The creation of our claymation animation
proved to be the most difficult project of all. It involved taking many
pictures (close to 150 for our project which was called "Up, Up, and Away")
of our clay figure. Each picture acted as a single frame in our movie and
so for each picture the figure was moved slightly.
At first we
had to experiment with how much to move our
clay figure between frames to
obtain a smoothly flowing movie. As we began to take pictures we
encountered a problem with the camera. We realized that any movements to
the camera would result in a jumpy movie, so we decided to mount the camera
on a tripod to minimize any accidental camera movements.
A second
problem we encountered was that it took so long to take pictures and move
the clay figure that the
entire picture-taking process took us close to
4
periods to complete (4 hours!). This was a problem because it meant that at
the beginning of each period we would have to set up our scene guessing
where the clay figure and props were supposed to be. We were able to come
pretty close to setting everything up the way it had been by comparing it to
the last picture taken on the previous day.
Then, to
disguise any small changes in positioning, we decided to change the camera
angle. The third and last problem we encountered was getting the clay
figure to hold each position long enough to take a picture because the clay
was so soft. 
So, we had to use pieces of wire to hold up the clay. This
added the workload in the end because I personally had to edit each picture
using Adobe Photoshop version 5.5.
Once we
had obtained and edited all of our pictures we used Stopmotion Pro to make a
movie out of them. It was
really easy and the program did all of the work.
It even had the option of automatically resizing each picture to a desired
resolution. Although the most difficult this project was also the most
rewarding. It was a change to work in a group, and a little trying when
trying to even out
the workload. With all things considered, sitting back
and watching the finished product after it has been mixed with sound, using
Adobe Premiere 6, there is a lot of satisfaction felt by all group members.
By: Zack Rousseau from "Team Zack"
