Animated Film Production: Sets.

You could call “Rocks In My Pockets” a mixed media project, since it mixes drawn animation and stop motion like in a Screwdriver (we could argue which media serves as vodka and which as orange juice, but the effect is the same – getting buzzed!!!). Before we are able to work on drawings, though, we have to get the stop motion footage first. Stop motion is many things (pixilation is stop motion, too), but we work with the kind that requires newly made objects and environments, so called “sets”.

Eventually, with the help of After Effects, we’ll place animated characters in those sets, but at the moment we have to worry about practical stuff like, is my iron too hot, where is that darn tube of red paint, superglue is stuck on my nails before my perfect hot date!

Here’s a video on how “Rocks In My Pockets” sets are made:

Sets are easy and fun if you don’t have to fit them in a specific bigger story. Then plotting them out becomes much like a chess game – if I move my Pawn here what will happen to my Queen over there? Storyboards would come in handy but we had decided not to use them to make things exciting. I think, “Rocks In My Pockets” might be the first animated feature film in animation history that is entirely improvised. Guinness Book of Records, are you recording?