Stop Frame Animation Reflection Essay

Marlee Quintasket
Final Draft
American Studies 5/6
November 6th 2007





Stop Frame Reflection Essay



Just recently my partner Sidney Hauser and I finished our Famous Explorer Claymation Project. Our American Studies class had been working on this project since towards the beginning of the school year. During the period that Sidney and I had been creating this Claymation, we went through a lot of frustration, patience, and difficulties. In this essay, I will describe those difficulties, my favorite part of the project, and the main thing that I learned during the making of this project.

Sidney and I experienced easy days, and harder days. I have to say that the easier days were my favorite.
There were a lot of fun things we did to create this stop frame animation, we made funny characters out of clay, I got to work with Sidney ( who is a really good friend of mine) and we worked on the computer and added sound effects and music. Choosing just one of these as my favorite is pretty challenging, but I guess I would have to say that making sound effects and seeing our clay come to life was really thrilling! We recorded voices that matched our clay characters perfectly, added some virtual sounds and music ( because it was quite difficult to make certain sounds and songs without cracking up.) And when we pressed the play button, we saw our clay characters, which were once these cold, stiff figures just standing there lifelessly, seriously come to life. They seemed so much funnier, happier, and warmer. There facial expressions really showed and they acted as though they were little cartoons! It was a thrilling experience to receive that kind of emotion out of little clay people.

This project, was particularly difficult for me and Sid. Due to the cause of a supply delay, or animations were many days late. Me and Sidney put in a stretch of effort to bring this clay to life, but some days their bodies were to stiff and cold to work with, and other days they were to warm and gooey. We ended up losing our storyboard ( that I should mention contained all of our explorers information!) And on top of all that, we had to rush in order to get fully caught up with the class. And during times of stress like these me and Sidney had gotten into quite a few minor arguments, but could you blame us? These were pretty much the hardest part of this project, and you may think it doesn’t sound like much but in our point of view, it was like swimming against the current, full on.

During the hardships and fun points in this project, we actually were in sort of a learning experience. There was so many things that I know how to do now, but the most important thing that I learned, would probably be the little pin points of my explorers life. Personally I enjoyed the fact that I now know how to make cool videos on ivideo, and I can put them on YouTube. But that isn’t really the most important school wise.
I now know how my explorer died, ( eaten alive, which Mr. Bergquist doesn’t believe. ) And I memorized that fact too. I also learned that even a school project can be fun and educational at the same time! Wow, that’s a real shocker.

My experience in making this Claymation on my explorer Giovanni de Verazzano, was a real positive influence on me because of my few memorized historical facts on a famous explorer, and of course the ability to make claymation videos. I really enjoyed this project and would enjoy doing it again as a project, and maybe sometime individually at home. I feel as if I could make something really good if I don’t have any time limits, and it’s not a part of my grade, and about a topic I am really interested in.