Applying sound to our stop motion animation

Once we had completed all the frames and put them all together to ensure there was a continuous flow it was time to think of a soundtrack to accompany the animation. This proved quite difficult at the time as other groups seemed to be doing the same thing and there were different songs being played left right and centre. However, as we were watching our animation a song popped in to my head and I instantly thought 'that would be perfect'. I converted it from Youtube,imported in to Zu3D and it just fitted perfectly - all three of us were so pleased with it straight away. We did have a bit of trouble cutting it down to the length of our animation as our cursor on the computer we were using had a little mind of it's own, but we finally got there. Here is the song that we chose, it's called 'Hoppípolla' by Sigur Rós. Here it is........

Filming process of our stop motion animation

As you can see here these are photos taken during our filming process.



After finalising our characters to use by adding a few bits and bobs such as a butterfly and a watering can we then began to film our animation. We decided to use Zu3D mainly because we had already had some experience in using it previously in the year and after trying a few other programmes available on the iPad Zu3D seemed to be a lot less complex to use. Mandy provided us with a camera to use and once we set ourselves up we assumed we would be on a roll as everyone else around us seemed to be. However, this certainly was not the case. We had trouble for a while with the lighting as we had set up directly in front of a window and as the sun was shining through so brightly, along with the fact that our set generally consisted of light colours, we could not see a thing through the camera. We overcame this problem by taping a big piece of black card up to the window to block some of the light. It was by no means perfect but we made a start anyway as we felt we did not want to waste time.

We progressed through the day, taking it in turns to take photos for each frame, moulding and re-shaping the clay until we finally felt that we had enough in order to complete our two minute video. When we finally had enough frames we couldn't quite believe how much work and effort goes in to such a short 2 minute clip. Coming towards the later frames however, as our clay flowers were getting bigger and bigger they became too heavy and would not stand up.This issue was quickly addressed by us making a 'make-shift' wooden stand hidden behind the flower to prevent it from following anymore. When we played all the frames through together to create our stop motion animation we were all very pleased with the result of the video as I don't think any of us were really knowing what to expect.

Storyboard for our animation

Before beginning to make a start on the set and characters of the animation we identified a structured story line to ensure that everything we would create and each frame we would take would all be relevant and related to the scientific concept that we were trying to get across and more so to prevent us going slightly off track of our idea.



The storyboard clearly shows that the aim of our stop motion animation was to demonstrate a step by step breakdown of the scientific concepts that occur in the life of a flower everyday. Through creating the storyboard we found the name of our animation which was going to be 'Life of a Flower' under the assumption that our original idea, supported by the use of this story board, would all go to plan and would work out the way we wanted it to. Our aim was to highlight factors that contribute to the life and growth of flowers such as sunlight, water, polan from bees and so on (See storyboard above for full breakdown).

Design Process for our Stop Motion Animation Project

When me, Rhiannon and Stacey first heard of the project and what we had to do we were all petrified because none of us felt that we were particularly creative enough to do such a thing and none of us had done anything of the sort before. Trying to think of ideas initially was really difficult because as you can imagine there are thousands of different messages you could portray through the use of stop motion animation and many different ways of doing so. However, on the first day of designing the animation I was unable to attend uni therefore Rhi and Stace carried on without me but continuted to text me and keep me in the loop all day about ideas and we shared suggestions on different ideas and little things to do. We finally agreed on creating a stop motion animation using clay and our story was to be about the life of a flower and how it grows and so on - something scientific and educational for children to learn in a fun way. Rhi got on and started to make the set and stace started creating our little clay characters which were flowers, seeds, the sun moon and so on. Here is a picture of them getting stuck in below :D:D.