Paper Panther - Research

As part of my research I wanted to look at the process of a paper stop motion animation and a great modern example would be The Rooster, The Crocodile and The Night Sky (Barley Films 2008). I have found on Paper Panther's website the whole process they go through to get the final animation and it was a great inspiration for my own project!

Here are the initial paintings of the Rooster character as you can see they've different colours and designs for it's tail and facial features before they came to the final design.

I found it really interesting how they still did action sheets of the Rooster even though it will be a puppet that they can make do any action. However, I feel that it helps the animators to get a better feel of the kind of character it is and I want to create action sheets before going ahead with my astronaut character.

Here are the prototypes of the Rooster before they made the final character and I really love the different colour palettes they have tried here! This has inspired me to try different colours and textures with my own puppet before I make the final design.

Here is the Rooster in motion!

Here is the rough and final design of the Crocodile, I really love seeing the initial design and the final puppet side by side. You can see all the different joints in the crocodile's tail and his head appears to be two separate parts.

They have actually planned out the action of the stretch here and I want to do a similar plan when Tom the astronaut jumps out of the spaceship, this way I can get it right instead of guessing when I come to animate. Below is the final animation they created!

By looking at this process for this paper animation it has helped me see that I'm on the right track, however I want to establish the actions and my materials a little better. As you can see this is not all of the development they went through to come up with the final characters and it has helped me understand that this process is lengthy and it can take a lot of trial and error to get the puppet to move in the right way as well as getting it to look aesthetically pleasing. They have used white tac for their puppets, which they explained on their website and I want to try this technique for myself instead of pins.