Plasticine animation – a beginner’s guide
Posted on December 13th, 2009

Plasticine animation in progress.

Maybe you have been inspired by the adventures of Wallace and Gromit and would like to produce your own animated plasticine films. If you are wondering where to start here is a complete beginner’s guide to plasticine animation.

First some advice from amateur animator Fred O’Neil (writing in Animator’s newsletter issue 4): “Try putting a ball of plasticine in front of the camera, set the camera to single frame, and take one picture only. Taking care not to shift the ball from its original position, squeeze it very slightly, and take another picture. Continuing in this way, the ball you began with will assume various shapes, and in this way you can obtain inspiration. Work patiently and slowly for the whole effect can be spoiled large movements.”

If you are new to animation you are probably wondering where to get a camera that takes single frames. If you, or someone in your household, has a webcam or a digital still camera then you already have such a camera. It is just a matter of getting the single frames taken on the web cam or digital camera into your computer and make them into a movie. There is some software that you can download free that will capture your images and enable you to convert them into movies. It can be used with a video camera, webcam or digital still camera and is compatible with Windows from XP onwards. See the external links at the end of this post for more details.

Now that you have your camera set up you are ready to learn from the experiences of some other animators. Lewis Cooper tells us “You’ve decided to make a film one frame at-a-time. To make it you’ll need lights which get very hot but the substance you have chosen to use slowly melts under those lights. Not only that, the substance has the alarming tendency of falling over at regular intervals, thereby flattening the features you’ve carefully modelled. Even if you can achieve the impossible and prevent it falling over, the very act of manipulating the substance to get your animation slowly disintegrates your model. You’ve guessed it – this melting, squashing, disintegrating substance is plasticine. It is also an excellent medium for the animator to work in. These statements side-by-side indicate the basic requirement for all animators. They need to be a little nutty. Having established that fact, let’s talk about animating plasticine.” You can read the rest of the article in Animator’s newsletter issue 3 page 14.

David Coleman recalls his first experience of plasticine animation (writing in Animator’s newsletter issue 5 page 20): “All went well during-the first twenty-eight hours of shooting. I did not have to do as much re-furbishing of my huge and heavy, white horses (more than a 500g pack of plasticine in each of them!) as I had expected. One nomad did seem determined to get a new nose job every few hours, but I was in time to catch most of those suicidal characters who tried to dash their faces against the chipboard of the square. People say plasticine figures are less temperamental than real actors but don’t you believe it!”

Animator Dan Richards shows how to make an animated film with your own plasticine models.

Related posts:

1. Make your own Plasticine Morph
2. Stop Motion Pro software animation tool reviewed
3. Animating squash and stretch – bouncing ball
4. Cracking Movie Lad! The Making of Wallace and Gromit reviewed
5. Using Windows Movie Maker to assemble your animation