PAXTON WENTZELL CAPSTONE

Posted by Paxton Wentzell on

snowposter
snowposter
ABSTRACT:

SNOWSTORM
IN A SNOWSTORM I WAS BORN
A MIXED MEDIUM ANIMATED SHORT FILM

For the past four months I worked on this short film. I wrote the script, crafted the sets, built the characters, filmed and animated them, and edited them into this two minute piece. One of the greatest things about animation is the amount of control that one person can have over the work. I wanted to create something that was entirely me. And I feel like I did that.

Bibliography:

“Into To Animation.” UARTS PreCollege Class. UARTS PreCollege Class, Oct. 2018, Philadelphia, UARTS.


From September to November, I took animation classes at UArts. They were by far the most helpful thing to completing my capstone. The ability to talk to working animators about techniques and programs and equipment and tricks was a huge time saver. Hours and hours of research were saved with these conversations.


“The Sandman.” IMDb, Paul Berry, 1991, www.imdb.com/title/tt0105311/.

This is one of the first animated films that I saw that I really loved! The style here is gorgeous and unique. It's not hard to see why this is such a classic. The dark themes that my animation and this animation share make it easy for me to draw stylistic inspiration for their exaggerated yet simplistic spaces and designs.

Anderson, Wes, director. Fantastic Mr. Fox. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson, 14 Oct. 2009.


It’s hard not to love Wes Anderson. I’ve wanted to watch Fantastic Mr. Fox since I was a kid, so this was a great excuse. The animation here is lively and amazing and I found myself trying to emulate their perfect movement. Key word being “trying”


Vimeo, Jeremy Clapin, 30 Apr. 2019, vimeo.com/36824575.


Sofia Powers showed me this animated film and it was an amazing inspiration! It is so beautifully done! Most of my inspiration came from very popular films, so it is good to be able to see what can be done on a smaller scale.


Stauber, Jack. “JackStauber.” YouTube, YouTube, www.youtube.com/user/JackStauber.

I found Jack Stauber right before I started my capstone. He’s one of the reasons why I wanted to make an animation in the first place. I’ve always been a fan of mixed media. I feel like Stauber’s been doing the kinds of things that I wanted to do anyways. So, his accessible style was a great place to start. I would watch the things that he makes and try to reverse engineer the techniques to get similar effects for my own film.


Dixon, Barnaby. “Barnabydixon.” YouTube, YouTube, www.youtube.com/user/barnabydixon.


I found Barnaby Dixon around the same time as Jack Stauber. He made a stop motion animated film, Eskos, by himself when he was 19 and it is AMAZING! Age wise, he wasn’t too far away from me. I found myself pushing harder and hard to try to match the quality of what he did. Now, Dixon does puppets. His mastery of movement, even though it’s not stop motion, was extremely beneficial to study.


Comments

No comments have been posted yet.