Students will look at images by Rene Magritte. They will create an animation that is based on one of these images using the stopmotion animation technique and Adobe Premiere Elements.
Begin by looking at the storyboard you created in the last lesson and look at what kind of scenery your movie will require.
You will need to build a set for your figures to move around in.
Make a stage out of heavy cardboard. It will need to have windows in the sides for light to get through, however to avoid harsh lighting, put lightwieght white paper over the window to diffuse the light.
Here is one I made using the lids from three printer paper boxes.
Make a drawing for the backdrop of your scene. If there are items that need to come forward in space, make them out of cardboard.
I will post more indepth information on how to make cardboard structures at a later point.
Building the Clay Mannequin
The video below shows how to build a simple clay manequin for use in a stop motion animation project:
Lights! Camera! Action!
The video below shows how to light the stage and how to set the camera up to take the best pictures for a stop motion animation project:
Once you have taken all of your pictures, open Adobe Premire Elements. Go to the Edit menu and select Preferences-->General. Be sure to have Still Image Default Duration set to 4.
On the right hand side of the workspace click on Media-->Get Media-->Files and Folders and select all of your pictures. If you have them all in one folder on your harddrive, you can click on the first image, hold the shift key and click on the last image to select them all.
You should now see all of the pictures listed when you click Project on the right hand side of the screen. Be sure to click Oldest to Newest. Select all the images at once by pressing ctrl+A and drag all the images down to the Timeline.
You can preview it there in Premiere or Export it to an avi file.
Here is an example of what one of my students came up with:
