Armature- First a design must be drawn and given measurements and dimensions. Your armature should be able to move around like a human with working joints and easy to bend arms and legs.
An armature model will have the most movement out of all of the puppets, and is the ,most common type used in professional stop motion animation. Armature can also be used with interchangeable pieces to improve the puppet.
Modeling- first you need to design a character ,once you have designed your character you can then use a material like clay to mold your character over a bendy metal body. Once you have molded your clay around your metal body you can start to ad detail to the face and body.
cut out animation- cut out animation is a 2D animation that is made out of paper or card.
Cut out animations tend to be quite basic and
not have much going on in them, so the cut out pieces don't take long to make.
3d printing is starting to be used more and more in stop motion this is because it makes it more easy than ever, to make more intricate and small pieces. It is also very good because the pieces for the puppets will have almost no imperfections which means the animation will look better and more realistic.When using 3D printing to make facial expressions, your imagination is the limit, meaning that if you can design the face you can print and produce it easily. An example of a stop motion animation that used lots of 3d printing was kubo and the two strings which produced loads of interchangeable face pieces for the movie. 3D printing could be the future of stop motion animation, because of everything that can be achieved with it, like sets, puppets,faces or objects.
*The fps is the amount of frames per second, the higher the frame rate the more fluid the movement of the video is. when a stop motion has a higher frame rate,the illusion of movement is much more believable compared to a video with a low frame rate ,where the video will look choppy and unrealistic.
A 12 frames per second animation doesn't look very smooth but will still show some properties of having the illusion of movement. This is because the human eye can only process around 12 images per second, meaning that human eyes will see movement in the animation, but it will be choppy compared to a 24 fps animation that would look smooth. (TechTerms february 3rd, 2015)
Filming at 24 fps is very fluid and looks very smooth and it wont look choppy or unnatural, filming at higher fps that 24 or 30 is not needed very often and a lot of people prefer the look of 24 fps to 60 fps .
25 fps for television looks good on the screen and allows it to look fluid and natural, this is fps is often used for television to reduce flicker on high frame rate displays although 25 frames per second looks smooth , at cinemas a movie will be shown in 24 fps this is because it is easier and cheaper than filming it and showing it at a higher frame rate. (film independent 2016) . (TvTechnoligy February 23 2018 )
Wallace and gromit was shot in 24fps.(Andrews amazing blogs,February 25, 2015)
and coraline was also shot at 24 fps (https://shotonwhat.com/coraline-2009).
24 fps for stop motion is very smooth and if they had of used a lower fps
the animation wouldn't as smooth and would look more choppy and not fluid.
If a higher frame rate was used the smoothness and fluidity of the animation
would increase but it would be harder to make.
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.
Modeling- first you need to design a character ,once you have designed your character you can then use a material like clay to mold your character over a bendy metal body. Once you have molded your clay around your metal body you can start to ad detail to the face and body.
