learning aim A:understand the characteristics and processes of stop motion animation

post 2 visual development

narrative development- the idea process begins,and characters and storylines are starting to be made.
This may be an idea by only one person, or may be by multiple people. creating a character can either be made with no inspiration, or can be partially inspired by real life for example a friend or family member. In Wallace's case wallaces look was inspired by a  postman nick knew and the name was inspired by a dog he met on a bus and Gromit is named after an electricians grommet                 (Wallaceandgromit.com ND).  Nick park made these characters purely from his head. when it comes to Coraline (2009) Henry Selick had to adapt the book version written by Neil Gaiman and begin a creative process of visual development. This includes the look of the characters, and his interpretation of the story. Designing a character from scratch  is often very difficult but  3D designing software's are rapidly improving making it a lot easier to create characters faces and designs. Once an idea  is created and developed they move on to storyboarding.

Storyboarding- a story board is made to give a rough idea of what will happen in a scene. In stop motion a scene must be planned heavily first and thought through, because they can not just delete a scene that someone might have worked on for months. Storyboarding is also important, to make sure everything has structure and doesn't fail when creating the stop motion animation. In Nick parks story board although, the angle doesn't change you can see the movement happening in the picture; where as in the Coraline storyboard the angles of the shot change frequently,which   gives the storyboard a less fluid and smooth look to Nicks. In a live action movie the story board can be more "vague" as the the storyboard is only really guidance where as in stop motion the story board should show all the motion and action in the scene's and help let the animators bring the story to life. storyboards are then turned
                                                      into animatics that can aid the animators and editors with syncing
                                                      the sound tracks and making any adjustments or changes before
                                                      starting the animating process.

Treatments and pitches- before a stop motion can be commissioned it has to be pitched. If they like  idea you are pitching ,they may ask you to draw a few storyboards or prepare a script. If they like these they may hire more writers or script writers to improve the script. lots of ideas may be rejected or changed for example a character you have created or parts of the story. Also when giving a pitch you must expect the possibility of getting turned down. For example the stop motion animation version of coraline  had to be pitched to Neil Gaiman before they could go any further with the production.