Earlier this week, I was lamenting how children’s television has changed. I know, I’m officially an old fart now I’m saying “when I was a kid…”.
Anyway, I was thinking about shows I used to watch like Jim Henson’s The Storyteller, Fat Tulip’s Garden, and Grim Tales (I love everything Rik Mayall has ever done - as a child, I was spellbound by him).
These shows were charming and fed the imagination; they weren’t condescending or dumbed-down.
In all fairness, we don’t own a TV, so perhaps there are some lovely children’s shows out there today, but the few I’ve seen recently have been all loud noises, bright colours, and kind of creepy.
So, I thought: Bugger it, I’ll make my own! How cool will it be when my son is old enough for ‘screen time’ and he can watch productions made specifically for him?
Here’s what I did:
Watched a few YouTube tutorials on stop motion animation
There are tonnes of these, just do a quick search.
The one I found most helpful for the sort of animation I wanted to try was this one by The Slanted Lens, featuring Trisha Zemp.
Equipment
You don’t need much, I’m lucky to already have a decent DSLR camera and tripod, but you can do all of this just with a smartphone or tablet – best if you can lock it into position somehow.
There are free apps you can use with your phone or tablet, like Stop Motion Studio.
I ended up buying the Stop Motion Studio Pro app ($14.99AUD – I’m not an affiliate of any sort) for my computer because iMovie was giving me the shits.
Came up with a simple idea using household items
I wanted to be able to make an animation immediately (I'm very impatient), so only used items I already had in the house.
My inspiration: a purple dragon carrot I picked in our vegetable garden.
Here is a list of exactly what I used:
1 x purple dragon carrot
3 x red cos lettuce leaves (also from our garden)
1 x sheet of white paper
1 x purple pencil
1 x pair of scissors
1 x kitchen knife
Everything was set up on my kitchen table.
A rough plan
I came up with a rough plan in my head of how I wanted the carrot to move and transform – I figured I’d just experiment as I went along and see how it worked.
To be honest, I didn’t think it would come out how I’d imagined, but in the end it was quite close.
Taking shots
I set up the camera on the tripod and used manual settings. I took about 100 shots in total (this took maybe an hour). The concept is very simple: you just move your items a small distance with each shot.
Editing
The editing took about an hour, it would have taken about half that time if I hadn’t dicked around on iMovie for so long. Stop Motion Studio Pro was very easy to use, very intuitive (and I’m crap with that sort of thing).
I imported the photos I’d taken, changed the order of some of them, deleted any where the lighting had changed significantly, and imported some stock music. That was it!
The final result: Purple Dragon Carrot
For a first attempt, slapped together in two hours, I’m really happy with this. I can see tonnes of room for improvement, such a better lighting (easily fixed with a couple of desk lamps).
The best part about this was having a shitload of fun – it was so enjoyable!
I plan to keep making these on a regular basis.