Stop Motion Animation of Falling

Hello there. This week we began learning about the trials and tribulations of stop-motion animation. In order to create the gravity test featured below I took some quick steps:

1. Create a plan! I had a different idea, where the bomb was going to roll down and bounce, but it was far too big and heavy for me to feasibly do that. So Octopus we went. After making ideas for the arcs, I marked the physical path with masking tape.

2. Action! Using the plan, I safety-pinned the Octopus's arms together to create the streamline shape that travels when it picks-up speed and shot all of those frames. Generally I just used masking tape to stick it to the wall (and to tilt the lamp). After shooting the frames of the arms together, I shot the frames with the arms jumbled about or in otherwise strange shapes. I had a tough time piecing together the turns, because the face would be in some arcs and not others. So that was a challenge I should have planned for better.

3. Edit! In a lot of the frames I accidentally left my phone and tape rolls lying about. I went in digitally to edit the pictures with clean frames, or at least less distracting pixels. I also bumped the tripod a few times trying to review footage unfortunately causing some of the frames jiggle. Once those were cleaned-up, it was simply a matter of putting them in a timeline and adjusting timing/cutting frames to create the illusion of bounce.

And here's the final short:

Thanks for reading!