall in Claymation/stop motion?

We're doing a school project, and one of the ideas is to have a guy falling down a hole. How would you do this in stop motion?How do you make a figure fall in Claymation/stop motion?The specifics of how you're going to achieve what you want will depend on what the shot looks like. Do you want him just falling into a hole? Like a side view of a guy walking down the street and falling into an open sewer? Or do you want a shot where the camera is under the figure after he's fallen through the hole and is now falling towards the camera? Or do you want an Alice in Wonderland kind of deal where it's a straight on side shot where he's constantly falling down a tunnel but the character stays in the center of the screen?



In all of these cases, if your character needs to be positioned in the air, you're going to need to create some kind of rig to suspend your character in the air while you take pictures. If you're good with Photoshop and digital imaging, you can use it to remove any kind of suspension system you build or use to keep your character in the air while you take you images. Some stop motion animators use string (two strings, otherwise your person will just spin around on one wire and you won't be able to control the direction he's facing) or some kind of stiff arm (metal or wood rod) that connects directly to the character. Then you have to remove the string or rig from your images. Usually you'd take a photo of your scene with no rig or car in it to use as a reference for the clone stamp tool or whatever you'd use in Photoshop.



Old school animators who worked before computers would use see-through plastic boxes to prop up objects in the air. If the object is only in the air for a split second or a very short time, you don't usually notice the plastic box because of the action going on in the scene. If an object is in the air for a fairly long time, they'd use thin string like fishing wire. They'd leave it in the scene since the string was so thin you wouldn't notice it, or if you did it wasn't that big of a deal because the wire was so thin and see through.



Fabric stores sell a sewing string called invisible string which is good for this kind of stuff, since it doesn't reflect light like plasticy fishing wire and takes on the color of whatever's behind it.How do you make a figure fall in Claymation/stop motion?Well with a hole is not so hard . Have him over the hole, skip a frame and put a stick on his ***, pull him through the hole.



If you dont have an actual whole dismont his body in parts and make it look like he is disapearing into a hole.
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