Adventures in Plasticine!

I like to offer a nice mix of activities with my nnoodl adventures. Having previously done axe throwing, singing, beekeeping and fencing to name a few, I thought it was time for a creative challenge.
Something I'd been looking into for a while was stop motion animation. This is a technique that physically manipulates an object so that it appears to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a fast sequence. Think of things like Morph, or 'The Trap Door'. One thing I have noticed, however, is that art and craft type activities can often make people feel more anxious than physical ones. The idea often brings up memories for some of being told they 'just weren't artistic' at school. So when I found Jennifer Kidd,from Ctrl+Art+Del and had a chat to her,she seemed exactly the type of person who could lead our group of unsuspecting participants in this activity. 
I instructed our adventurers to meet at Canning Town station,which I know had already caused a few murmurs of what exactly might await us in this outlying area of east London? I had to manage expectations as we gathered on a grey Saturday morning that we weren't going to get a flight from London City Airport (sorry!) A short walk and we were at the London City Island Gallery. Now this on itself is a little hidden gem,a collection of eclectic art all sourced from the locals in the area. The perfect backdrop to this creative pursuit.

Jenny explained to the group what we would be doing, which is always the moment I personally feel most nervous. Will anyone say they don't want to do it, or have they done it before, and want to take up their 'pass card'? Thankfully there was a ripple of excited noises as everyone seemed up for it. The first part of the day would involve us splitting into small teams and creating characters from plasticine. The brief was pretty wide here, but Jenny advised us to consider maybe having a villain and a victim. Considering I was the only one of us who knew what we were doing in advance, you might have thought that I'd come prepared with some idea...but no. I decided to see what my fellow teammates, Lee and Andy were producing, and then see what I could add to it. Lee started modelling an octopus, whilst Andy was hard at work with a scary villain. The idea of water always appeals to me, so I thought 'a starfish!'
Talk then turned to the recent story of starfish being washed up on the beaches at Ramsgate, and so immediately my little character became the victim in our yet to be developed storyline. It was heartwarming to see how engrossed everyone was in this childhood modelling fabric for almost 2 hours. It made me wonder if I should invest in some plasticine to use at the end of a busy day! I could also hear random snippets of conversations about the different groups character names and personalities. We were then encouraged to develop this further and think about what the characters fears might be, and how they would interact with each other.

Our group found ourselves developing a story with a conservation message about the villain being a litter lout and the sea creatures being caught up in this, leading eventually to the death of the starfish by ingesting plastic. It's quite poignant that this storyline wasn't actually my idea, despite my current work with WWF. In fact each of the teams ended up creating a moral tale - with one story about protests and fur during fashion week, and another about a child using her imagination to play creatively.

Time for a short lunch break to have some tapas type food (all included in the price don't you know!). Interestingly though, everyone seemed keen to crack on and continue their storyboarding ready for the camera work that afternoon. Sign of everyone having a good time!
Jenny explained some things we should think about when we did our storylines, such as should we communicate certain messages with speech bubbles, or would the story be self-explanatory? There is also the option to add sounds and music in of course, but we realised we were up against time..... 

You soon realise the work that goes into these animations as Jenny explained that we had 900 shots available to us! You have to think about continuity if you are trying to replicate a scene with a moving character in it (so try to avoid kicking the camera tripod Denise). Yet she also advised us not to get too precious when the characters inevitably got a bit 'remodelled' or discoloured during the process of moving them. Yes, we spent many minutes readjusting eyes and mouths which had fallen off our characters. As we set up our scenes I was amused by the dialogue coming from the other teams "Let's get more blood there when she gets hit!" for example. All a bit dark....
The time just disappears when you are acting director for these animations. Trying to frame the shot just right, and get the perspective and continuity. I can see why in the credits of Pixar films there is always a long list of 'Pixar babies' who have been born during filming. Apparently a frame in one of these films can take 24 hours to render, and a 90 minute film will have on average about 130,000  frames! 

Once we were happy with our shots, we joined Jenny to talk through the final editing of them. This is when you spot any inconsistencies, or wonder if you should have worn your glasses after all?  However, we were actually pretty pleased with the results, especially from character creation to completion, this was all done in one day. We all agreed we felt pretty tired! So it was time for a glass of celebratory cava to toast our creativity. Have a look at the final animations below and see what you think....
Oh and if you are now inspired to come along to a future nnoodl adventure, the April one is sold out, but our next one on 9th June is now booking up, go to the 'Packages' page here to snap up your place before it sells out!