Hypercinema - Stop Motion

This week, we experimented with some stop motion! I worked with Tash Trebisacci to create these tiny little animations.

To continue my obsession with the laser cutter, we decided to play around with cutting paper and cardboard. We figured it would be pretty easy to make “morphing” shapes (for example, the moon below) in illustrator and have them cut out, rather than trying to mould them by hand. This took inspiration from Shugo Tokumaru’s Katachi as well.

Our aim was to make simple but delightful animations. After the initial brainstorming and idea generation, we each set off on a bit of personal exploration, and came up with these.

Our first GIF is Tash’s cute moon animation:

Each of the backgrounds for the moons is a snippet of Tash’s handmade paper.

And up next, my gif of a little text “Boo!” in the spirit of Halloween.

The full effect requires a little bit of sound. I actually took this audio with my out-of-order typewriter, which has been gathering dust while it awaits a fixing.

And as a bonus, the internals of the laser-cut moon:

Lessons learned:

• The faster you laser cut, the less likely you’ll get burn marks.
• Paper is remarkably easy to laser cut, and the result is very satisfying.
• Shaky tables and wobbly tripods are the enemy. Next time, I’m getting a remotely-shuttered camera to do this with.
• These are REALLY FUN.