Claymation for a Manatee

Hello everyone. This week I will be focusing on one topic only, however, it's a big one so bear with me. As the title may suggest, the topic is on claymation. For my Sculpture final project I have been working on a claymation of Hugh Manatee.

Claymation is a form of animation in which you set up a scene and take a series of pictures while moving the objects you want animated between frames. First, you take a picture. Then, you move an object to a new position. Then, take another picture. You need around 24 to 30 frames (pictures) per second of film to make a video. So a one minute video equals about 1,800 pictures. A one hour video equals 108,000 pictures.

I know that the quality is low, but this is the first 26 frames I made for this claymation. I purposely made this video slower to show the frames of each shot. I will take this set of pictures and edit them so that they are synced up properly. This scene took over two hours to shoot. One hour was setting up the scene and the rest of the time was shooting.

One key part of shooting a claymation is location. You need an area that has no external light source. This is important because you need to have control over the lighting in every frame of the claymation. External light sources can be an outdoor light from a window or a lamp from the room next door. 

Another important part of making a claymation is picking a spot that is not used frequently. Using a bathroom would be good for eliminating external lighting sources, but it is a space that is used frequently and there is no guarantee that your work will remain undisturbed.

Hugh: behind-the-scenes

Here is a screenshot from a behind-the-scenes look at the Hugh Manatee claymation. (That's a glare spot on my face from the lights I was using.)