Learning the Art of Stop-Motion: Lesson 1

LIGHTING SETUP:

Lighting is a key factor in any movie. Since stop-motion generally takes a long time to shoot, animating in places that have direct sunlight from the Sun isn't such a good idea. Everyone knows that the Sun rises from the East and sets in the West, correct? Well, this also means that the amount of sunlight at a certain location will change as the day progresses. In addition, clouds may also block the Sun, decreasing the intensity of the light. You might not realize this happening while you are animating, but it will become obvious once you play your film and the lighting suddenly goes from dark to light to dark to light.

You can see an example of this happening in the video from my first blog post, where I shot the film right next to a huge window in broad daylight. Notice how the shadows change in every frame (picture), and the lighting intensity varies between every scene.

To completely master the art of lighting, and make a film look as realistic as possible, you want no sunlight - none at all. How to accomplish this? Simple; you shoot at night. Well, technically, you could shoot in a room with no windows or any other types of 'holes' that reveals any sunlight, but that's not an option for me right now...

A basic lighting setup for stop-motion includes three light sources (lamps) set in different positions of a set:
   -A key light: the main source of light illuminating the scene
   -A fill light: illuminates or fills in shadows and reduces contrast.
   -A back light: illuminates the scene from behind
This is called the 3 Point Lighting Setup, and is used in almost any shot of any stop-motion animation.

I will try to use this lighting technique, and test around with it during my future animations.

The 20% Time Goal

Hey, guys!

For my 20% project, I want to accomplish creating one or two short stop-motion films.

Just in case you don't know, stop-motion is an animation technique that physically moves or manipulates physical objects to make it appear to move on its own.

OK... That might've sounded too complex. Basically, you take a picture of a still object, move it a little, take another picture, and so on. When you play all the pictures consecutively very quickly, the object gives an illusion that it is moving. Or at least, that's the main concept.

I've done some stop-motion animation before when I was in 6th grade, and the only thing I remember from that is that these things take time - lots and lots of time. I remember shooting this short 1 minute film took me about 4 days to complete:

By the end of this year, I want to become at least somewhat good at stop-motion animation, and I just hope to make at least one or two decent short films (about 10 minutes long) using stop-motion for my 20% project   :)