Study Task 4

Overview

I’m going to look into animating water in stop-motion. This will mainly focus on water expanses (eg. oceans, seas), particularly with regard to my practical outcome, which will be a stop-motion ocean system in two different environments (stormy and calm) as well as a cloud backdrop. I will also look at moving water (eg. rivers, pouring water, showers, rain) and gaseous water (eg. fog, clouds and weather phenomena). I'll look for these examples in animations by LAIKA and Aardman as well as ‘Two Balloons’, ‘Hedgehog in the Fog’ and the ‘Gatorade’ advert. I'll be researching the behind the scenes of these films and looking at seminars/interviews with those who were behind making the films. I predict that it will be possible to animate water in stop-motion format (at a small scale and budget), however it'll be a difficult task. 

Introduction

It would be understandable to believe that water poses as a large problem for filmmakers who wish to animate it in stop-motion. Water’s liquid nature is the antithesis of such a medium, which demands frame by frame morphing, while requiring the animated object to be stationary between shots. It is of course not possible to reshape water and get it to hold its shape in the same way most solid objects can. This task is further accentuated by the fact that so few stop-motion animation projects are running nowadays, due to the lack of monetary incentive to produce such a film. On the surface therefore, the immediate answer to the question being investigated in this essay is ‘no’. This essay however will attempt to investigate beyond this immediate presumption and find out whether animating stop-motion water is in fact possible. The practical side to this essay will be investigating, despite time constraints and a low-budget, whether it is possible to create a realistic looking stop-motion ocean scene. In addition to this, whether or not the practical side helps prove the theory or not, on closer inspection, it is evident that there is in fact a wide array of stop-motion films, from large production companies to individual animation projects, which have successfully attempted animating water, albeit in a small minority with regard to the wealth of animation films that are around today. Whether it be the ocean scenes produced in ‘Two Balloons’ or Laika’s ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’; the rain effects used by Aardman in ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’; the shower scene in ‘Coraline’; the mist made for ‘Hedgehog in the Fog’; or the ‘Gatorade’ advert, which uses the medium of water itself to animate with, these are just some of the many ways water has been successfully animated in stop-motion.