creating short stop animations to calm people with hyperactivity disorders

Ever since I was a kid, I have taken an interest in stop motion animation. Seeing shows like Wallace and Gromit has impressed me because stop motion animation is a simple animation technique but can be used to make amazing movies. I have wanted to learn and be good at stop motion for a couple years now. Therefore, this personal project will help me be able to achieve my dream of being able to create stop motion animation. When I was younger, I was diagnosed with mild ADHD, it made me have issues with focusing and studying in general. I need a solution to make me calm and focused. Watching stop motion animations to calm me as a child was one of the solutions. This is why I wanted to make my personal project about stop motion, to help myself and other people by creating short stop motion videos. For these reasons made me decide that I want my learning goal would be to learn and be good at stop motion animations

Product Goal

My product is to create a 30 seconds stop motion animation that can calm people with hyperactivity disorders. The video will be about the classic ‘Tortoise and Hare Race’ story, it will be about the arrogant hare versus the humble tortoise, I have chosen this story because it is simple and will reconnect watchers with nostalgia, the characters, rabbit, and tortoise are made in folded origami, to create stop motion video I used an app on my phone called “Stop-Motion Studio to help me create the animation, and a tripod to correct and stabilize the angles I filmed at.

Reflection

When I first started the project, I thought I could just do some research and make stop motion as easily as I could, but I underestimated, I admit, turns out that it’s true about the “capture a photo and move the character and capture it again” it was harder than I had thought it would be. I had problems with camera movement, the lighting changes, and suffered burnout since I was a procrastinator. It’s honestly so tedious to capture an image and move it again, I had no assistance so I was doing it alone. I also had a few rushed changes, my product success criteria, especially about the Animation part was changed from 2 videos each 30 seconds to 1 video that lasts for 2 minutes and 45 seconds. This became a problem until I had created the storyboard, I created the stop motion animation before the storyboard because I was impatient and wanted it to be fast, but I can’t fit the “2 videos 30 seconds” pledge, so I had to extend the video to 2 minutes and 45 seconds, and because I had problems with the camera movement, lighting, etc. I used video editing to make up for it, to make it more enjoyable and entertaining to watch. To be honest, I learned stop-motion animation more by trying it out rather than reading about it. This project made me learn a lot about patience and planning. I should’ve been more careful at planning with analysis etc, I should’ve been more patient when it comes to creating stop motion animation. I learned about Stop Motion animation and animation in general and how they were made. Creating the characters, moving them one per frame taught me about the amazing things people can create with a simple animation technique and tell stories.

Product Evaluation

My product was a short stop motion animated video, consisting of 2 main characters, 2 background characters. The video is about a race battle between the humble turtle and the arrogant rabbit. When the race starts the rabbit had a great start but the turtle is still going slow, the rabbit goes on the road and the turtle slowly is trying to follow the rabbit. Things get violent when the rabbit kicks the turtle and makes him trip and flip himself. The rabbit continues to run fast and gets sleepy so the rabbit sleeps for a while, and then the Turtle finally gets back up and has enough time to run across the finish line, and with the embarrassment, the rabbit gets after waking up, the rabbit dies inside. I was most inspired by TV Shows such as Wallace and Gromit, Shawn the Sheep, etc. While working on the film I had my criteria to ensure that I am covering the strands. I would see if what i'm doing actually hits the standards. When I rewatched it and matched my success criteria, I was a bit disappointed because I felt like my success criteria are false promise.