Flo Bender

Simulated Work Experience

For the simulated Work Experience, I was grouped up to help Year 2 student Saba with her 2D animation project. Her project is a story about a girl breaking free from the constraints of her family and country, in order to follow her passions.

Saba communicated to the group that she wanted to focus on getting some rough animation completed, as she hadn’t decided about voiceovers or scripts as of yet, which is a skill I offered to the project (voice acting/acting.) Saba mentioned that due to a script not yet being written, that the voice acting would be for a future collaboration if she ever needed me.

So, with my skillset, I decided to create some frames for her, using the LAV’s she provided as reference. For this, I used Adobe Animate. This was if anything, good for me to do, as my style contrasts with Saba’s work. As I work mostly in stop motion with materials like sand and paper, it was a breath of fresh air to return back to 2D and for me to reflect on the translatable skills between stop motion and 2D.

What was challenging about this was not having many options when it came to helping Saba, as the majority of what she wanted was to be completed in Blender or Maya, which is out of my depth. Also, being in limbo with whether Saba needed voice overs from me, was part of the reason my work for her has been limited.

Although, positives to take from this experience, have been I’ve understood how imperative life drawing is to 2D animation especially. Sabas LAV’s were not dissimilar to movements you would find yourself drawing in a class with Vanessa. And being able to have a fluid, light hand when capturing the essence of a movement is so imperative to 2D animation.

Tests

STOP MOTION:

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Cut Out

I began using the cut out medium in the stop motion pathway and carried on experimenting with it afterwards. Below are a set of tests I did following on from my lip sync project. I wanted to be able to provide evidence I could also hit certain pronunciations. The first set of tests were not accurate enough, so I redrew them plus more in-between mouth shapes and created a 7 second skit over a green screen. Important to note here that the audio was recorded first and then I created the visual to match it.

The original test drawings helped me to look at how animated the mouth really is. And so using my own mouth as a reference, helped to capture, reference and include more in-betweens which can sometimes be easily forgotten about in stop motion because the environment is more fast paced than 2D animation.

I also experimented with flipping this process on its head and instead of recording audio and then creating the visual, I created a visual for me to voice-over afterwards in post-production. This is one of my more successful pieces, I believe due to the fact It was a spontaneous experiment, with no expectations, which allowed my improvisation to flourish with more freedom.

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Clay

Below are visuals from the clay stop motion group project. As a group we wanted to keep the storyline as simple as possible, and we quickly learnt that with clay, less is more. Additionally, with help from Lucia Wang, follow through was successfully incorporated. From this I began understanding how important follow through is for the viewer, as it creates small moments after a large moment, to make sense of direction and physicality.

Group project: Flo Bender, Alice Beghatto + Lucia Wang

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Sand

Using sand as a medium, in reflection, helped me with my 2D animation. It forced me to understand important things like frames of apprehension, as once a frame is taken, you ‘can’t’ go back, so you notice your mistakes with more intensity! Whilst frames can’t be returned to in sand, it can also be very forgiving. Techniques such as morphing become very attractive and easy to depend. So, Improvising becomes very simple with sand, literally anything can become anything with a seamless transition.

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2D ANIMATION:

Walk Cycle

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Push, Pull + Lift

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Quadruped Walk Cycle

Cut out & Terry Gillingham

“The technique itself doesn’t really matter, whatever works, that’s why I use cut out, it’s the quickest and easiest form of animation I know”. (Terry Gillingham on Cut Out Animation – BBC Archive)

Terry Gillingham, a cut out stop motion artist, is best known for his attention grabbing work on Monty Pythons “Flying Circus”, “Life of Brian”, and “The Meaning of Life”. His most notorious, scenes from ‘Baby Carriage”, in which old ladies repeatedly get devoured by prams.

His work didn’t directly influence mine, but as I began experimenting in stop motion, using clay, sand and cut-out, I realised there were similarities in the absurdist type narratives I was creating. Having taken to cut-out, I have, on reflection, been able to better understand why my work was more successful and engaging.

“You can be silly with your walks”. (BBC Archive)

At the start of Year 1, working on 2D software such as TV Paint, learning basic technicalities like walk cycles, I didn’t feel as though I was producing interesting or playful work. These basic understandings are imperative to gaining deeper understanding for character development but as I began experimenting in stop-motion later on in the year, I engaged with a lot more enthusiasm. Mostly because I was able to use my improv skills with more freedom, I felt as though I had suddenly been given permission to engage with absurdist narratives, on the basis that I was able to pick and choose different parts of a magazine apart promptly and in the moment.

Gillingham talks about how walk cycles can be created in many ways, “The camels legs never moved, just simply slid across”, as he describes the Christmas card scene from the ‘Three Wise Men’.

Cut out animation allows for quick thinking, improvisation and organised chaos. My priority as an animator is to tell stories, cut out allows for these stories to be understood even if body language or walk cycles don’t make real world (life-like) sense.

‘Baby Carriage’, as mentioned above, is an interesting moment in the animation, in which a hand appears in scene, altering the narrative by changing the direction of the pram. This creates a very meta moment, as what would automatically be thought of as a accidental take, and not in keeping with the scene, Gillingham decides to actually incorporate it, making this piece feel very ahead of its time in terms of what can and can’t be done in stop motion. The experimental nature of his work gives me a sense of freedom, as though I can work by my own rules and make use of what “goes wrong”.

Below is a mood board video from a cut-out experiment partner (Ori) and I created as inspiration for our Final piece in the stop motion pathway.

We gathered some more cut-outs and created a final version.