Stop Motion: Cat on the Hunt

I worked with Filmon and Themis for the first animation project, and we worked together very efficiently. After briefly discussing our interests in materiality and character development, we did some research individually. Themis found a frame-by-frame breakdown of a cat walking and jumping, which we found fascinating. She printed out the frames and cut the pieces out, 30 in total. When we reconvened in person, the conversation drifted towards forming a narrative out of the cat’s movements and creating a background scene along with a sense of depth. We landed on a story where the cat walks in, chases a mouse, and takes a leap but fails to catch it. In order to stay consistent with the materiality of the cut-out cat, I suggested creating a background scene in a similar manner and pasting the elements on small pieces of foam board to place the elements at different heights.

With a clear sense of direction, we got to work, printing out pictures for the background, cutting out the potted plants and mouse, and hot gluing pieces of foam board on the back of the cut-out cats. We set up the tech for the shoot with a Canon 5D Mark III, tripod, and a production laptop with Dragonframe installed. The shooting process was straightforward; we switched out the cut-out of the cat frame by frame, looping the walking sequence accordingly. I was surprised at the amount of time it took to shoot a short sequence and gained a profound admiration for the patience of stop motion animators. All in all, we are very happy with the cute little sequence we ended up with — I could watch it forever in loop!