Stop Motion Animation Evaluation

Ashley Mason

Did you find this difficult?

There were parts throughout the making of my stop motion that I found difficult. I found that coming up with the original idea for using Lego was not difficult as I had viewed videos online that gave me the inspiration to use Lego as props. I found that coming up with a storyline was difficult as I had to make sure I had enough/ the right pieces of Lego to use, this meant I had to base my story around the things I had. It was also difficult when filming as I did not have a tri pod to stabilise the camera when taking pictures.

How did you decide what to use?

When I was deciding what props to use for my stop motion I decided to look on YouTube for some inspiration and see what kinds of props other people had used. I knew I had some Lego and I thought it was a good idea to use it as I could create many different storylines and plots.

Building the Narrative

Drafting – how many ideas did you have?

In the beginning I had quite a few ideas, I knew from the start I wanted to use Lego for my props but I came up with many ideas of what the plot could be. At first I wanted to have a football match as my storyline, I also had the idea for a race between Lego built cars. I wanted my stop motion to have some humour in it and wanted it to be entertaining to the audience.

Were there any limitations in terms of resources, time and location?

I found that I had to change my idea quite a few times due to the lack of Lego pieces I had. I had a good amount of resources to use but not the correct ones that I needed to pull my idea off. For example I intended on using the ‘Lego men’ so that I could split them into teams and have a football match, however when I went through the Lego I found that I did not have as many ‘Lego men’ as I originally thought. I intended on using ‘Lego boards’ which would enable me to stick the blocks down, unfortunately I could not find them and this meant the set up was not how I would of preferred it to be. I also did not have a tripod, this meant my shots would of been jerky if I had raised my camera and got different shots, instead I had to balance the camera on the floor so that I had a flat surface to use. I also did not have a lamp handy at the time, this meant I was using natural light for my scene.

How did you use technologies to create your product?

I used a digital camera to catch the images for my stop motion. I turned the flash off as the natural light in the room made the set bright enough. The pictures where then uploaded to a computer and stored on a USB to use once in college. In lesson I put the pictures from the USB into numerous power points as they were too large to be uploaded altogether, once they were split I then uploaded them to Slideshare. I then created a media blog on “Blogger” which allowed me to present my media work. I then embed the power points into my blog so they could be viewed.