Getting Personal - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 71

KD - Pure pleasure, but it's hard to not rush it to see what it is. I think as an actor. I like to act it out
beforehand.
RC - I'm aware I'm an animator manipulating a model. At the same time, I am the model. Because
the model can't move on its own, I rely on the real me to move the little me, so I can act. Other times,
I'm outside it, moving the puppet through its paces so it does what I want it to do. My goal was to give
the characters believability even if they only 'lived' for thirty seconds. If you're not honestly trying to
bring that character to life, you're cheating the audience and yourself. Animating has never been just
a job; it's been my life. Even with 'small' or 'boring' jobs, I gave them my honest effort and tried to
make them as well as I could. If you do anything less, you're probably not an animator, just a talented
set of hands.
DC - It's mainly a job, lighten up! I like the feeling of creating life though. If you make something move
nicely enough people suddenly start to care about it. You can make people cry by showing them how a
normally inanimate object supposedly feels.
AW - I feel animation is a tactile and spiritual experience. Mostly I feel like an actor. I never stop
observing movement and breaking it down into 24ths of a second. I do it all the time. It's normal to me.
Watching something come into being is a beautiful process - like making something on a lathe. I'm
addicted to animation. I need it like a drug.
SB - I'm mostly trying to give a performance, although this can sometimes be diffi cult in preschool series
work as some scenes can be dull, with a lot of talk and no particular emotion to latch on to. On those
days it's just a job.
RH - When I am animating with puppets I feel like an actor, engaging myself within the individual
characters' thoughts and motivations. I feel a deep sensation, getting into the characters' minds and
bodies. I'm most happy animating when it's fl owing well, and when the animation is working that I don't
need to check it. We're fulfi lling the need of the illusion of life - we're making characters breathe and live.
They become believable.
JC - Mostly I love animating. It feels like a creative process, when I can put part of myself into what I do.
I like the idea that I'm a 'shy actor', the puppets attempt what I cannot in public. I put life, character,
humour into these beautiful puppets and the results entertain at some level. Though it's a wonderful
job, it's more than a job. In general, most animators will go that extra distance to fi nish a project, even
coming in, unpaid, to reshoot something they're not happy with.
FL - Tactile pleasure is one of the main reasons for doing stop motion to me. The feeling of creating
life that wasn't there before should be another one …. It's a kind of magic to see your frames playing
back, and that supposedly dead thing starting to move, breathe, live …. When you animate in stop
motion you're not animating the representation of something or someone, you're actually bringing
life to that thing. The puppet itself is the character, so you are giving life to the thing itself, and not to
what it means.