The Multiplane Downshooter - Frame-by-Frame Stop Motion: The Guide to Non-Traditional Animation Techniques - page 97

Fig 7.6 two underlit setups for
downshooters.
Carolyn Leaf, a master and pioneer in downshooting techniques, describes
her own setup:
“I have given many sand workshops and the setup is a single framing
camera over a piece of clear glass (plastic builds up static electricity, which
can make the sand jump around) with white paper underneath, raised and
underlit. I like to put two lights on either side of the glass pointing down
onto white paper and bouncing back up to the glass surface. This gives even
lighting and isn't too hard on the eyes, which shouldn't look directly into
lights and can find tiring the contrast of light and dark when working with
underlit sand.”
Clay, Sand, and Three-Dimensional Objects
Downshooting refers only to the shooting setup. The objects or materials
that can be animated are quite varied. This is limited only by the
imagination of the animator or designer. Several mediums have been
used successfully, and we touch on only a few. My own experience with
downshooting primarily focuses on clay figurative subject matter. This is
when characters are drawn and sculpted in plasticine (an oil-based clay
that never hardens) in relief. This approach to clay animation has a
stylized graphic quality that looks like a mixture between two- and
three-dimensional animation. The great advantage to this technique is that
no armatures or support structures are required to hold up the puppets.
They lie on the glass and can move around anywhere in space without the
constant struggle with gravity that is a part of most three-dimensional stop
motion. It is necessary to fabricate replacement models if the figures need
to turn in three-dimensional space.