Cut Out Animation Evaluation (Stop-Motion Animation)

In this unit we were given the opportunity to construct our own Cut out Animations.

A cut out animation is the process of creating a piece of animation via the usage of cut out images. Cutting images from magazines, newspapers, old books and more could make up these images.

Personally, my cut out animation was very simple to fabricate. I already had in mind an inkling of what I wanted to do. This was to produce a catwalk like short animated film. Firstly, I drew a quick rough mind map of the things I would have liked to incorporate in my film. This made it easier for me when it came to the production stage. I did this by cutting up random pictures in the Shortlist magazine in order to make up my background of the catwalk. I then used images of people in the same magazine to play my models. To make my images ‘talk’ I cut out the mouths and moved it up and down during the filming process to personify them.  I tried to make my animation humorous as opposed to serious as I thought it’d be more fun and easier to do, which it proved.

The software of I-Motion on the Mac computers was very helpful during the making of my animation. I also used a removable webcam in order to capture every single move accurately as the camera device built into the Mac didn’t reach the table.  

Upon researching Cut out Animations I came to find that one of my favourite animated shows is a subject of Stop-Motion animation; South park. This was something I hadn’t notice before. It has certainly made me more conscious of Stop-Motion productions out there.

I very much enjoyed cutting anything and everything from the different sources I had and conjuring up a storyline to go with it. With Stop-Motion animation, anything can be a characters, it only depends on how it is personalised and personified. An example of this would be the scene in my animations where I have two different pairs of shoes having a ‘dance off’ so to speak. To produce something such as Stop-Motion animation, I feel requires a lot of creativity which is not something I have.  Creativity is needed to create something out of nothing or everything. However, I found this unit both enjoyable and uncomplicated. My aim was to make my animation as simple and humorous as possible. I hope that my aims and objectives for this are clear to my audience.

The only limitation and perhaps negative thing that I could mention about this process of animations is how restrictive it is. When I say restrictive, I mean it in the sense that I couldn’t make images that I’d necessarily need, such as a proper backdrop for my catwalk scene. Again, it could have only worked in a 2D shapes, which narrowed the production process. I had to make do with the images I could get from the magazines, which did turn out better. It is also very time-consuming as it requires the absolute care and precision when taking the shots and patience I feel as I could be feel myself becoming irritated during the production stage. One thing I could have done differently is remembered to take my hands out of the image before taking the shot. However, I don’t believe that it’s ruin the animation for me but made it obvious that it’s a cut out animation, which is something I wasn’t too worried about.