MAGIC - Animating and Submission

Today I animated my Magic animation! It only took one full day as I had good planning and a storyboard/animatic to go off. I started by animating all the wide shot scenes and then finished by shooting the close ups.





I also made up my own set by using one of the stages and taping black card to it to create a blank background. I found this was the quickest and most effective way to get a clean background for my animation as I didn't have an actual set. I also used magnets to keep my character stable and so he would be able to do the jump scene! The main thing I found difficult within filming this animation was the camera would only focus on one point in the scene and this made the piece of cheese not be as clear as it could have been. I tried to mess around with the focal point on the camera, but as soon as I plugged it into dragonframe the focus would change. I'm not sure if this was down to the camera or dragonframe but it made a lot shots hard to frame. Another problem I faced was that by using the magnets the puppet's feet liked to jump around a lot and this was quite annoying as I had to try and find the exact place it last was using onion skins. I feel the only way to get round this would be to keep adjusting the magnets instead of forgetting about them.



I found that the animating went really well and next I edited it all together. I decided to use an ambient sound in the background of my animation to give the sound some texture and I use kitten noises for the cat to make it seem cuter. I also used foley mouse sounds every time it would come on screen to establish what it was in case it wasn't as clear. Below is my final animation!


Just Like Magic from Stacy Straub on Vimeo.

I'm really pleased with how this animation turned out and I am starting to see myself improving with my quality of animation! I feel that stop-motion really is where my skills lie and I am going to keep growing with it.