What students are doing

Preproduction – Design Work

This year I’m directing, producing, prop making and animating on a short stop-motion film.

My team consists of 6 animation students, 2 film students (a cinematographer and an editor) and 3 costume students. At the moment, we are focused on visual development and set building. This means, along with learning teamwork and time management through directing and producing, I’m getting to explore the most effective methods of visual communication.

I developed the concept for the set, working to find the best design to suit our story, characters, and technical needs. This includes things like making sure the set will provide interesting compositions from different angles, having removable walls to film through, and ensuring the quantity of prop making is achievable.

From this I made a CAD model of the set in SketchUp, working to 1/8 scale. Having a digital model of the set makes set building and prop making easier as you can refer to it for measurements and view what you are trying to create in a 3D space. The digital painting of the set makes sourcing materials and working within the colour script much easier as you can see how each element will interact with those around it.

Having completed concept work I started working in 1/8 scale to construct miniature props – a bedroom with tiny paintings and soft furnishings, and a garden scene with an arbor, climbing vines and tiny flowers. We did this as a team in the stop motion room provided by animation, and used the model making facilities in the workshop for wood cutting, sanding, laser cutting, metal work and spray painting. The prop model I’ve included here is one of the first I made – an arbour for the garden made from balsa wood, stained, and covered in mulberry paper laser cut leaves.

Animation Specialism

We had to set our own independent projects for our selected specialism.

I intend to go into stop-motion animation. My focus for my project was on the movement of orangutans and how I could create and animate my own orangutan character from this.

It’s a great opportunity to further your skills and experience. Figuring it out on your own is a great way of picking up new techniques and learning from mistakes in preparation for third year.

Lev Yilmaz

Currently, Level 5 students are developing work towards pitching our own 2 minute stories; to help us we’ve been having weekly lectures on various techniques for storytelling.
During this lecture, we were introduced to the alternatives to commercial storytelling, and there was no better way of learning about it than to have a Q&A session with Lev Yilmaz!
Lev Yilmaz is best known for his “Tales of Mere Existence” animations – worth a watch!

The Wind in the Willows

Richard Haynes, who is our Senior Lecturer, brought the original caravan cart used in the British stop motion animated film in 1983 into the studio for us!