Peer Review of a Fellow Groups Stop Motion Animation

I have chosen to review the Stop-Motion animation created by Toni Watts and Feba Philip called:

The Life Of A Student 

You can find the Link to their blog and video here ---> http://p095516tjw.blogspot.co.uk/

They used the medium of Cutouts to create their Stop-motion animation. I personally really enjoyed their animation. I found it ran smoothly, was really entertaining, humorous, very well drawn and put together, and all the other features like the sound lighting etc seemed to compliment it very well. The fact it was on a topic their target audience (University students) could relate to worked in their favour making it more enjoyable to watch.

I found the story ran through very well and kept my attention all the way through. It didnt feel like I was watching it for 2 minutes. All the cutouts were really well drawn which added to how realistic it looked; It was evident that they had put time into it. They used a music track through out the whole animation which complimented it all very well, and encouraged a smooth flow from scene to scene. So altogether it put across their message very well.

However... A couple of things I thought could have been better was, to use more frames to really highlight and show off the movements of their character; in turn making her look like she is more alive and less like a cutout. Also parts of the film were slightly jittery and were freezing up, which didn't really affect the quality of the animation, but could be something to consider. Apart from that, overall the animation worked well and was very enjoyable.

My Animation made through Stop-Motion Techniques

As part of my Educational futures module we were asked to create a two minute long animation made only with Stop-motion techniques. The objective was to deliver a certain message or moral through the 2 minutes and to show ability and convince the audience that the characters are alive and moving on their own.

Stop-Motion is a very tricky and time consuming way of creating an animation; although it can be a lot of fun and is very rewarding once watching the finished result of your work. Certainly a perfectionists nightmare! As so much can go wrong... even in the slight nudge of the camera their is a stress that follows, to get it back into the same position. Then there is the lighting, the characters, the stage and the background/setting as well as other things that have to remain the same from picture to picture; so use items that aren't likely to change on their own (unless of course it's part of the story for it to change).

I found when making this animation the easiest way was to do as much as I could in one run. Whenever I wanted to finish working on it for the day I made sure to finish the scene or get to a point where there was a fade-out or change of set so I could start afresh the next day; This helped to keep the continuity of the realism of the animation, and meant any slight changes over night didn't affect the animation.

Apart from these small details working on this animation turned out to be a very enjoyable process, even though very time consuming. However, this meant you could really invest your own creativity into it and really make it yours. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in animation.

So here is my animation called...

The Lion and the Monkey: (Hope you enjoy it!) Make sure you watch it in HD quality :).