For the past few weeks, my family and I (or, more specifically, my three year old son and I) have been playing with the art of stop motion animation. It was a hobby we serendipitously stumbled upon one day about three weeks ago. My son had asked me to build a dog using his MegaBlocks, so, I happily obliged. I thought the end product was kind of cool, so I decided to capture my masterpiece by taking a picture of it from every angle. As I scrolled through the pictures on the camera, I realized that I had more-or-less created a stop motion video, which you may see here by clicking on the picture:

Then a light went off in my head.

I began snapping pictures of the dog, as I slowly inched it across the table. My son watched with an almost eager sense of curiosity. I then decided to introduce another character, which I located in my children’s toy bin. For the next several minutes, I alternated snapping pictures and repositioning the characters, as I spun an entirely improvisational story line. Once I was satisfied that the story had sufficiently ended, I plugged the images into my computer. I coached my son on the narration, and added the final touch with a title page. My son and I watched it over and over. Even my one year old daughter was intrigued by our end product. I then uploaded it to the internet. You may watch this video, entitled “The Dog And The Dinosaur” here:



I decided that we had to pursue this hobby further, so about a week later, my son and I created our second video, entitled “Dough Monster Vs. Tank”. While the title wasn’t all that innovative, I liked “Dough Monster Vs. Tank” more than “The Dog And The Dinosaur”. It was more complex, and even included music which I whipped up on my ukulele. Also, the title screen included the name we had just dubbed our production “company”, “Matt & Fam Entertainment”. “Dough Monster Vs. Tank” may be viewed here:



After “Dough Man Vs. Tank”, I realized that Play-Doh was a complete hassle to work with on projects of this nature. It doesn’t tend to want to stay together, is heavy, and therefore difficult to manipulate and hold in position, and characters created with it cannot be used time and time again, as it will eventually dry out and crumble. Not wanting to attend any Play-Doh man funerals, I decided that I needed to get some non-drying clay with which we could create stock characters. I went to a local craft store, where I purchased some samples of such clay. With said clay, I fashioned a “rough draft” stock character which I named Flibert Lubbery (that’s pronounced like “blueberry”, but without the “b”). We created a very short video starring Filbert Lubbery as an experimental run, which may be viewed here:



The Filbert Lubbery video taught us some very important lessons regarding this type of character construction, namely that paper clips DO NOT provide a suitable frame. They simply are not nearly malleable enough, and therefore tend to poke through the clay rather than move with the clay. We will obtain a more malleable wire, and then subject Filbert to a very extensive surgery where we will replace his skeletal structure (poor guy), and we’ll probably attempt another trial run with Filbert before creating more characters, although I believe the direction we will head in the future will involve a litany of characters; possibly a family named the Lubbery’s.

Either way, I am very enthusiastic about this family adventure into the world of stop motion animation, and it is my hope that you, our beloved reader, will join us on this thrilling endeavor, and maybe even be inspired to take a similar road yourself or with your family!