American Art Clay Company - Fun With Clay: Claymation Movies

Fun With Clay: Claymation Movies

Have you ever dreamed of being a movie maker and having your films be a new movie release on the internet? If so, and you don't have a cast of thousands; try claymation for your first short animation film. It's a wonderful medium, fun and creative. You can create characters you would never be able to make without a full costume and make-up group. Your imagination is your only limitation. First, you must come up with an idea or story line for the movie.

Is it going to be in the genre of action movies or something a little less active? How many characters will be in it, how many extras and where do the scenes take place. For your first movie, you might want to keep all of these to a minimum. Once you decide what the movie will be about then you can write down your ideas and start scripting it.

Once the writing is complete, it's time to storyboard it. If you haven't seen a storyboard, try online movie downloads and get your favorite animation movie on DVD or on your computer and watch it frame by frame. If you then take the first frame of each sequence, that will give you a good idea of what a storyboard looks like. This may take a creative team member as drawing and writing are different talents. Once you have decided what the characters look like and what the sequence of shots will be, then it's time to record the voices.

You may be able to use the same team members that are on the creative team but reading a script as a character is another talent all together. Being able to see the action of the clay characters in your head while you're reading is something even seasoned actors may have trouble with. This may be the most expensive part of your budget and sometimes it's worth spending the money on professional talent. The recording studio should also have a professional quality of sound capture whether it's in someone's basement or in Hollywood.

So let's say you have decided that comedy movies is the genre for your first short animation. You have a good script, read by excellent actors who are really funny and the sound quality is great. Now you need to create these characters out of clay and move them frame by frame to create a movie. Using a copper wire frame as the armature inside your figures, sculpt your characters based on your storyboard, creating the head on an eraser for easier movement. Going by your storyboard as your basis for the movie and listening to the script frame by frame, you start moving your characters bit by bit. As you move them you take a frame of film after each move. Having one character on the set at a time is the easiest method but not very practical in a movie. You probably have to move several characters bit by bit as you take each frame of film. This is very time consuming but also very rewarding. With the variety of clays at your disposal, you can create just about anything your imagination allows with almost any color imaginable. The main ingredient is to have fun.

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