This week was quite quiet in terms of animation for Martha’s project. Michael and I met up to start sketching a few initial designs for the shadow puppets based on the animatics and information Martha had given us. The puppets will be made out of black card and split pins for the moveable joints and so will the background and foreground elements, as they should also have small movements to give the whole composition fluidity. I think this will be an important aspect of the animation in order to really bring it to life. When doing stop motion it’s really easy to only concentrate on one single element as it’s such a meticulous and calculated job trying to manufacture believable weight and movement, but doing this neglects the rest of the composition and ultimately leads to a very stilted and jarring sequence. Having lots of elements interacting and moving in conjunction takes a lot of prior planning, which the animatics have been useful for, and makes an animation much more lively and engaging.
I watched a few online videos of old shadow puppeteers’ processes which have been intriguing and also useful. Some of them were puppets on sticks, which Martha has expressed she’d like some sections of her animated sequences to be, so it was useful to see how to mirror fluid movement with different parts of the puppets’ body on different sticks. I found the animated ‘Candyman’ trailer to be a big source of inspiration, as it closely lines up with what me and Michael have been imagining in terms of using transparency and proximity to the baking paper to convey depth of the background, and also with the movements of the puppets being quite naive and childlike. ‘Making Shadow Landscapes with Jess Mabel Jones’ was also really useful, as although we won’t be using an actual shadow puppet theatre, she details how to achieve a depth effect in quite a simple and doable way that I can recreate digitally.
Stills of the ‘Candyman (2020)’ shadow puppet teaser
Stills of ‘Making Shadow Landscapes with Jess Mabel Jones’ on Youtube
I found the post-production sound lecture and workshop with Ali Murray really interesting and enjoyable. It made me properly consider the role of sound in my own film and animation work, especially the shadow puppets sequences for Martha’s film. The sequence will have the girls’ voiceovers over it, but the workshop made me think about whether it should have diegetic sound as well, to give the puppets some added weight and the entire sequence a bit more authenticity. Alternatively, I think some diegetic sound could also emphasise the fairytale aspect to the sequence if used in a slightly surreal, exaggerated way which could be interesting and is something I’ll bring to Martha, although this will likely have been thought of by the editing department.
Next week, Michael and I will continue to design and hopefully begin to cut out some of the key puppets in preparation for animating in late Feb – March.
