Stop-Motion NYI

January 12, 2010

I had less than 1 month left before my contract ended and I wanted to end with something amazing. I chose to do a video for NYI (Nazarene Youth International) as my last project. Since this is for youth, I thought I could be a little more unique and creative. I quickly realized that a promo video for the youth of Eursia was a broad concept and complex project. So after a lot of brainstorming… and delays… and more brainstorming, we finally figured out what to do…. stop-motion.

Stop-motion: a style of animation that sounds like a great idea until you start working on it.

Academic definition of stop motion: is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence.

So this is some insight into my last few weeks.

Thursday: brain storm…. “We’ll have a map, then paint each field, then have landmarks pop-up like: Eiffel tower, Taj Mahal, temples. Ya ya. Then we’ll have painted hands show info about the field… yes yes yes… We’ve got it!”
Friday: make a list of what we need: paint, markers, people for the hands

Monday: get paint, markers, sheet, letters, project map onto the sheet, sketch map
Tuesday: paint, paint, paint, pic, pic, pic
Wednesday: paint, paint, paint (russia is ginormous and my back is starting to hurt) pic, pic, pic
Thursday: finalize script, cut out landmarks, import 1,000 pix, edit, find music
Friday: have a headache, neck spasm, regret doing stop-motion

Monday: pick song, take 3 hours to fix one picture in photoshop
Tuesday: paint hands, pic, pic, pic, import, edit
Wednesday: edit every frame to music (24 frames in a second)
Thursday: keep timing music to video
Friday: can’t stand to hear the song or watch the video ever again

Monday: final edits
Tuesday: make a vow to never do stop-motion again
Wednesday: finished

click below to see some of my blood, sweat, and tears… in motion.

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1 Comment

  • Sonny January 21, 2019 at 12:46 am

    A pllneiagsy rational answer. Good to hear from you.

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