Different Techniques - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 142

Sand
Working with sand or salt needs the same painstaking precision and the same loss of the
actual artwork, but the results are beautiful. I'm not sure whether animators actually touch the
material as i ngers are too clumsy and clunky, which must slightly take away from the pleasure
of feeling the material. Pushing sand and salt around with brushes may not be the same. Every
time I see an exquisite sand animated i lm I can't help fearing what a disaster a sneeze might
be. I like the way that sand can be placed on translucent screens and lit from underneath,
making a silhouetted texture. The ef ect can be reversed so the sand is pale against a dark
background. Often sand has been featured to great ef ect (especially in the two great i lms,
Co Hoederman's Sandcastle and Tyron Montgomery and Thomas Stellmach's Quest ) alongside
articulated puppets that look as though they've been formed from sand.
Tyron Montgomery and Thomas Stellmach's Quest , whose sole character, although armatured,
resembles sand (Aaron Wood).
Claymation
I'm in awe of animators who work with clay and Plasticine, as apart from needing
the skill of animating, they have the extra skill of sculpting. My skill in sculpting
is pretty non-existent, and I was deterred at school after managing to sculpt two
pretty impressive pieces. One was a dinosaur, which looking back is rather odd
for me. I worked for days on the texture with the end of a biro pen, getting every
little scale and wart. I can't deny there was some satisfaction from such painstaking