Stop-frame animation Workshop: COP21 Ident

In one of our last introductory workshops, we were put into a group to work on stop frame animation. The brief instructed us to create a 10 second ident for the upcoming political conference: COP21 that is happening this in two weeks in Paris and focuses on climate change and is aiming to come to a conclusion on how to work together efficiently to slow down and stop the detrimental effect on the climate made by pollution.

The brief was fairly expansive as it didn't have any restrictions other than that the stop frame animation had to be made with paper/card under the stop-frame camera. Other than that, we could be as creative with it as well.

In a group of three, we started brainstorming ideas on how to effectively present this ident in an informative and attractive way. Our main idea seemed to be very consistent with the idea of focusing on water shortages. After some initial sketching, we put our ideas together and came up with the idea of cutting out a tap which slowly started dripping out drip shaped pieces of blue card which slowly grew into an Eiffel Tower shape.

Due to a certain complexity in our idea of the forming of shapes into the shape of the Eiffel Tower, it meant we either had to be extremely patient and also skilled with cutting up card by hand, or we could use a rotary paper cutter to accurately cut out the shape of the Eiffel Tower. I measured each part by hand to try and approximate the amount of "Eiffel Towers" we would need to realistically create the vision of it growing and settled on 25 so we could add a new bit every 2 seconds.

Using these pieces, we learnt how the rule for stop frame animation was that, to create a realistic movement, it is recommended to use a 25 frames a second approach, meaning for every second you should have 25 frames which change the position of the pieces to create the fluidity of movement.

Despite attempting to accurately plan measurements and movement, time got ahead of us and we were forced to rush to the deadline, dropping frames and producing an overall messy concept due to not being able to stick to the 25FPS guideline and adding in far too much extra bits which made the entire video almost 20 seconds long. On the other hand, we successfully made use of the card to express the information we needed to, but had to withdraw on the aesthetic side due to running on too long and rushing the final product. Another thing that needs correcting, if this project was to be redone, is the consistency of the lighting between frames as this adds a rather horrible effect due to the constant change of lighting on screen.