How are stop motion movies made? How do you effectively tell a story with stop motion animation? What materials do you need to do it? Guillermo del Toro once said that stop motion was probably the, “purest art form,” due to the artist’s ability to control every aspect of the film. In order to create an immersive experience, the animator has to perfect imperfections; such as a child forgetting to shut a door, or an old man trying to grab a cup but missing it on his first try. A full feature film, with teams of dozens of animators can take months just to film a single scene. It’s no wonder that del Toro also remarks that, “stop motion is an artform kept alive by madmen.”

For my capstone project I created a stop motion short film. This art form isn’t entirely new to me, I’ve made stop motion films before. What made this film different was that I wanted to move beyond what I had done before. My goal was to design and build puppets from scratch, build and decorate a set for them, and use them to tell a short story. I wasn’t as focussed on telling a story with this film, so I could focus more time on the puppets, so I used a dream I had last year where Mr. Kamal made an army of evil robots to take over the school. Overall I am satisfied with what I created, and through this capstone found a new appreciation for stop motion animation that I didn’t have before.

Video Link: https://youtu.be/iYt2Jzn62EE

Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mK3SAK3pwn-f9BEXQoL1Hsf9PM9Y2MUfUo6wMVwEc4c/edit?usp=sharing

Here’s my list of films that are important to me. All of these in some way or another have influenced how I see the world and film in general.