We were tasked to create a stop motion animation video in 30 seconds or less. I was paired up with Jeff Park and Pan Pan and we started hitting the ground running with some awesome ideas. Each of us came with three story concepts. We ended up deciding to create the story called "Book Tales". We decided that we wanted to do the shoot in 12 frames per second, which worked out well for the overall feel of the story.
We first created a brief storyboard so that we knew what shots we wanted to capture.
animation_storyboard
We wanted to be able to work in the library and shoot it without being asked to leave, so we had to make sure we had everything planned out ahead of time.
Shooting in a library was actually easier than expected. We were in a corner that nobody came to so we had plenty of time to get the shots we needed.
In class one, we reviewed the Principles of Animation:
Squash and stretch
We were lucky because we decided to have our story about a book, it's movements, gestures and fall were pretty straight forward to capture.
Anticipation
I think that we captured this in the beginning when the book is waiting to be selected. It's difficult to work anticipation into a 30 second story, but I feel like we were able to create a short amount of anticipation.
Staging
At first we were going to add many eyes to many books on the shelf. We decided not to do this because to would affect the staging of the story. The scene would be too cluttered and it would be hard to concentrate on what's going on in the scene.
Straight ahead or Pose to Pose
Because of the rigidly of the book, we decided to take the pose to pose appearance in the story.
Slow ins and slow outs
This was a concept that we didn't really consider in the creation of this story. Maybe if we shot it in 24fps then maybe we would have considered this more
Secondary action
The secondary action in this short were the people moving in the beginning of the scene.
Appeal
I think because this is a common story of not feel 'good enough' can hit home for many. So I feel that the appeal of the story is something that many people can relate to.
Here is the end result: