25 Dec Stop it!!!

Ah the dual nature of stop motion animation…

The first side: all the planning, and prepping: It can be anything from sand, to Legos, G.I. Joes, to drawings, to the classic “Claymation”. You spend hours plotting out the story, making the background, each individual frame (if required), and then you finally shoot it. Which, if anyone is wondering, takes several more hours.

The second side: you’ve accomplished all this work!!! Then you play the footage……..it lasts 8 seconds. Literally.

8
seconds

le sigh

That’s it. You might be able to stretch it to 10-12 seconds, 15 if you’re really good. But all those hours of work and you have seconds to show for it. That’s what you love and hate about stop-motion.

It’s also the root of all filmmaking. That’s all film is, a series of photographs taken and played at high speed to suggest movement. Some of that photography involving real life people and some doodled by hand. My 8 seconds is nothing compared to the animators who worked at Disney in the 50’s/60’s era. They drew hundreds of thousands of frames for a 90 minute movie. But those thousands of frames would stay with those kids for years and in some cases, generations after that. Which is nothing to scoff at. It makes you appreciate the process. The people who created zoetrope’s and nickelodeon’s could only have dreamed what Disney accomplished. And Disney in the 50’s could have only dreamed what Pixar has accomplished.

So my Holiday animation, makes me proud. It’s short, but you can only guess the amount of time and effort I put into it.