Stop Animation Sound Exercise

Today we combined our knowledge and basic skills of stop animation with our previous experience with creating sound tracks.


We created a stop animation using coins and a topple-ware box. We took the box and started brain storming in what we could do; most of the actions were improvised as we filmed as we suggested ideas throughout the process which turned out to be successful.


We had several piece of large card (to hide the table below) which we preformed all the actions on. We had a video camera on a tripod linked to a laptop beside it running iStopMotion. 


We had the box open and spill coins across a table, the coins then moved around and back into the box. The lid of the box formed a ramp for a single coins to roll up and fall into and then the lid was put back on to finish where the animation started. We were sure this time as a group to make the animation much better than our previous ball animation, we did this by making sure each change in-between frames were less dramatic and more subtle. Carefully animating this makes sure that the overall video is more visually pleasing to watch and the length of the video increases as a result which in this case is a positive side effect.

We used iStopMotion again to record this. To run through the process again we took a photo whenever we made a change and by the time we had taken a photo throughout the sequence we could play them back as a video and we create the illusion of motion.


the change we made this time was to add a soundtrack using foley sounds (which involves recording the sound something makes and placing that over video). We completed the video then used final cut to record voice overs however, we used this function to record sounds for the video. For example for the topple ware box we would start recording then close one of the sides of the lid, we repeated this process for each side and then synced them to the video in final cut. We individually recorded each sound and synced them up throughout the video and end result is great and we are satisfied with it. We did this by recording all of the sounds and matching up the start of each sound with roughly the start of each the action in the video. 

This is the end result and we are all pleased with it, both the sounds and animation work well together and creates a nice and fluid animation. We also managed to fix the previous issue with the lighting by making sure no excess shadows in the shot. There is a small blurred object in the top right at one point of the video, we are not sure what this is but we will be sure to keep all objects away from the lens next time.