Animation Tests

Before I started animating properly I wanted to test out the way that the string moved and if the idea I had would actually work. I thought about animating it digitally, however I really wanted to keep everything similar in material and my strengths as an animator are in stop motion animation.

I decided that I was going to use wire and wrap wool around it to create an illusion of it being very flexible string. I first tried to use medium thickness wire (which is the yellow string test), but it didn't work great as I wasn't able to get it to bend very easily. As this string was going to do a lot of wild and fast movements I needed thinner wire to achieve this.

I then tried again, this time with thin wire (pink string test) and it worked great! I was able to get a lot more movement out of it and I'm really glad I tried out these different test before I began. The string is a vital part of my narrative and needs to move in a way that's believable, yet it can have it's own characteristics and performance.

Here are my tests!

Animation Tests - The Box from Stacy Straub on Vimeo.