Poetry In Motion

We asked our colleagues to pen down an ode to their crushes. Presenting Poetry in Motion - where spoken poetry meets stop-motion.

#documentary #liveaction #streetart

Certain types of clay, if left too long on a sheet of paper, leaves an oil-spot on it. This is just one of the nuances of claymation that we figured out as we worked on “Poetry In Motion”, our first stop-motion based animation project. In it, we read out poems we’ve written to our crushes, brought to life through the aforementioned style.

Concept

Raaj Rufaro

Written by

Shashank Ganesh

Raaj Rufaro

Sriram Sabhapathy

Vaishnavi Dhumal

Niranjan Kotukkal

Directed by

Raaj Rufaro

Produced by

LastBench

Lead Animator

Raaj Rufaro

Supported By

Vaishnavi Dhumal

Shruti Motta

Music and Sound

Niranjan Kotukkal

How it began:

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The project began when Raaj pitched ideas for an Original done in stop-motion animation - a style he hadn’t worked with before at LastBench. One of the ideas was where we write a poem and animate it. The whole team chipped in, from writing a few lines to creating long works of poetry dedicated to their crushes. Some wrote a few lines, some wrote whole narratives. It was a blast!

How it began:

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How it began:

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How it began:

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How it began:

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Then came the tricky bit:

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Storyboarding for a flat-lay stop motion is much more different than doing it for a 3D project. We soon realised that we hadn’t truly taken into consideration the physicality of the medium.

For example: When drawing out a square in the storyboard, we don’t realise how difficult it is to make a perfect square out of clay. The closest approximation you get is a nebulous blob. You see the problem?

Additionally, proportions were another major learning curve - when storyboarding, we don’t quite think about how the proportions will translate physically. Human hands have limitations when crafting tiny clay models.

Back to the drawing board.

Then came the tricky bit:

‍

Storyboarding for a flat-lay stop motion is much more different than doing it for a 3D project. We soon realised that we hadn’t truly taken into consideration the physicality of the medium.

Back to the drawing board.

Then came the tricky bit:

‍

Storyboarding for a flat-lay stop motion is much more different than doing it for a 3D project. We soon realised that we hadn’t truly taken into consideration the physicality of the medium.

Back to the drawing board.

Then came the tricky bit:

‍

Storyboarding for a flat-lay stop motion is much more different than doing it for a 3D project. We soon realised that we hadn’t truly taken into consideration the physicality of the medium.

Back to the drawing board.

Then came the tricky bit:

‍

Storyboarding for a flat-lay stop motion is much more different than doing it for a 3D project. We soon realised that we hadn’t truly taken into consideration the physicality of the medium.

Back to the drawing board.

Due to the fact that we had so many things to figure out during execution, we didn’t stick completely to the storyboard - but rather took it as our guiding star and then reworked things as we went along. ‍A scene is too complex to execute? We quickly reworked the visuals and made an alternative scene.