Two Materials, Two Frame Rates

I wanted to do a little more exploration with clay and animated a short scenario involving a clay monster and my own hand interacting with it.

As my project is moving more towards “materials and movement” I wanted to use a contrast in materials and see how the movement of those materials are different.

In this animation test I animated the clay creature at 15fps (frames per second) and my own hand at 30fps. I wanted to emphasise the difference between the two animated subjects, utilising a lower frame rate to bring out the animated charm of stop-motion in the character, keeping my hand feeling “more real”.

A challenge of the pixilation technique (stop motion with live subjects) I found was animating my hand  required me to keep my hand motionless in-between frames. This is was something I didn’t foresee as I animated my right hand, so was left to do all the clay manipulation with my left hand.

While I didn’t get stronger animations from the clay character because of this, I do notice the difference in the quality of motion between the two subject materials. The clay still gives the imperfect and very unique movement where the maker’s mark can be noticed