Its Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah not really, I'm just super organized and getting my Christmas post in early......ahhh not really! god I'm funny. So for the end of the year we had to make a wee Christmas film and I pretty much jumped at the prospect of doing whatever I wanted. I really wanted to make a whimsical fantasy film. I had been doing alot of tacky kind of comical stuff and I wanted a wee break from that.

I got the majority of my inspiration from this adorable wee film and also this sketch I made. 

I decided I wanted to take this wee guy on an adventure. 

I decided that I wanted him to be late for something and he wakes up in a wasteland all by himself. I initially thought he could be running to watch the sunset or some sort of event with all his other snow creature friends but then I decided that would probably be a bit too ambitious to make so many characters within the time scale I had. 

I began story boarding and thought it could possibly be a hand drawn animation

I managed to get some sort of story put together. This little creature wakes up and looks to see the almost setting sun, with a little cry of dismay he begins running. after a while he finally makes it to see the setting sun, when it sets everything is still and the creature looks a little confused. Suddenly he begins to levitate, he seems shocked but not scared. gradually he floats into the sky and meets several other floating beings(however later on I decided on just one character). Its basically a sort of "finding your place in the world" film I guess in the broadest of terms. 

I really wanted this film to look good and decided that I would do it in stop motion which is one of my most confident and time efficient methods. 

I planned out my basic scenes but I wanted to leave alot of the project quite loose so I could get a feel of the character and story . 

So here he is! 

Initially I decided to make 2 versions of him, this one for the close up shots and a smaller version for wider shots. I thought this would be more effective as I wouldn't have to make a very large set. I also decided to work on the basis of filming all the scenes and then going back and refilming anything I wasn't happy with. This way I would always have a completed film at the end even if it wasn't perfect.

I was happy with this scene but I decided to edit it a bit to get more of a night time feel

For the second scene I tried animating with the smaller model on a smaller set but to be honest I wasn't that pleased with the outcome and decided to put it on the refilming list. I made a little set in my spare bedroom during the weekend with a very hitec set up (torches ductaped to the wall)

I also tried to do a pan and zoom but my rickety tripod didn't really do a good job

I think the issue with this scene was that there was too much of a noticable difference between the small model and the larger one. I just didn't think it looked very professional

later on I decided to make a much bigger set and use the bigger model for my scenes 

(10 bottles of salt to make all that snow and it still wasn't enough!) 

I got a much better pan and zoom with the great big studio tripod and I just like the feel of this version much better

Another mistake i made was with the running scene. As you can see I forgot to move the snow he was running on and only moved the front and background so a refilm was in desperate need!

For the sunset scene I wanted it to be very slow in the background. I asked Gary to hold a light behind a large sheet of acetate and gradually move it down as I animated, but due to the fact that he is a human, he couldn't quite keep as still and be as meticulous in his movements as I'd like. So later he found me a light on a tripod that I could very gradually move down as I animated. 

3 cheers for the worlds fastest sunset!

The last scenes went quite well and I didn't need to do any refilms. For the final scene where he is floating I used wire covered in black plasticine. To get the slow levitating for the last scene i just put sheets of paper and card under the model gradually so that he travelled upwards gently. 

This maybe gives you an idea of how big my set was

And with that I was finished! Now all I had to do was get my sound and music sorted. And clean up all the salt.........I can still taste it. 

The voice of the little creature was made by me (cringe) and I got my music from the wonderful Kevin Mcleod

After all that we only had a few lost eyes, a very salty studio and a wee film that I'm rather proud of!

This will be screening at the peacock visual arts gallery in Aberdeen on the 21st of March

So thanks for reading about my little journey in making a Christmas film, they were actually only supposed to be 30 seconds long but what sane person wouldn't want to give themselves more work??

Is this copyright?