Stopframe.

So first project of the term was to create a stop frame animation using only Zapf Dingbats, a common dingbat typeface:

I have never created a stopframe animation before so had a lot to learn! We spent the first day of the project getting our heads around the history of it all, this short film called 'Neighbours' by Norman McClaren was one of my favourite examples shown.

We were put into groups of three, each group coming up with a different narrative that would become a 10-20 second clip using only the dingbats. My group and I decided a fireworks display would be a way to incorporate some of the symbols provided..and began to work on a storyboard. We had not planned any colours at this point:

Although we were limited to 10-20 seconds, producing the film took hours. Once printed, each small symbol had to be cut perfectly, and after quite some time (and a bit of pain), were were we ready to start shooting. As we had a storyboard to follow, the making of the film was fairly straightforward but still very time consuming, as every slight move had to be accurate. We used 'iStop Motion' software, linked up to a camera as seen below:

Learned a lot from this project, and although a lot of patience was required throughout, the outcome looks awesome. Will have the final clip itself up shortly!