Snip & Snap: Stop motion with paper art!

Last month I hosted Snip & Snap, a stop motion paper art workshop, at Monster Mouse Studios in Marrickville, Gadigal (Sydney).

I’ve always really enjoyed working with paper cuttings as a way to create in the third dimension while still keeping a 2D style. I’m also a big fan of origami and shadow puppetry, so when I started planning an effective way for people to learn and play with stop motion, paper felt like a great medium to work with.

We kicked off by reviewing the techniques of stop motion animation, and looked at some examples covering different methods: creating eye movement, blinking, objects shifting and blending into each other, body movement, and timing.

 

 

I’d prepared character templates along with short storylines that people could use to get started, and everyone was welcome to create wha they wished. We had colour paper, magazines, pens, markers, and plenty of scissors to get busy with!

As everyone started on their pieces, it was really nice to see people experimenting with different ideas. Some were using collaging techniques, some were drawing their characters from scratch, and one person brought their niece’s photo along that they ended up animating as a digital birthday card (so cute!). There were lots of great ideas being explored and tested throughout the room.

 

 

Once everyone had their sets and stages ready, we used our phones to take snaps and animate frame by frame, with each frame capturing a small bit of movement before snapping the shot. It was great watching everyone’s animations slowly take shape over the session, and by the end we were adding sound effects to bring the pieces to life.

It was a great afternoon of getting creative. Watching a room full of people go from a blank sheet of paper to a moving, animated character in just a few hours was so rewarding, and everyone left with something new they’d made themselves.

It also reminded me how much I enjoy running these kinds of hands-on sessions. There’s something really satisfying about planning out a workshop, setting it all up, connecting with others, sharing info to get started and watching them take it in new directions. It really inspired me to do more workshops in the future, watch this space!

 

A very bee-utiful animation created by one of the participants.🐝

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