This week I finalized my first draft of my stop motion animation, which is a digital copy made using pictures of the physical elements. I made this version first, before filming with the physical elements, to visualize how I wanted them to move before putting in the time to make them move in real life. Stop motion animation is very tedious, because you have to move the elements a lot of times to get the illusion of fluid movement. Therefore, taking the time to make a high quality first draft will be super helpful because it will save me a lot of time in the filming process since I have a guide I can rely on.
In order to finalize the first draft I first cleaned up the overall timing and transitions. I made sure for the final collage sequence that each transition had 13 stills. This guideline will be very helpful when filming the actual thing because I will know how many pictures to take for it to have the desired timing, instead of having to guess.
Then I exported each section of the video and complied it into it’s own AfterEffects file. From my experience working with AfterEffects, this process, of exporting videos from separate AfterEffects files and then compiling the exports, is the best course of action. If I try to animate everything in one file, it works extremely slowly and sometimes will crash. The only issue with the process is if I make a change somewhere I have to reexport the video and recompile, which isn’t too time consuming but can get there when multiple videos have updates.
I went to FedEx this weekend to get my pictures for the perfection collage printed. I got it printed on glossy, coated, lightweight paper to match the texture and shine of the other magazine cutouts I have. I cut them out in order to have the individual elements and I am really happy with how they turned out.
Finally, I add music to the first draft. I did this importing the song and video into iMovie. I haven’t added sound effects yet because I am still not sure what sound effect I want to add, or if I even want to add them… I am not fully happy with the sound design yet, but I am going to focus on this more after I have the stop motion filmed and edited.
This weekend I am going to film the final collage sequence on Saturday morning. I don’t have time to film everything this weekend, but I want to get the ball rolling. This scene is a hefy chunk of the overall film, so it will be good to get the filming done so I can start editing and have a decent portion of the final project done.
I am excited to sit down and film this weekend, as I have missed this process ever since I started working on the digital first draft. Before Saturday, I am going to compile the physical elements for each collage into bags so I have everything ready to go before Saturday morning.
I posted my final collages on instagram, which I am really excited about. I have never felt confident enough about an art project to share it on social media, out of fear that other people would judge or make fun of my work. However, I was able to overcome this fear and post my art which is a big step for me. I feel so proud of this work, because it really came from the depths of my soul and represents who I am, and all the pieces that come together to make me who I am.
