Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation

To make great animation, you need to know how to control a whole world: how to create a character and how to make that character live and express emotions like happiness or sadness. You need to build an environment around them, including a landscape, the sun, and the moon—a complete life for them. You have to get inside that puppet, first making it come alive, then making it perform. Susannah Shaw provides the first truly practical introduction to the craft skills of model animation. This is a vital book in the development of model animation, which, following the success of Aardman's first full-length film, Chicken Run, is now at the forefront of modern animation. Illustrated in full color throughout, you are shown step by step how to create successful model animation. Starting with some basic exercises, you will learn about developing a story, making models, creating sets and props, the mechanics of movement, filming, postproduction, and how to find that elusive first job in a modern studio. Susannah Shaw is Programme Development Manager for the Animated Exeter festival. She was head of the Bristol Animation Course from 1996 to 2000 at the University of the West of England and a former camera assistant at Aardman, working on projects like A Close Shave.

Audience: Student and amateur stop motion animators; secondary market - professional animators.