Team Working in Stop Motion Animation

Team working is essential when working in a creative environment – especially animation teams. Therefore, it is needed to have roles and delegate tasks so that a group can exceed to the best of their abilities and create high quality animations. In this specific task, we were split into small teams and given some wooden dolls to create a 10 second stop motion animation with. There were no requirements to the task other than the 12 frames per second guideline and the total time it should be. This gave us mounds of creative freedom to experiment with physical stop motion techniques.

Figure 1 – An image of a homemade stop motion using a green screen and lighting. This emphasises how anyone can produce simple stop motion and how we went on to use a similar setup. (sabado, 2013).

There are numerous professional stop motion productions that started from a bedroom and a simple phone camera. A well-known example is the famous Wallace and Gromit. Over the years, this has evolved into a larger and more experienced studio and has gained millions of watchers. Below is a short video going into detail about the making and beginning of the series. I enjoyed learning about how stop motion works and giving myself some context before delving into the creation of one.

Figure 2 – A short video on the backstory of a famous stop motion production that has evolved into a very large company over the years. This allowed for me to think about how we could use some of the initial techniques in our own stop motion work. (Gromit, 2015).

Initial Teamwork Planning

Before we began brainstorming, we had to decipher which roles are suited best to each person in the team, which was easy to sort out since we previously have learnt about psychometric testing. This allowed us to stick with the same roles previously discovered and choose who would be our best conductor and so fourth. We re-established that we would have one conductor who lead the stop motion and the rest of us would be the chorus and ensuring the movements for the animation are smooth and consistent. This worked positively for our group and it was time efficient and the shy people still had a big impact in the project even if they weren’t leading anyone.

The production of the stop motion was very simple and contained the dolls, a small tripod, and a phone to take the 120 images on. The idea needed to be lengthy enough to fill the storage space but also not too complex that the animation would be longer than it needed to be. It was discussed for approximately 2 minutes and settled on a short dancing scene with some movement at the end of the dolls exiting. The camera was stilled on one end of a table and the dolls on the other. The conductor was in charge of taking the images and ensuring the smoothness while the chorus of people moved the dolls to how they expected the dance to go. The movement’s were not complex and the sequence was completed swiftly. Everyone was happy with their roles and allowed for a successful animation to be completed. Below is a small mind-map that we produced as a group before creating the animation piece.

Figure 3 – A small 2 minute mind-map exploring a brainstorm for a few ideas for our stop motion animation piece.

The editing stage was also delegated fairly following the conductor’s recommendations. One person took all of the photos, another edited the sequence together, and a third added music so that the roles were fair and no one was missing out. This, again, was extremely time efficient and allowed for everyone to be included in all aspects of the project no matter what their roles were. I don’t see any negatives to this approach and everyone felt comfortable feed-backing their ideas and thoughts on the process.

Final Stop Motion Production

This entire experiment was extremely relevant to our final animation to allow for experience for a physical stop motion animation but to also further positively impact our team working skills. Below you can see the final stop motion animation that was created in our team.

Figure 4 – The final produced stop motion created and uploaded to YouTube. This team-working project allowed for an insight into how important working within groups is in this profession.

Potential Improvements

In the future, it would be essential to ensure that all of our frames provided symmetry and a plain background. It also needed to be a lot smoother with smaller movements in between frames so that the overall animation seemed professional. The group worked very well together and the planning was consistently positive so this would stay the same if we were to complete this project again.

References

Gromit, W. &., 2015. Making Of – National Trust and Wallace and Gromit. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3CEE9xKKZc
[Accessed 23 March 2023].

sabado, 2013. COMO HACER FUEGOS ARTIFICIALES. [Online]
Available at: http://santiagomejia-uvm.blogspot.com/2013_11_10_archive.html
[Accessed 23 March 2023].