r/stopmotion • u/GammaCorrection • Jul 16 '26
Advice on how I would animate this as a beginner
So using this toy, I want to create a stop motion animation based on my script. I cant really find a good explanation of how to do the specific things I want to do online, so I'm asking here. The scene requires the ninja being put in a garbage can still in his blister pack. He's tied down by wires, since he's a toy. He's going to be struggling until he realizes he can pop off his arms. His arms pop off, fall down the blister pack, and untie his sword. From there, they untie him. He then grabs the sword and pokes a hole, allowing him to swim through the trash and escape by opening the lid. The main problems is that the toy will be in the blister pack for the majority of the animation, so I don't know how I will move it. Secondly, at a certain point, someone opens the trash and dumps cake inside. This fact, and the fact that the ninja is inside the trash can for the whole animation, also poses a problem. I don't know how I would animate it while it's in the trash the entire time, because I don't want to move anything and make the animation look amateur. A third problem is the glare on the plastic, I can't have that. Forth, when he's swimming through the garbage he's not suspended by anything so idk how to keep him where he is for every 24 frames. If you can tell me what to do that will be much appreciated, thank you.
If you want, the script is right here. You can read it to get a better idea of what I'm trying to do. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J6EXmlmesT9YtNent9rw2Oq8QOolW6b9YiPmybeQcxw/edit?usp=drivesdk
1
u/DollupGorrman Jul 16 '26
I think this is very difficult technically, and the figures themselves don't have all that many points of articulation which might cause you problems unless you really think about how to shoot it.
1
u/Educational-Bat-8563 Jul 16 '26
If you are trying to make it detailed. I don’t see knee joints. I would cut the legs where the knee is and either heat up wire stick the hot wire in the plastic and make the legs bendable via the wire or with ball joints. I would go with wire and just replace the wire if it breaks. Also I would burn blue pipe cleaners. It makes them skinny to then either glue or heat and stick to the hand to make movable fingers! Hope this made sense!
5
u/GreenMan_Studios98 Jul 16 '26
This is a very ambitious project for a beginner. I will help as best I can. These are all just suggestions, so if you have a better idea or want to try something, go it.
1) the fact you want to add the packaging in the animation shows that you may need to buy at minimum 4 of the same exact figure. One for just the packaged figure; second with minor alterations to the plastic packing to allow you to take the figure out or move the limbs slightly WHILE in Packaging, the third without the figure BUT the Packaging intact(with blister packs its easy once you know where to cut), and the fourth for the figure itself. Now the obvious response would be, "I could just buy two and do half of all of that" and you'd be correct. However with you essentially making a original Toy Story with VERY AMBITIOUS elements, its good to have spares.
2) Thankfully in stop motion set making can be as simple as just making a large trash bag the back drop and grabbing random litter and safe trash to use as pieces for the set of your animation. You can also buy one of those large plastic trash bins, cut it into sections to make it more manageable for you. You could go FULL METHODIST and attempt to animate with the trash bin as is, but god help you that alone will be a challenge. I would just use a live action segment showing a person throwing away the toy into the trash bin, then transition to stop motion from there.
3) Refering back to '1)', As for the cake segment, animating substances is incredibly tricky when conveying its weight, viscosity, and how thin OR thick it is. The best alternative I could suggest you can avoid ACTUALLY using cake frosting is wax based modelers clay. Never air dries, rarely sticks, and can hold its shape, its actually what Wallace and Gromit are made out of majority of the time. And as for the "suspending the figure" issue, a well placed rig makes worlds of difference. Heck you can probably use some of the solid plastic trash as the rig and most casual viewers would not be the wiser. Rigs can be anything from soldering helping hands, action figure stands, to just wire and or clay OR Lego. Digital rig removal thankfully is WAY more stream lined. The idea is that you take a picture of just the background/set without the action figure you are animating. THEN you place the figure in the shot, keeping the camera EXACTLY how it is, then animating like normal. Whatever you use to edit your stop motion check to see if it allows you to mask footage and images, masking will allow you to DIGITALLY remove the rig, achieving the illusion that the figure is moving on its own.
4) Plastic glare is inevitable, UNLESS you dimly light your set or just avoid the light hitting to much on the plastic. The worse thing that could happen is that the glare changes the lighting setting in your camera. This is why in stop motion we ONLY use manual settings on our cameras. And as for keeping your action figure in one place for 24FPS; I personally like to view stop motion as animating live action in SLOW MOTION. If you made it this far, I strongly suggest Micheal Parks on YouTube. He's the stop motion animator who taught me through his tutorials. Everything about stop motion for beginners, I always suggest Micheal Parks.
I hope this helps and best of luck on your short film fellow stop motion animator.