Stop-motion Animation: Evaluation Part 1

Stop-motion Animation: 

Living with Mental Health 


'Self Evaluation Part 1' 

This weeks post is all about the creation and evaluation of my own individual stop-motion animation; thus far, the posts in this blog have considered the various aspects required and the processes involved in creating a stop-motion animation. Each week, different ideas and elements were investigated with practical workshops carried out in order to aid the final part of the assignment: 'Creating our own animation'! 

                                           Planning   

Time snuck upon me really quickly and there I was at the planning stages of my stop-motion animation. I had been mulling the idea over for a couple of weeks and had already carried out significant research into the concept of the animation. From this I continued with the research along with writing the storyboard and acquiring the various materials that may be required. The research in this instance was quite straightforward and not as time consuming as expected; mainly because I already had the concept with a few scenes already implemented in my mind. The research for the content side of the animation included various websites, and articles, which I had used for the psychology element of the degree about mental health; the creative and artistic side was researched through youtube. As this was our first official attempt at creating a stop-motion animation, I figured youtube would be the best place to start, by viewing some simple ideas; however this somewhat hindered the process as it provided me with so many creative and aspiring ideas leading me to a confused and complex storyboard. Needless to say I was initially punching above my weight in the realm of artistic skills and what could be achieved in a two minute animation!

After considerable deliberation and reminiscing of previous sessions, I remembered the story our lecturer shared with us of a primary school class who were asked to create an animation. One of the children had drawn several pictures moving inch by inch for his animation, however when producing the animation, he realised that the first and the last picture were only required to demonstrate the persistent of vision notion. It was during this moment that I figured I had to keep this animation SIMPLE if I was going to have any chance of winning. 

 Creating and setting of scenes 

Members

During the undertaking of such a task, I decided I would ‘go at it alone’ as the idea chosen is one in which I am passionate about, and in addition to this I was keen to challenge myself by experiencing all elements of the process.

Concept 

In terms of the concept behind the animation, the only criteria started were to portray a contemporary issue chosen by the group or individual. Given this, poverty was initially considered as this is a huge issue currently surrounding many countries including the UK, however after delving deeper into this idea, it made me think how some people are steered to poverty through many reasons and one that is of strong focus in the media currently is mental health or more specifically depression.

The basic outline of the story demonstrates how an individual looses a loved one and as a consequence becomes extremely depressed; the depression follows the character around and is illustrated during scenes in the shape of a black silhouette. The opening to the story begins with various facts about mental heath in general, leading to newspaper cut outs and words describing mental health in a stigmatized way; more recently it has been debated how such stigma is attached to mental health which leads people suffering in silence about their illness; therefore the newspaper cuttings added to the power of the message.

The animation attempts to show this by portraying scenes of the character missing a loved one at their grave side followed by scenes depicting how the character is feeling including running into a forest confused and distressed. The various scenes were made to look quite dark and deep to represent how the character is feeling.

Characters 

The animation only encompasses one main character which is the individual experiencing the depression/illness, however as mentioned earlier, there is a black silhouette that appears in a few scenes as the ‘depression’. Due to the nature of the concept, the character does not have a name, neither is the gender specified. It was felt that the animation was strong enough alone for the audience to draw their own conclusions from the film; additionally, it was noted that mental health does not affect anyone exclusively or within any specific age category therefore these demographics were left open for the audience to interpret. The appearance of the character was a wooden model that moved at each joint of the body therefore was perfect for the film. Initially the character in the storyboard was made out of paper however numerous cutouts were required, which would have been extremely time consuming and difficult when ones drawing skills are very basic!

Mini-set 

The entire animation was created in my living room at home; I used the coffee table as a solid base to start and used the white side of wrapping paper to cover up the wood when required. The app I chose to create the animation with, was Zu3D which I purchased for a bargain price of £6.99! In addition to this, I invested in a tripod to hold the iPad in place whilst taking the individual shots; from experience of the different sessions in university I had realised that this was going to be a challenging task and one that would put my patience to the test.  

For the opening title, black and white card were used which was simply filmed on the coffee table; the black card was torn inch by inch to represent the idea of it unfolding. This was followed by letters taken from the game ‘scrabble’ to portray the facts about mental health. Subsequent to this, the coffee table was then covered in white paper as the background for the rest of the scenes. For the grave scene, cardboard was cut out and used to display houses and a church in the background; this was filmed at night to get the effect of a graveyard, with tea light candles used as a path leading up to the grave. 

Subsequent to this scene, the character is then seen sitting on the floor surrounded by thoughts; again this was carried out on the coffee table with the white background, and a christmas decoration of a fireplace was added to the set as an additional prop. Further, a small keyring touch was used to create the circle that the character was sitting in. 

The forest scene contained various different props and materials such as trees cut out of cardboard and coloured in black, twigs and stones taken from the garden to emphases it being a forest; fortunately I also had some black wallpaper cut offs lying around which resembled a forest background. The wallpaper was attached to the back of a mirror and held up using a mop as demonstrated in the photos to the right. The trees were fixed to the white wrapping paper on the coffee table and strips of cardboard were secured to the back to hold them upright; stones and twigs were scattered onto the set to improve the reality of the scene. 

The same cardboard set for the graveyard was also used for the last scene with the character, with the addition of a cardboard cut out of a house that resembled a ‘health clinic’.  Moreover, purple slate was taken from my garden to portray a path leading up to the health clinic. The slate and petals from a flower were further used to make a small flowerbed outside the clinic, and a vase with artificial flowers was also placed in the set to give a positive and welcoming sensation. 

Conflict and Story of Character 

The character depicted in the animation is perceived to be fighting with depression following the loss of a loved one. The loss of somebody close can be a trigger of mental health illness albeit not necessarily the entire cause. The reason behind the death in this instance was to illustrate to the audience that this particular trigger can clearly lead to depression or mental health. Many other causes could have been demonstrated, however it was feared that the audience might not understand the story, which is vital in any animation. 

Graveyard Scene

The character is first displayed in a scene walking down a path leading to a graveyard; this symbolises the depressed road that is ruling the characters life. The character was deliberately positioned with the head down and in slumped manor to portray the low, depressed state that the character is experiencing. 

Submerged in own thoughts 

The next scene was again left open for the audience to make their own renditions, although the overall consensus being that the character is submerged into his own thoughts, feeling dejected and alone. The statements in the speech bubbles were taken from various real life case studies of individuals whom have experienced low thoughts and emotions as a consequence of suffering from a mental health disorder. A black silhouette appears as a shadow towards the end of this extract characterising the implicit depression being experienced, and the feeling that the character is being drawn into a deeper and darker place. 

The following passage of a forest was simply created to clearly typify the character not being able to cope with such an illness, and how this individual is slowly loosing a fight with depression. Thoughts of confusion, frustration, anger, sadness, and despair are taking control over the individual despite their efforts to run away from it. 

How is this resolved?

The above scene clearly represents the severity of dealing with depression, therefore, the following scene views the character sitting on the floor outside a health clinic contemplating the idea of seeking help. At this point the character is still down and frustrated and the depression appears once again for the last time in the animation. The character stands up and kicks the depression away as if to finally face up to his fears of depression by seeking help. 

Background sound effects used to increase believability

Zu3D was the software used for the animation and fortunately various soundtracks were accessible, however the opening title of the animation is typed out onto a scroll therefore I recorded the sound of a keyboard typing to make the animation more realistic. Furthermore, the sound of a crow and the rustling wind were added to the forest scene which made it come alive, as well as giving it an unnerving feeling. In contrast to this, the final scene with the medical centre portrays a more positive impression, thus the calming sound effects of countryside with birds singing was added to enhance the emotion of relief from the character. Finally, when the character is standing outside the door, a sound effect simply demonstrating a knock at the door was inserted to increase the credibility of the story.

Background Music 

In terms of music, my initial thoughts were to locate a well-known song with strong lyrics, however after adding a song of this criteria, the animation appeared to lack the feeling expected and the emotion to carry the animation through the story. Furthermore, it was supposed that if a common or well-know song was used, the audience may draw on their own experiences or memories of that song, thus detracting from the purpose of my animation. As a result, further research steered me towards the idea of instrumental music; this appeared to have a great deal of emotion and power behind it and similar to fantasia discussed in the sound post, orchestral music can be extremely expressive when telling a story.  The piece of music that was settled on was taken from Youtube as a piano instrumental and is titled ‘Sad song for a broken heart’ – the title of this music seemed appropriate and as was the music itself; it gave the animation a purpose and wasn’t too bold or pessimistic.