clay-mania-mation

Its funny that this project has come about really. I (like probably most children) watched all the classic Disney films, but it wasn't until I saw the Wallace and Gromit (Aardman) shorts that I really considered the world of animation. I suppose you could say Wallace and Gromit were my initial inspiration for wishing to persue a career in animation. 

Here are some clips of example claymation that might help inspire my character for this project.

Creature Comforts

The original episode by Nick Park made in 1989. A great example to look for looking at different character designs. Simplistic shapes with a reduced palette of colours help create the look of the characters as well as the traditional Aardman style eyes and mouth. There are a mass of limitations when making characters in clay, If characters are too tall they can easily topple unless they have quite an advanced rig so you'll notice some of the bigger characters such as the gorilla and the jaguar are propped. Characters also have to built up with clay so when they are being handled their skeleton does not appear through their geometry. In earlier episodes such as this one, you can see dents from where the animators fingers from where they have been pushing the models around into the desired poses. Not sure how this would transfer to 3D precisely. Finger prints could be a possibility but might look a little odd if not combined with the dents otherwise it'll look like there's flickering occurring on the texturing. Anything textured on the creatures such as shells are indentations made straight onto the clay instead of using another median. 

Pingu

Pingu again demonstrates nice simple characters with limited colour palettes as well as nice examples of exaggeration in its animation style in terms of morphing. It would be nice to include principles like this in 3D with good squash and stretch to keep the characters quite fluid in their movements. Good examples of how foley can help aid the animation in terms of the feet slapping.

Aardman's advert for Change for Life which incorporates very simplistic colourful characters amongst a 2d background which gives an interesting play on dimensions. Characters again demonstrate morphing abilities and even without real faces are able to express some basic expressions and are appealing in their bold colours. Theres a great handmade quality to all these pieces which I think would be good to incorporate into my own work for this project. 

Chicken Run by Aardman...again (o they are the gods of clay aren't they) Showing a nice combination of claymation characters into realistic constructed sets as well as cloth on character. There's definitely a transition of progress between Aardman's earlier work to its more recent but this could also be to do with the difference in animated shorts and features. Again typical Aardman facial features occur and designs still reflect simple geometry. 

Coraline 

I wouldn't say this was the exact style of claymation I wish to reflect in this project, but Im looking at all the options here and Henry Selick's (director of The Nightmare Before Christmas) new film is pretty much the contrast to the look of Aardman. Its adopting (though I dont see his name anywhere) a more Tim Burton approach to its design with characters with who are taller and longer in their features. Such designs wouldn't work in straight claymation as Im sure these designs have pretty advanced rigs inside to keep them steady. The movement does demonstrate some jerky qualities but overall this does tend to favour a more computer generate look rather than traditional claymation. Characters are more detailed than those of Aardmans yet there is a nice play on shapes. No extreme forms of exaggeration in terms of characters morphing to reflect clay.

Purple and Brown

O yes...I can see why our tutor Jared finds this entertaining (simple things!) but yes, very entertaining and again very simple layout. No dialogue so everything is based on the interaction between these two characters. Again there is no set, so the focus is on these two characters and the stupid antics they get up to. The characters themselves are probably the simplest shapes you can get but allows for some great morphing of their bodies as well as interesting walk cycles and distribution of weight. Again typical features from Aardman of the eyes and rubber lips. Characters are kept to a simple base colour.