Stop-Motion Character Animation

"Footsteps" 

a stop-motion animation by: Jessica Tong, Catharina Sukiman and Edric Yamamoto

Song: "100 Years", Five for Fighting

Software: StopMotion for iPad, Adobe Premiere

This animation was a lot of fun to create!  I worked together with Jessica Tong and Catharina Sukiman over the course of an evening to make our little minute and change short animation.

At first we had a fairly complex story involving Transformers and rubix cubes but decided to try and simplify.  Catharina spotted my son's shoes lying on the floor and after an hour or so of brainstorming, an idea was born!

First we went to work building our set.  We used my dining room pendant lights and diffused them with sheets of animation paper to eliminate any hot spots/reflections on the floor and set up a key light to add some nice shadows.  I found my step ladder and fastened a board to it and then clamped my iPad to the end for a makeshift downshooter.  The software we utilized is an app called StopMotion which allows onion skinning and playback which helped tremendously.

I cut up some cardboard and used duct tape to fashion blocks that we could use to raise the shoes for their contact and passing poses.  Catharina and Jess animated the adult shoes and I animated the kid boots and the baby shoes at the end.  

We filmed the first half on 4's and the 2nd half on 6's.  We used Adobe Premiere to composite and add audio.

Big thanks to Cat and Jess! =)
and Choco of course.