THE ASK:
It was my senior year at SCAD and it was time for my Motion Media Design capstone project. I had this cool idea for this song paired with Lord of the Flies. I came to the conclusion that conceptually it worked best in stop motion. I never made a stop motion anything before, so it was time to learn what it took to do that while utilizing the current knowledge I had about design, animation, and production.
The Solution:
I quickly realized that to achieve my vision, I had to give this project the whole short film treatment. So I went through every stage of animation production after intensive stop motion research while recruiting my friends to harness their talents on the aspects I couldn’t take on alone. I wound up collaborating with 16 people on this project, and that doesn’t even count the friends, family, and professors who gave feedback and guidance along the way.
how:
Creative & Art Direction, Compositing, Laser Cutting, Puppet Rigging and Animation, Research, Storyboarding, Cel Animation, Reference Shot Acting, Editing, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Dragonframe, Google Drive, Concept Pitch Decks for art directing each team, Google Sheets
concept
My senior project is a stop motion short film on Lord of the Flies that explores how the psychology of Carl Jung relates to the story’s themes of shadow selves and the primal human. It will be visual music to the song The Rhythm of the Heat by Peter Gabriel since that song discusses those themes and perfectly fits the tone of the story I'm interpreting.
The Rhythm of the Heat by Peter Gabriel is about Carl Jung's Collective Unconscious psychology, a theory that explores how even though we've evolved past our animalistic ways, there are primitive traits that we still carry with us without realizing it. Another Jungian psychology that is alluded to in the song is the shadow self, a part that every human has within them which stores the emotions and desires that they push down and don't want to confront.
I found these themes to be a perfect pair with Lord of the Flies, since the story is about a group of young boys and how they're stripped down and forced to confront the animalistic desires within them while stranded on an island.
Visually, I decided that stop motion was the best technique because it's a more stripped-down way of animating and gave that gritty look that I was going for. I also decided on 2D cutouts as a medium so I could layer them on top of each other and try different lighting techniques to convey the shadow self.
ANIMATIC
STORYBOARDING: CORA KEENE AND me
The animatic was created in collaboration with several of my friends. Cora Keene provided sketches for many of the frames. For the action shots, I traced over reference shots that I filmed with my friends. I sure can act!
Alexis Dow and Samantha Seigel assisted me in filming. Erin relied on these reference shots when creating the frame-by-frame laser cut sequences, along with me and the cel animation team when animating those shots.
FEATURING THE ACTING TALENTS OF: ME, CORA KEENE, RACHEL GOLLA, LIBBY NETT, AND MEG AKI
Character Design
I collaborated with my friend Erin James to bring the characters to life. They provided character concepting based on my descriptions and research, and created costume designs, turnarounds, and assembly sheets for each shot for when I prepared the laser cut sheets in Adobe Illustrator and rifled through the cuttings after the fact.
assembling the puppets
Erin was very thoughtful about how they broke up the characters so the puppets could be easy to rig and assemble. I prepared their assembly sheets in Adobe Illustrator by vectorizing and adding holes to the appropriate limbs so I could rig them with wire later. I rigged the puppets by threading them through the holes so that the wire wouldn't show when animating the puppet.
Special thanks to Professor Nathan Asquith for teaching me how to rig a puppet and advising me to go about it in this way!
STOP MOTION ANIMATION
After consulting with my professors, we determined that the best approach to filming the puppets was an overhead shoot. I used an overhead tripod and hooked my camera up to Dragonframe to shoot my footage. I configured my lighting setup depending on what was needed for the scene.
BACKGROUND ART
SH001 by Meg Aki
SH004-006 by Bella Shih
SH010-11 by Bella Shih
SH012 by Bella Shih
SH013 by Meg Aki
SH015 by Maria Chiuz
SH017 by Priscilla Quek
SH018 by Priscilla Quek
SH019 by Haze Nguyen
SH020 by Haze Nguyen
SH022 by Maria Chiuz
Sh023 by Bella Shih
SH036-37 by Haze Nguyen
SH048-50 by Haze Nguyen
SH051 by Haze Nguyen
SH057 by Haze Nguyen
SH059 by Haze Nguyen
SH064-66 by Haze Nguyen
SH075 by Haze Nguyen
I assembled a team of background artists/animators based on how I needed so many backgrounds and I couldn't do it alone! I compiled a moodboard and art direction rules, such as a brush set for when the artists made it in photoshop for consistency and keeping everything monochrome. background production all started with Maria Chiuz trying her hand at a background based on the animatic and look I was envisioning, then after we found the look we liked the best, she listed out the brushes she used and we created a brush pack from there to share with my future recruits.
Compositing
Shooting each puppet individually on a green screen gave me the flexibility to key and composite each puppet in After Effects so I had the most amount of control. In After Effects, I utilized color grading, lighting techniques, and putting the puppets in 3D space with depth of field. My background artists animated and the background elements so all I had to do was put them in z-space and integrate the puppets with the environment. I also integrated the cel animations, like the shadow monsters and environmental elements. When needed, I used the fire and smoke to add more life to the compositions.
Compositing was mostly a task I took on alone but I did have some help with the tedious green screen keying for each of the characters from my Assistant Animators. When collaborating, I consulted with Cora Keene about file setup and conventions to keep collaboration pain-free.
compositing breakdown
I also had to create a template for the Shadow World, the art style shift that happens whenever the primal horn music cues happened. I timed the structure of the story to synchronize with this so the art style shift could occur whenever shadow self acts of savagery were occurring or brewing under the surface. It was a very convoluted file on After Effects, but the technique worked whenever I fed it footage at the root of the composition tree!
Production
I wouldn't have been able to even imagine how to wrap my head around this multi-faceted project without my producer, Alexandera Marca. She helped me create a comprehensive production timeline, shot organization system, and physical asset management system for my puppets. I also created a Google Drive and external hard drive file management system with naming conventions so it would be easy to organize and share assets when collaborating with the team.
CREDITS
Director, Animator & Compositor
Josie Glassman
Character & Puppet Designer
Erin James
Producer
Alexandera Marca
Puppet Laser Cutting & Rigging
Josie Glassman
SCAD Digilab
Background Artists
Haze Nguyen
Bella Shih
Maria Chiuz
Meg Aki
Priscilla Quek
Isabelle Kalyn
Storyboarding
Cora Keene
Josie Glassman
Cel Animators
Nico Warner
Marly Koven
Josie Glassman
Reference Shot Filming
Alexis Dow
Samantha Seigel
Assistant Compositors
Cora Keene
Punasa (Bee) Sihsobhan
Claire Lin
Rachel Golla
Assistant Producer
Alexis Dow
Credits Sound Design
Samantha Seigel
Based on the novel “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding
Soundtrack
“The Rhythm of the Heat” by Peter Gabriel
special thanks to my friends who dedicated their time to this project, everyone who has supported me, and my professors who have been giving so much useful guidance on this whole process :)
