Stop Motion Animation - Cheaper than Rent
We started out having a conversation about a guy who went to college via airplane every day, and then thought, “so should we make a plane?”. The answer was yes. We knew the loop we wanted to make, and thought the process would be easy (it wasn’t).
The number 1 thing I learned about stop motion is that there’s always so much more than meets the eye. It really made me appreciate stop motion video, especially from 50+ years ago.
Step 1: Making Everything
Fatma started to build the plane while Yafira and I worked on the backdrop. Yafira designed the paper elements on Figma while I collected materials from the Soft Lab and Junk Shelf in the Shop to add in the 3D elements.
We had to make a couple of different planes since we realized it would need to balance well for us to be able to control it without getting our hands inside the frame.
We experimented with a couple of different techniques to try to work out the weight of the planes. At first, we tried to tape a thread to the plane, but the plane was too nose-heavy for it to be effective. We started adding weight towards the back of the plane in a chaotic combination of tape, paper, and wires. Finally, we got an upright plane!
Next, we did the backdrop. We originally used the white box backdrop from the shop, but realized it was limiting us and creating weird shadows when we tried to shoot. After a couple of reprints, we were ready to shoot.
Step 2: Filming
Filming was also (of course) harder than I thought it would be. It was hard to get the right angles for the plane without putting our hands in the frame, and we didn’t want to Photoshop too much. We decided to use styrofoam blocks to get the angles upward for our plane, and the other shots we controlled with a two-hand system that you can see Fatma using here: