Abstract PAPER Lip Sync Stop Motion Animation

Vocals by: TVsKyle (Kyle Carrozza), BlackUniGryphon (Kandice K Zimbleman)
Lens: SIGMA (various)
Software: DragonFrame
Shot at UMASS Boston 2017

Back in 2017 at UMASS Boston I was personally invited to attend a special Experimental Animation/Media Class. I used DragonFrame and a series of abstract paper pieces which I cut out by hand. I'm a Traditional Animator (Old School) so for me Stop Motion is child's play. But, no one believed me that I could lip sync audio to literally ANYTHING. But, for animation that's utterly NORMAL. Luckily these days sound reading can be done directly from the file WHILE SHOOTING on the fly. My own audio is so-so, because no one whom was supposed to help me ever did, or ditched me. So, I asked several of my friends to let me use any old audio clips they had. But, no one had any available.

I asked my friend Kyle Carrozza [TVsKyle] whom, altho' he was very busy working at Cartoon Network at the time, still managed to squeeze it in. He gave me a whole bunch of audio clips of himself doing various funny voices (he's a professional voice actor & recording artist). His vocals are so much better than mine.

BIG THANX TO KYLE!

So, I whipped these together, and it went rather well. I offered to teach the other students how to do lip syncs, but this seemed so intimidating to them that they all cowered away from it. It's honestly the easiest method to animate with audio files, especially if you are shooting on software rather than old school hardware. Thankfully I no longer need to do a sound chart. Just slap in the audio n its there.

What makes Animation WORK inside the human brain is what's called "persistence of vision" which when coupled with audio convinces the viewer they are seeing something real. In this case I use several pieces of cut paper, then move them around set to the audio. This tricks the brain into believing that someone is talking to them, when its just abstract, and nothing but paper.

It's literally SO EASY that I kept getting bored n making more challenging things to do with the papers. It wasn't enough to move the paper, I wanted it to move more, and move around, and have an attitude. It was so fun to do this, but also incredibly easy.

I was very amused by the task. I also got a kick out of the fact that people thought I was doing something hard or advanced when literally a child could do this. I could teach this to a 4 year old. If they had just sat with me and let me show them how it works, they'd probably have made their own animations as well.

For me, I was taught analog traditional animation on paper frame by frame drawing by hand like classic Disney films. If I wanted to ever do something quick & easy in a pinch, for me stop motion animation was so simple. I'd made so many stop motion animations when I was a teenager that was just something I could do, like writing my ABCs or my name, or being a cashier, but just more on the creative end of things.