2D Animation

With the plasticine stop/start Morph animation I did in mind, I wanted to have a go at 2D animation.

I went for a simple subject, a flower, for my first attempt. I cut up sheets of paper to about A6 size and numbered them as I drew each bit of the animation.

Then I went back and coloured each frame with watercolour paints. I knew that doing this by hand, as opposed to digitally, would cause more variation and make the finished animation more jumpy, but that's all part of the fun of it. 

Then I took a photo of each image to make the animation. It would've been better to scan them in but I didn't have access to a scanner at the time.

And here it is. Not bad for a first attempt.

Animating Morph

 At the Morph making workshop we were encouraged to take our Morphs home and try animating with them. So I did! I've done stop/start animation before and I really like it.

 This was my set up. I kept things simple by putting my Morph on a plain white background in my home made light box.

(Wait for it to load so it plays smoothly)

For my first animation I thought it would be really funny to make Morph do the Macarena - or 'Morpherena' - and it was. Though Morph wasn't completely steady on his feet and face planted a few times in between shots, and he missed out one of the moves of the dance.

Then I did a fun little magician scene using paper clips.

Now...how inappropriate would it be to make Morph twerk?

Morph Making Workshop

As I mentioned on Sunday I went to a Morph making workshop as part of the Radio Times festival last weekend.

For those of you who don't know Morph is an animated plasticine fellow who has been on children's tv for ever and is made by Aardman, the same people who make Wallace & Gromit.

Everyone was given the same amount of Morph-coloured plasticine and a little bit of black and white. 

Morph doesn't have an armature so you start but rolling the plasticine into a ball then pulling out bits to make a kind of starfish.

Then you make the bits into the head, arms and legs, and add thumbs.

The only time you remove a bit of plasticine is to make the nose, which is added on separately.

Then you use the white and black plasticine to make the eyes.

The only problem with the workshop was there weren't any visuals to work from. So when I got home I looked at a few pictures of Morph and worked on my model to make him look better. I mainly made his head rounder and made the eyes bigger. I also used a teaspoon to make the proper mouth shape, as suggested by the guy running the workshop.

I put a photo of my finished Morph on twitter and the actual Morph favourited it!

Miniatures on the move

Before putting my miniature creations away for the summer I thought I would use them as sets for some short stop/start animations.

(Wait for them to load so they move!)

For the first I used the hospital room I made and the miniature scrubs I put together.

Then I thought I'd use the miniature coat I made for my little studio space and the miniature letterman jacket I made. The secret is pipe cleaners!

And then I made a spooky little animation using the shoebox office scene which I think I could make into a longer animation, but I never take enough photos for it to be really long.

Maybe next time.