Hello, and thanks for coming back to check out my second post, which pretty much concludes the month of January.

Progress Report

Since my last post, I have completed the following:

I have done my first video call with my mentor. This first video call was mostly just an introductory one. During it, he was introduced to my parents, and we started talking about how I could improve at stop motion animation. Because this past month of January has been my equipment month, he gave me suggestions about how to go about equipping myself to animate stop motion.

I then did some of my own research and ended up buying a canon t3i camera and two IKEA positional desklamps. I am very satisfied with both of these. One of the best parts of now working with a DSLR camera instead of a phone is that there are so many more options and new things to learn. Then, with the help of my Dad, I created a downshooter, which basically is a mount for the camera that lets you animate videos with a birds-eye view. We made it out of wood. Additionally, I found an old tripod in my basement that I was able to fix up, and a waist-height set of drawers on wheels that I can use to store my props. I also found some copper wire in my Dad’s shop that will be useful for suspending characters in midair.

Since this month was kind of equipment and props month, I also made a few small advancements on the props side of things. I found a few different colors of posterboard/cardstock-like paper at my dollar store, which make for great backdrops. I also tried animating with LEGO, just to familiarize myself with it, which opens up the prospect of using LEGO as props in the future.

As far as animations go, I ended up making three. Before I acquired the camera, I made two with LEGO. The first one, which was Star Wars themed, tested my focus because I found myself moving the set every frame as well as animating the figures. The second one was more just fun. After both of those, I decided I needed to improve my equipment, and I got to work finding what I mentioned above. After that, I made a third animation for my Napoleonic wars school project. This video took a lot of work and was filmed with my new camera. During this process, I also found a new way to create characters, which was to design them on a drawing app, print them out, and put them on cardstock. The links to all three of these videos are below.

| Star Wars Battle | Castle Construction | Napoleonic Wars |

How to Have a Beautiful Mind

Unfortunately, I did a video-call with my mentor possibly before I received the email, or maybe just before I read it. Anyway, I was not able to take video evidence and wasn’t keeping all of the tips in the forefront of my mind. However part of me is glad that I was just able to meet and get to know my mentor and such before also trying to observe and keep this assignment in mind. Regardless, I will try and relate what I can recall.

Firstly, there was not much actual argument or disagreement happening for two reasons. For one, I just met him and so it was all pretty polite and I didn’t feel like a knew him well enough to really disagree out loud. Secondly, he is my mentor, and the whole point is that he knows more than me, and I am learning from him. As far as what was unspoken, however, there were a few things that I wouldn’t really call disagreements or differences, but rather the seeds of them. What I mean to say is, that I was too busy focusing on the conversation and my learning of stop motion, that the parts I didn’t fully agree on didn’t really develop into disagreements If you get my meaning.

Anyway, it was mostly instances like when he pointed out my videos lacked a story or something driving them. I was conflicted at this, because yes I can agree that’s what they were missing, but at the same time, I kind of think the idea of them was to become better at animation and my animating skill, sort of tests rather than fully-fledged videos. When looking back at that, however, I can realize that that was more of just an excuse, and deep down I really did agree with him and understand his point. It’s just that because of my different experience, and how I was coming from the place of having put a lot of work into those anyway, part of me didn’t want to see problems with them. So, thinking through it now, with the concepts from the book in mind, I think I’ve kind of resolved the possible disagreement.

My call with my mentor happens almost right after this blog post is due to be posted, so I will update it with more about agreeing, disagreeing, and differing once the meeting happens.

In conclusion, January was a great and productive first start to my project, and everything went pretty much how I planned, so I guess I learned having a thorough, yet also flexible plan like this really pays off. Even though it might not really be complete, I’m still really glad I ended up reflecting on this, it really helps just to think more about it.

Also, as an added bonus, I just recently watched a movie animated all in stop motion called The Isle of Dogs, and I really enjoyed it. So not only did I learn and practice stop motion this month, but I was also entertained by it. Anyway, I guess that’s all I have to say for now, thanks so much for reading through all this.

-Ben

 

UPDATE:

Ok, I have finished the video call now. There isn’t much really that I have to change about my first report based on this meeting. Since the whole call was just him giving me insights and tips about stop motion, there wasn’t really anything I disagreed about. Although, in an email thread afterward, I saw the usefulness of disagreeing (sort of) when I questioned why he added a certain part to his storyboard, and he told me it was because his client wanted it, and wasn’t something I needed to do. If I hadn’t called that part out (politely of course) then I wouldn’t have known why he was doing it and why I didn’t need to. Like I said before though, he has been doing this for years now and I wasn’t really about to refute the advice he told me, but rather I was glad to learn from his experience. As for evidence, the link to the post with the videos is below.

In order to maintain the anonymity of myself and the privacy of my mentor, you will need a code to access the media.

| My Media Post |