Visual Storytelling: Stop-Motion

Prerequisites: All OF THE FOLLOWING: ARTDES 243: Intro to Animation.

Description: Meditative, labor intensive, insane, magical. Comprised of hundreds or thousands of still images shot in sequence, stop-motion animation is ALL of these things, and more. In this course, students harness the power of stop-motion to create short experimental narratives. The emphasis is on hands-on animation of physical materials including clay, paper cutouts, found objects, and people, as well as building puppets. Other topics include motion and timing, lighting, staging, editing, special effects, and compositing. Class time is divided among demonstrations, screenings of historical and contemporary work, critical readings, and critiques. Dragonframe is the primary production tool (and should be purchased), while other Adobe Creative Cloud applications including Photoshop and After Effects are used for post-production. Having your own DSLR camera (with Live View) is helpful, but not required.

Frequency: This course is typically offered in the winter term of every academic year, though scheduling may vary according to future term circumstances.