What is Claymation? Visual styles

Well, from my understanding Claymation is another way of using a different material (clay) to create Stop-Motion. However in this brief we have been assigned to is asking for a CG Claymation which is where we create a model in a 3d package and give it the look of Clay - Stop-Motion. So in this post i'm just going to dig out some existing claymation films both CG and Stop-Motion.

Flushed Away - Aardman












Ok so here's a movie using CG Claymation, Dreamworks were brought in to work on this film to create the models in CG to try a new approach and work method. For the textures i was interested in how some times you can spot an added thumb print in the render.

Chicken Run - Aardman















A traditional claymation but with using raw materials i'd not really noticed before now that the edges are smooth, for some reason i thought they'd be obvious to the tools being used so when comparing the work of the CG and traditional i can't really tell. CG claymation just takes away some restrictions had with traditional claymation.

The shapes used on claymation are layered, so nothing terribly too complex, that could be because that being a feature film using too complex models would increase the difficulty and need more time to model and shoot these characters.

Aardman - Creature Comforts

















Look at those shapes!!! loving it, all these characters have a great sense of weight.

















Cute, Owls from Aardmans' Creature Comforts series. The roundness, and the different colour used for the white part, the line isn't perfect which gives it a more natural feeling for some reason, maybe because things aren't symmetrical all the time, so when i'm texturing i should certainly take this into account, also again with the shapes, i can see the circles.

Pigeon Pilfer

Pigeon Pilfer from Michael Stevenson on Vimeo.

This being a different look completely from Aardmans clean models, by clean i mean smoothed out, i love that the eyes are just little slits, and you can see the thumb and finger shapes when the pigeons have been moulded to a new shape. The movement on these characters is not real really, when the pigeon gets hit at the beginning at almost waves as it loses its balance, getting away from restrictions that you can do any things in claymation as you can easily mould it.

Chess Claymation



Movement and how they move from one space to another is very creative, and how they kill eachother is funny. It seems much more like you can touch these materials, more organic than when using CG which is what i love about it, i'm crazy texture touchy person.

verdi traviata choeur bohemiens



Oh my i'm in love, look at how the characters move!!! The food moves with perfect weighting, the way the blobs move with the principles of a bouncing ball, and the red ones just kick a foot out and shift all the mass.

Summary;
Weighting is very important
Texture doesn't need to be rough
Don't need to have all symmetrical on the body of gorilla.
Simple shapes and curves





One last thing.. i love how the instruments are shot as though they're coming to life, on the video there is a part showing the inside of a piano, but the idea of animating an inanimate object really gets my imagination going. the lighting is also quite dramatic in the sense it gives us the centre focus on whats going on :)