Category: Unit 1

Unit 1

Festivals, submissions and exhibitions

Post author By Florence Macleod
Post date 11th June 2025
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Festivals of interest for ‘A Clayful Adventure’:

London Short Film Festival (London) submission deadline: 10th of August, 2025
Stop motion Our Fest (Argentina) submission deadline: Not announced
Stop Trik (Slovenia) submission deadline: 7th of July, 2025
Annecy (France) submission deadline: Not announced
Cannes (France) submission deadline: Not announced

I will start submitting my Unit 3 film, ‘A Clayful Adventure’ to festivals after our degree show in June. I also intend to record the music with The Guildhall Session orchestra in September, which will add even more atmosphere to the piece.

Unit 2, ‘Peel Great’ festival submissions.

Fine Lines Illustration and Animation Festival

I was delighted to get my Unit 2 film, ‘Peel Great’ selected for this Festival’ in May. This is the first time one of my directed films has been screened at a festival. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to be there in person, but I received pictures and a video of the event. It was amazing to hear the audiences reaction and laughter. It makes the whole stressful process of making a film feel worth it.

I was also lucky enough to have the Unit 1 LIAF film, ‘Why Not’, selected for ‘Fine Lines Illustration and Animation Festival’. I worked as an animator, story developer, character and background designer and helped make replacement pieces.

Brighton International Animation Festival Visit

I went to the Brighton International Animation Festival on the 6th of April and saw two screenings, ‘East Asian Panorama’ and ‘Queer as F++k’.

Central Saint Martins MA Character Animation was well represented, with a lot of last year’s graduates having their films screened. This gave me some confidence to believe that I could do this too and I also spoke to a lot of the alumni at the event.

I will definitely submit both ‘A Clayful Adventure’ and ‘Peel Great’ to BIAF 2026.

London Short Film Festival Visit

Screenshots of the screenings I went to. I particularly loved ‘Come on Let’s Play’, there was so many charming stopmotion films.

At a venue for The London Short Film Festival, 2025

Exhibition Inspiration

One day I would love to be able to have an exhibition of my work, spanning across Animation, ceramics, graphic design and illustration. Getting into an exhibition is very difficult, but there is a space called ‘Free The Gallery’ in Crystal Palace that runs pop-ups and markets. I have sold my ceramics there before but I will also reach out to inquire about exhibition space. I felt so inspired after seeing ‘The World of Tim Burton’ exhibition at The Design Museum, it was like stepping into a film set.

Tim Burton’s workspace. Picture from ‘The World of Tim Burton’ Exhibition. It would be amazing to be able to make a living making things and creating characters and stories.

I also enjoyed looking at Burton’s illustrated storyboards

The puppets were beautifully crafted and held so much character expression.

Unit 1

Protected: Unit 3: The Future Part 2

Post author By Florence Macleod
Post date 11th June 2025

Unit 1

Animation Theory

Are feature film stopmotion productions becoming ‘too perfect’?

‘Chicken Run: Dawn of The Nugget’. Image from Carr, M. (2023) Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget Review. Available at: https://www.ign.com/articles/chicken-run-dawn-of-the-nugget-review-netflix (Accessed: 19th March 2024).

Aardman released their long-awaited sequel ‘Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget’ in December last year. However, I put off watching it because the trailer looked ‘too perfect.’ Over the past few years, I have noticed that Aardman productions have become slicker; it has become harder to find the human touch, the tell-tale fingerprints, and little wobbly movements.

One of the reasons why I love stopmotion is because of these slight flaws, the little mistakes, being able to see the stitching and dried paint. It reminds me that I am watching something that started off as raw materials which has manually been turned into an entire world.

Watching ‘The Making of’ film was interesting as you can see the huge amount of effort and time that goes into making a production of this scale. They clean up the mouth and face connection lines using CGI. But I wonder if this makes the characters lose some of their charm? If a puppet looks perfect and blemish free, then is there an argument to use CGI to create clay textured puppets which can be rigged instead? What would happen if you left these lines; would audiences complain, or would they find it endearing?

It is a fine line balancing analogue and digital in stopmotion animations. For my World Animation Presentation, I researched ‘Smallfilms,’ a British stopmotion company making films in the late 1950’s to 1980’s, before the days of computer editing and dragonframe.

As technology develops it is up to us as the animators and storytellers to decide what we want to use and how it will add to our story.

I have now watched ‘Chicken Run: Dawn of The Nugget’ and I really enjoyed it. CGI was used very cleverly to bring different sets and backgrounds together and remove any traces of dirt or dust on the models. The movement of the puppets is incredible and very inspiring. Since starting this course, I now watch animations much more carefully, looking for the twelve principles and observing the plot and character narrative arcs.

I also went to The National Film and Television School Animation Screening which was mostly stopmotion. There seemed to be more ‘charm.’ Perhaps because these were short films instead of feature films and worked on by a smaller crew. I really hope I can volunteer to help with one of the productions.

I am realising the potential that CGI and digital processes can have on stopmotion animations and the importance of being open to change. However, I am also very keen to carry on bringing handmade design elements into my stopmotion animations.

Unit 1

Simulated Work Experience

Post author By Florence Macleod
Post date 27th February 2024
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Hearing Juliana talk about her final film, ‘Sketches’ (puppet stopmotion) is very inspiring and I’ve really enjoyed assisting her. Juliana was inspired by times spent on train and tube journeys observing and drawing people. I also have to travel a long way in on the train and I like to watch people and overhear interesting conversations. She has also been very kind, answering lots of questions about second year.

She is collaborating with a sound artist to create the background music and a costume designer for the clothes. I love that she is working with other people, which is something that I am looking forward to doing.

I have learnt lots of new techniques and tips:

Using a colonoscopy bag to create the puppet skin (gives a natural looking effect)
Using electrical wire plugs to make joints on a wire puppet
Having a 12 principles checklist for each shot
Be organised, have your files well labelled

Live Action Video Reference – Drawing

Level One – Character starts drawing people and doodling over them. Something strange happens, is it just a trick of the eye?

Level Two – Character continues to doodle on the drawings. Things are definitely happening to the people in real life! Character tries to rub it out.

Level Three – Character is very distressed and confused. The people have completely changed!

Live Action Video Reference – Bored/looking on phone

Adding frames into the Animatic

Juliana wanted to insert some new movements into the animatic. My drawings are in the middle of this clip.

This was a very interesting task as I had to draw in Juliana’s style to make sure the animatic didn’t change too much! I felt more confident to help with the TVPaint animatic; I’m still learning, but I used Vanessa’s advice from life drawing. This task gave me an insight into what an animatic is. It seems a bit like a moving storyboard. However, I think the phone needs to be added in (I didn’t realise there was a phone, I thought it was the hand.)

Music

Juliana asked for my advice on two music files she had been sent by the composer. The music is meant to be played quietly in the background to add to the idea of a waiting room and sense of mischief! I really enjoyed this task and I realised just how important sound is in animation.

Here are some of my thoughts.

Paint Colours

I really enjoy research so I jumped into this task. Juliana wanted me to look up beige, cream and pale blues. Juliana’s animation is set in a waiting room, she wants it to have a warm mood and for the characters to look calm.

Juliana found a pale blue piece of wallpaper to use. That is one of the things I love about stop motion and small sets; you can use anything.

Screenshots of some of the paint colours.

I would like to help with some of the physical making, but Juliana is making her animation at home (so it makes it harder to understand the sizing of the puppets and set.) I am planning to visit Juliana after Easter to see her set which will be very exciting. I hope I can continue to help Juliana next term.

Unit 1

Practice Based Research

This unit has been very challenging; I’ve made lots of mistakes, spent hours trying to fix them and had to start whole projects again! However, when I look back on where I started in September, I am very proud of my progress.

Tuesday’s stopmotion workshops have been my favourite days. I love making analogue things with my hands and physically moving them frame by frame. I find it therapeutic, and I will explore more stop-motion techniques in future animation projects.

Attending Vanessa’s life drawing sessions has helped me gain more confidence in gesture drawing. I have actually begun to enjoy drawing humans in a more realistic way (not just as robots or creatures!) Learning ‘The Bean’ technique has helped me to understand proportions of the human body better, which has benefited my 2D hand drawn exercises. I found the perspective and colour theory classes very interesting as I’ve never thought much about the science and maths behind them.

I’ve pushed myself out of my comfort zone and tried to take every opportunity to learn something new. I need to worry less and enjoy the process more.

Bouncy Character Exercise

Learning how to animate a bouncing ball

Bouncy Ball Video Reference
How does a foam ball bounce?

Experimenting scratching circles onto old film. I really enjoyed playing with this technique and hope I can go back to it!

Initial Test: Experimenting with exaggerated squash, stretch and timing.

Test Two: I like the firmness, but the lines are changing thickness and the drawings aren’t spaced out correctly.

Experimenting with claymation

Shocked Frog

Character Design and Inspiration

Sketchbook – working out the design and movement.

2D bouncing Shocked Frog done on Animate.

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the claymation process but here is a screenshot. Cut and rolled out clay on a Lightbox, shot overhead.

Lift/Push/Pull Exercise

First Attempt (TVPaint)

Adding in-betweens to give a smoother movement. I need to watch the shape and size of the head, and the bottom is moving around too much.

Second Attempt (puppet)

My design, ‘The Robot Caterpillar’, painting

Drawing a simplified design for the puppet

Sketchbook

Shooting

First attempt in stopmotion.

Mood Change Walk Exercise

New video reference for the second mood change walk

Silent Film/ Body Acting

Initial idea, before I knew we had to use someone else’s character!

Izzy’s Character Design

Identifying the keyframes

Drawing the keyframes

Adding the rough character on top

After feedback from the tutors, my story was not clear enough. Instead of a fish, a fly will suit the movement better. Please see this in my submitted animation.