Chess Stop Motion ideas: this is my project idea that I proposed to my tutors. It’s a twist on the suggested animated film brief. In summary I want to create a short stop motion chess film. I am aiming for just over 1 minute of run time. I want the style to be fun and silly with some nice cinematic shots. Stop motion isn’t something I’ve done before and I’ve been wanting to try it out for a while and this is the perfect opportunity. Stop motion is an artistic medium that combines analogue and traditional techniques. I plan to explore this combination further by using some hand made overlays and some digital editing effects.
Target audience: my intention for this project is to make a short stop Motion video that is appropriate and suitable for all. I want it to have a fun tone that anyone can enjoy. I want the plot of the video to be simple enough that children can understand it but have enough drama and intrigue that adults can also enjoy it. Stop Motion videos are growing in popularity on social media so I am drawing inspiration that that trend and proposing that the video be viewed in this context.
Artists inspiration: As stop motion animation is a new style to me I did lots of research into artists who create work in this style to take inspiration from. I’ve also got a few artists who don’t work within stop motion but there are ideas from their work I like for this project. Below is a list of artists whose work I like and want to take inspiration from. I’ve written what parts of their work I am inspired by and attached images of their work below:
Handy Martian:
PES:
Cliff Beddy:
Andrea Animates:
Hypno Motion:
Evan Hilton:
Rich Webber:
Troy Browne:
Chris Haughton:
Keith Haring:
Chess and Guns: a game that mixes chess and real-time third person combat. This game doesn’t fit the tone of what I want my project to be but it does have a nice cinematic and dramatic style which I can take influence from. I really like the different angles that the board is viewed from, I want to get a range of angles in my films. Some more panned out to view the whole board and others that are more intense and level with the pieces.
Stop Motion Research: it’s key in any project to do contextual and academic research before stating to create the project. This is particularity important when exploring a new theme, technique or style. I did lots of research into stop motion, looking at the different types, the history, the equipment, how to shoot it and some artist examples. Below are some notes from my research:
This is one of the main sources I used to collect this information:
https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/animation/discover/stop-motion-animation.html
The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1898):
PES- ‘Fresh Guacamole’ (2012):
Project Storyboard: This is the first complete draft of a storyboard for my project. Creating a storyboard is not something I do regularly so I did some research into how to best create interesting and engaging storyboards.
The storyboard consists of a beginning, 3 main acts and an end. This is a classic story structure so through it was best to keep to a traditional format for the narrative. In this storyboard I began to think about what would happen in each scene and how they would flow together to tell a whole story. I also made notes about some of the effects and audios I wanted to have on the video. There are also some technical notes such the orientation, aspect ratio and frame rate that I want.
Further ideas: these are more notes on my ideas for the project. They focus more of the visuals and how I want the different shots in each scene to look. For inspiration on the cinematography of the video I watched some videos from the YouTube channel ‘every frame a painting’, they study topics such as how to do action comedy and framing a fight scene.
Stop Motion Experimentations: I made these simple tests to help better visualise my idea. I shot these at home but for the real video I will use the stop motion studio at the university. I’m happy with these visualisation and think this idea is worth carrying out. There are lots of things I will improve on these videos for the final videos such as making the camera steady and having a higher frame rate so the movements are smoother. I really like the additions of the movement lines inspired by Keith Haring, I think they add a fun dimension to the animation.
Photographic styles: these are images I downloaded from Flickr. I want to achieve shots similar to these for some of the shots, mainly in act 3. I like the clarity of the images and the angle they’re taken from.
One thing I am experimenting with is the idea of adding faces to the pieces. This idea is inspired by Handy Martian and his stop motion videos. My idea is to have simple faces with dramatic expression to help give the pieces personality and make the film more humorous. I’m undecided if I will mould the expression onto the pieces by hand using modelling clay or digitally add them in post production.
Samuel Green Illustration 