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It was on Sep 2018 that I was making an animation called “Path. . .” (Persian Name:Girih), the technique that I used is stop motion, and my characters were eggs, and spoon and fork.
Backstage of Making Stopmotion Animation “Path. . .”
Backstage of Making Stopmotion Animation “Path. . .”
I tested adding eyes and mouth on the egg, but that did not pleased me at all.
Test for adding real facial features in stop motion animation “Path . . “
What I had planned, was to record the frames and then add facial expressions to the egg by drawing eyes, mouth and hands over the frames. I did not thought much about showing emotions in objects as I was supposing the line drawing over frames will do that. As I started shooting the frames, things happened that totally changed my mind.
Backstage of Making Stop-motion Animation “Path. . .”
In a shot, the egg should have appeared so disappointed, leaving the scene, and go sadly to a new dark scene. What I was animating with was an empty shell of an egg. I started moving it slightly to the left and shooting a frame for each.
Character enters a dark scence -Backstage of Making Stopmotion Animation “Path. . .”
Then as I was moving the egg, I found out if I make the hole at bottom of the sell a little bit larger so the egg would be posed diagonally on the floor as if it is leaning forward, which will give a more disappointed feeling to the egg.
Character leaning forward -Backstage of Making Stopmotion Animation “Path. . .”
The egg entered the scene from right and exited from left. Hmm, but that egg was not so much disappointed, just seemed like an egg who walk in a leaning position may be it want to start running!
character moving while leaning forward — Backstage of Making Stopmotion Animation “Path. . .”
Another idea came to my mind. When you are sad and leaving somewhere, it is difficult to leave because you remember the hope or good memories you had there, you still might wish the situation change or someone apologize you or someone asks you not to leave. You see, the egg now has feelings, can you guess what it did? The egg entered the scene from right, then stopped, while standing turned right toward where it came from, as if looking to the right. Just looking and not moving.
Showing of sadness by stopping and looking the path behind -Backstage of Making Stopmotion Animation “Path. . .”
After a delay the egg gently turned to the left and started to go to left and leave the scene.
After a delay continuing the way — Backstage of Making Stop motion Animation “Path. . .”
And yes, no eyes, no hands, no mouth, but the timing and the leaning of the egg made it.
I found it another example of “limitation can bring you to creativity”, so I wanted to share with you.
Have an animatic life
-Hadis Malekie
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