After getting shown many ways to storyboard, I initially decided to chose a different text for this project, so I chose ‘The Tyranny’ because I had started to get a bit bored of my text and it felt repetitive. Out of all the texts this intrigued me most. It was quite a short text and it was all about contact. However, although I felt as though I was having some good ideas, I thought it was best to stick with my original text ‘A short stay in Hell’. This is because this time I could twist the text and I could use it to my advantage now that I knew the story so well.
After doing a session on story writing I got inspiration to create my own version of ‘A short stay in Hell’. My story is called ‘A short stay on earth’. In my story the Devil is based in an apartment and he is writing flyers to give out to promote the need for five workers in Hell. He goes to a few places to put up his flyers and encounters some people but has no luck and gets upset. At the end of the story, when he is upset, a person turns up to the apartment to join the recruitment and it is the least expected person you would anticipate would want to join.
This was a test run I did with Stop Motions Studio so I could gather an idea on what materials I wanted to work with in this project.
I have multiple random objects for crafting in my room so for making my main character I began by trying random things together and seeing how they looked. I was inspired by some of the animations we were previously shown especially the one where the main character was just a simple mug I think this was a powerful move for the story. We spoke about the devil not being shown as a physical devil but just an average human but in reference to my story I thought this would be a tricky factor as everyone is scared of the devil in my story.
I started to break lolly sticks and stick them together with pom poms. Although the idea was good, I didn’t stick with this main character after having a group critique because:
- I think the eyes make my devil look rather cute
- Although it could move it was stiff and hard to, it also had difficulties standing up and this would be an issue in the long run
- After seeing other peoples characters I knew I could do better than the one I currently had
The concept for the apartment was originally meant to be humorous and be the polar opposite to what a devil would actually live in. Therefore, I made cute little elements in the room and painted the walls pink. However I knew this wasn’t executing it for me and I decided things needed to change.
For the redesign of my character I remembered the teacup animation again and took that into consideration. I played around with the idea of a fork a bit like ‘forky’ from toy story as the top of a fork reminded me of horns on a devil and have the other people in the street as spoons. After debate, I decided the durability and practicability of this wouldn’t work and began thinking again. Suddenly, when thinking about my childhood, I remember trying to create a lego animation and watching lego animations and that’s when I started masking the face of my lego character and was finally pleased with the result. This character moved easier and would be simpler to work with through the set.
I began making a stereotypical villain/devil apartment. Some elements I made was a noose, hand, eye, a Hell sign, a window and planks. For the hand and the eye I got creative with polymer clay. I really liked how these turned out, they looked quite realistic.
I ended up with two models of the chair as my original was way too big for the set I made because of the size my character originally was.
The end result of the apartment I was very happy with, it was a combination of different materials placed thoughtfully when taking into consideration movement for the animation.
<The paint palette from the apartment
I had to remake the apartments because the first time I did the windows too close together, so that when the character was in the lift I couldn’t move him through the apartments smoothly and the door didn’t make sense being placed in the middle.
The shutters I made out of card and for the movement of them I simply used blu-tac.
I really like how the bakery turned out I think the lolly sticks was a great addition to make it feel bit more realistic but this was a challenge. The lolly sticks weighed down the bakery quite a lot when they were all gathered together so in the final animation I had to stick the bakery to my wardrobe.
The tin foil addition to my elevator I think was personally a great idea. It reflected the light of my Led lamp well to give that metallic affect. The doors I moved with little cardboard handles.
To film my animation I used ‘Stop Motion Studios’ and stuck my phone to a little hand held light that held it in place. I ran into a few difficulties but nothing huge, just a slight movement of when the phone had been on there a long time, it would start to slip off.
The sound affects for my animation were all made by me. Some I got from out and about; whether that was standing in an elevator or just walking about for the sound of feet. The rest I created in my room when putting the sounds together by mimicking simple movements in my animation such as scribbling on paper.
Through all the back pain and time consumed sitting on my floor moving each piece little by little I did really enjoy this project. I had fun building all the sets and I loved learning the difference sound affects can make to a piece of work I believed it made a huge difference once it all came together.