Claymation is a type of stop motion animation featuring characters made from synthetic modeling clay. Claymation requires painstaking attention to detail and long periods of time to move individual elements on characters fractions of an inch at a time. Digital still frame pictures are taken after each character movement and strung together for an animated effect. The time and patience required for this art form make it formidable to some, but anyone can learn how to do it, including common moves like making a character flip his hair from one side of his head to the other.
Brainstorm a storyboard for your character’s hair flip. Draw the type of character you want to make out of clay. Depict the character in dozens of boxes, representing the individual frames of your Claymation movie, slowly moving through the motions required to flip his hair from one side of his head to the other.
Build the character out of synthetic, or cartoon, clay. Form the character’s right or left arm, whichever you choose to perform the hair flip, around a piece of bent wire. Use wire to help move the arm through individual frames more easily.
Decide what color and length you want your character’s hair to take. Fashion your character’s hair out of modeling clay. Place it on top of a Styrofoam ball equal in diameter to your character’s head.
Start with the hair flat or slightly bobbed at its ends. Move the hair up 1/8 inch. Place the hair on your character’s head. Move the character’s hand up to the base of the hair. Use a 16mm camera with single frame shooting capability to take a still picture of the character. Move the hair and hand 1/8 inch and take another picture.
Continue moving the hair up and over to the other side of the head, taking still shots after every 1/8-inch movement. Coordinate the character’s hand and arm to move with the hair across his face. Plan to take 16 to 30 images for a hair flip designed to last one to two seconds in finished, animated format.
Load the images into digital editing software like Stop Motion Pro, Windows Movie Maker or Stop Motion Animator on your computer and run them together to view your work.
Tips
- If you can’t access a 16mm camera with single frame shooting capability, use a digital camera and computer editing software like Stop Motion Pro, Windows Movie Maker or Stop Motion Animator to string your photos together into a finished claymation project.
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