Character Animation

Mickey and Ball Stop Motion

I decided I wanted to use my sister's Mickey Mouse key chain figurine since he was somewhat posable. I first  created a storyboard to layout my plan and scenes for the stop motion. Then I collected my props and materials, which included clay (for the ball), needles (to hold up the ball in "midair"), camcorder, double-sided tape (to hold mickey steady), etc. When it came to animating Mickey, I just took shots as I moved him little by little. To be honest, I moved him in the only natural way I thought he could move, being made of rubbery material. I tried to take many shots to create a smoother movement. As for the ball, I used a video of a bouncing ball and used Tracker to track the movements. I then used it as reference and measured out the spacings and such on the background of my set. After collecting enough photos (some 300), I used MonkeyJam, an animation software, and clipped the photos together to form the animation. However, as some photos were off, I had to go back, rearrange, edit, and delete some photos. Editing took longer than I anticipated, but it was probably due to my poor planning and photo-capturing skills.

Below are some pictures during the stop motion process:

These are the shapes of the falling ball at various stages/times, which I prepared before hand. I thought it would be easier to have multiple balls made rather than shaping one ball as I go along.

  
This is Mickey as well as the needle (with thread attached, only in this photo) just to his left side. I used the needle to hold up the ball.

This is basically a zoomed image of my set.