Thursday, 26 April 2012

Claymation evaluation

The process of creating a claymation animation begins with grabbing some plasticine and crafting a unique character, you then can set up an environment for your character when you could animate him if you wish to. Then what you want to do is get some sort of camera and preferably a tripod, place your character(s) in the position you want them in, and take a picture, then move your character(s) slightly and take another picture and just keep going. Then when you're done with the animating, add a soundtrack perhaps or a voice over if that's what you intended to add from the start and maybe some sound effects.

The reasons why Morph is a popular show is because kids love colourful things and playing with Play-Doh, and since morph combines those two and adds an ounce of childish humor, it makes for the perfect show for children. It could also inspire those same children to devote themselves to playing with more plasticine and maybe one day get into the art of claymation animation.

The strengths of using claymation animation is that any person with any artistic skill is able to do it as it's rather easy to make a decent model, and pretty much everyone played with plasticine when they were a little kid. The main skill required for claymation animation is dedication, as a really smooth animation would take a really long time.

The limitations of claymation animation is that it takes a long time to make, you gotta make little movements and it takes 12 pictures just to film 1 second, and if you need to craft like 2 cars, you can't just copy the first model like you could on a computer, you'd have to create both by yourself which would prolong the time of the animation. You also have to secure the camera tightly, otherwise if it moves just a bit it would ruin the quality of the animation.

The strengths claymation and stop-motion animation both share is that you don't have to be very artistic to be able to do any of them, it would help out to make better models for claymation, but it isn't necessary and with stop-motion animation all you need is a magazine and some scissors and all you have to worry about is how good your cut out is.
A weakness they both share is they both take a long time to animate, and to create a good animation would be a very long process.