Animated Light Loop: The Bursting Star - Frame-by-Frame Stop Motion: The Guide to Non-Traditional Animation Techniques - page 175

Exercise 4
Animated Light Loop:
The Bursting Star
This frame-by-frame exercise and technique is very popular in Japan. The
Japanese refer to it as pika pika . They also call it lightning doodle projects .
Often, large numbers of people get together to create wonderful, fresh, and
vibrant images of light painting in front of the camera frame by frame.
So, I would like to dedicate this exercise to the people of Japan for their great
sense of unity, community, and creativity.
This particular exercise requires a few small props, a dark room or environment,
and a dslr camera, like a Canon 5D or a Nikon D-7000. It is important to have
one of these digital still cameras because you have a lot of control of the
iris, focus, and most important, the shutter speed. The shutter speed of the
camera is the critical element in this process. As we saw in previous chapters,
the longer the shutter speed, the more you can “smear” images and make
moving objects leave a trail of light and color behind them. This is how pika
pika works. The camera cannot be hand held or have the possibility of being
bumped during this process, because your whole image will be smeared
and impossible to read. A tripod is, once again, the anchor to making this
exercise work. The use of a cable release or a self-timer from the camera's
options might be worth considering. Touching the camera to release the shutter
risks a slight movement of the camera during the shooting, and the possibility of
smearing the whole image is increased. This is why a remote cable or 2-second
shutter time-release option is absolutely critical. If you are confident and have a
delicate touch then maybe you can take this risk, but I warn against this approach.
When you shoot an animated light loop, you have to keep in mind that the
registration of one frame to the next is difficult to control, because there
are no registration guides. Even using a capture software program that has
frame-to-frame comparison is impractical, but we consider the possibility of
using it in this exercise. You are virtually drawing in three-dimensional space,
with only your sense of frame-to-frame placement as your guide. As a result,
these light paintings have a very kinetic quality that is similar in appearance
to painting or scratching directly on film stock. But, you can do a few things to
help with your drawing.
Besides the camera equipment and dark space, the person painting the light
has to wear dark clothes. This person is slightly apparent in the image, which
adds a special quality to this technique, but we are going to minimize the