Research

I started the project by looking at early film pioneers such as:

George Melies

Arthur Melbourne Cooper

Emile Cohl

Windsor Mccay

Although I enjoyed their work I didn’t think I would be looking too closely at their specific animations. They did however give me a good insight into how animation was first created and the starting points to methods such as stop motion, kinetoscoping and rotorscoping. 

I then moved onto looking at more recently made animations so that I could decide what sort of films and methods interested me. The first which really caught my attention was Ryan Larkins, Walking.

I enjoyed the pace in which this short film moved and was particularly taken by the colours and mediums which he uses to draw his characters. The soft pastels pinks, purples, greens and blues against the white background is simple yet striking. I decided that I would want to use a similar color pallet in my own film and was keen to work in a similar drawn method to him.

This then changed when I looked closely at a short animation created by Elliott Dear who used cut-out, mix media methods. 

I really liked the style of this and wanted to create something with a similar feel. However, although I loved the look of both of these methods, I decided that as I came from a photography degree, it would make more sense to focus on a film/photography piece combining stop motion and live action. 

I made a few test stop motion animations with my digital camera, to get an idea of what it looked like and how slight movements need to be so this works effectively. The first I made was just of a person working towards the camera so I could look at the process of a person walking and the second was using ornaments which I collected from around our house to make a set. I called this The Hungry Pig. Although at this stage I was still not set on a definite story or script, it helped me decide that I wanted to use elements of stop motion in my film and still use different materials as much as possible.

'The Hungry Pig'

By Rak