Clay Animation- say Goodbye to being a perfectionist!

This week I worked with clay stop motion and it was very challenging. My character design was all wrong for clay. I went with a cute, small, multi-colored character, and in retrospect let me just say I can see why Gumby looked like he did. Art Clokey knew what he was doing.

Although clay was a challenge, I really did enjoy using it as a medium for character design because it is so versatile and fast. With practice I think it will be really fun to use this medium, I just need to get used to it so I can focus more on timing.

Check out my short experiment in clay.

Animating with Legos!

I tried out animating with lego figures, which was is actually quite challenging. They are great because they are already fabricated and they hold poses perfectly, but the downside is that they have limited motion (and they are tiny!), so I found it difficult to to get some of the broader arcs of motion out of their little cubic bodies. You can see what I came up with.

I think I would really like to try more with legos, like mimicking 8-bit or maybe with the figures again but with more use of sticky wax and flying rigs to get broader, smoother action.