Claymation & Reflection Essay

Claymation: a word that I have become very familiar with over these past weeks working on this project. When I think about the word claymation it brings a lot of other words to my head: fun, difficult, complicated, and extensive. Overall, though, the claymation taught me so much about using cameras, computers, and programs.

To get any fulfilment out of a project I have to have some fun whiile working on it. Even though the claymation project was not even close to a piece of cake, it still had plenty of fun aspects. The part of the claymation that I enjoyed the most was making the clay people, background, etc. for each of the scenes in our claymation. I liked working the clay in my hands then trying to envision what I wanted the person or background to look like. Once I finally finished a clay figure/ person, I loved to see how it turned it out because usually I could get it pretty close to how I envisioned it to be. Even though making the clay figures was fun, it was also challenging because you have to make sure the figures can actually stand up by themselves while still looking good. Challenges and difficulty can be a good thing, though, so I didn’t mind.

When the going gets tough, the tough get tougher, that is a good saying to describe the difficult parts of this claymation. Since whenever there was a hard part in our claymation I think it only made our claymation better and made my partner and I tougher. The hardest part of this claymation, in my opinion, was the audio. The audio was very difficult because you have to make sure that you say what you want to say not too loud or too quiet, or else the audio sounds bad. Also, you have to make sure that every piece of audio that you do is matched up with the scene you want it to be matched up with. It seemed to take forever to make the audio because there was just so much to do. No matter how grueling the audio process is, after you finally get it perfect, your claymation automatically goes from O.K. to amazing.

I learned so much from this project about Apple computers and programs. Especially iPhoto and iMovie. I learned how to use special effects in movies and create titles for each scene. The main thing I learned, though, from this project is how to make a high quality claymation. How to use 400+ pictures and turn them into one fast moving slideshow that tells the story of an explorer. I learned that to make your acclamation as nice as possible you must keep your camera stable so the pictures will not bounce around . I learned how to keeps organized and make figure out of clay. Overall, this was an immense learning experience for me.

This claymation project was one of my favorite projects I have ever done. No matter how hard it was. Fun, difficult, and amazing, that is what it was. It was one of those projects you put all your heart into and when you are done you are very happy with the final product.