Making People

Most films require people. If your film needs lots of people, you should make them all together and to the same scale. This means that all the children will be roughly the same size and smaller than the adults! No character should be more than 10cm in height.

People can be made using two basic shapes – balls and sausages. Make a ball-shaped head; use a fat sausage for the body and 4 thinner ones for the limbs. Remember that the legs need to be fat and the feet need to be big to keep the character standing up. To make the process easier and quicker, make body parts in the colour of the person's clothes.  Once you're happy with each body part, stick them together by smoothing the plasticine over the join.

 Face Detail

The face of your person can have as much detail as you like. You can create all sorts of hair styles and facial features. Let your imagination run wild!

Making the mouth removable means you can create a variety of facial expressions. If you want your character to blink or wink, the eyes need to come off too. Lastly, detail shows up better if you make things stick out rather than pushing them in - so make separate eyes, ears and mouths, rather than scratching them into the plasticine.

 Accessories

Just like real people, plasticine people need mugs, cups, bottles, food etc. Make sure you make these props before you start filming.

 Making the Scenery

We recommend that you make rooms inside shoeboxes, as these are a suitable scale. You can use doll's house furniture or make furniture out of cardboard. We don’t recommend making plasticine furniture or cars as they use a lot of plasticine and they’re hard to get right. Instead, make these out of cardboard or use toy cars.

 Setting the Scene

During our project, we used Logitech Camera and Image Studio to make animations. If you're using this software, set it to Stop Motion Animation at 8 frames a second. That means that each picture is only 1/8 of a second long.

If you are using scenery, make sure the camera is positioned so that you can see only inside the room (and not the table or anything behind the room). You also need 2-3 people to move the characters, 1 person to work the computer and directors to point out when hands are still in the frame and to suggest character movements.

 Making them Move

As each picture is only 1/8 of a second, this gives you plenty of opportunity to make the movements of the characters as realistic as possible.

After each frame has been taken, think about how your character will get into their next position and move each part slowly until they get there. If you move the character too much at a time, they will look like they're jumping from place to place.

Think about every aspect of the character. Remember that if people are about to be shot or are ill, they don’t smile! You can zoom in or out on a scene by moving the camera in and out in the same way as you move the characters. Move the camera a tiny bit; take a picture; then move the camera again.

 Blood, Sick, Tears and Wee

Your plasticine person can do everything that you can do. If you want bodily fluids to be involved then you need to make the fluid out of plasticine. You will need small amounts and then a growing pool as the fluid lands on the floor. When you want to introduce the fluid, first add a tiny bit of the right colour, then add more for each picture. Remember that fluid is always moving - so as well as adding more, you must move what you have already put on.

Click on the image for movie clip

 Flashing or Blinking

To make the scenes seem even more realistic, you can make characters blink or lights flash. Simply have the characters' eyes on the face for one shot, then take them off for the next shot. If you want lights to flash, apply the same technique. If you are making an ambulance, it looks really good to change the colour of the light from red to blue on alternate shots.

 Flying

Making things fly is quite difficult in time-lapse animation, but you can suspend things using see-through cotton or fishing wire to give them the appearance of flight.