Eric the Red Claymation

Anthony Jones
American Studies
November 5, 2007

Stop Frame Reflection Essay

During the first quarter of the eighth grade, Garret Thomson and I did a stop frame animation project on the famous explorer Eric the Red. This project showed how well your artistic abilities are, and your ability to work with technology, such as cameras and computers.

The most fun part was working with the clay models, and using new computer programs that I have never used before. The fun thing about the clay was just being creative with the figures. Like when you make your clay models, what are they going to look like? What are they going to do in your stop frame? These are just some of very many questions that you may have while making your animation. Then the computers, I loved working with the new programs like iMovie, the gimp, image capture, and iTunes. I personally love working on computers and I hope we get to do more projects with them.

The most difficult part of the project was doing almost all of the work. Unfortunately my partner had to go to Europe and I was stuck home working on it. I know he didn’t want to leave me with all of the work, but it made it really difficult to keep up to date on everything else. I did more than half of the animation before he got back. Luckily, he made it all up by doing almost all of the audio. I also did the story board all by myself while he was gone. I didn’t get a very good grade on it because I didn’t put what the characters were going to say, but in the end the story board helped a lot and we also didn’t have the characters say any thing in the animation.

The most important thing that I learned was just accepting the loss of my partner, put it beside me and get the work done on time. I didn’t mess around at all. I took my pictures and immediately put them on the computer into iMovie. I didn’t waste any time, not even a minute, I worked until the last three minutes of class everyday. This taught me that I can get any amount of work done with or without a partner as long as I don’t waste any effort doing it. I also learned a lot about an explorer that I never knew of, Eric the Red. I learned that he may be the first European explorer to find North America. I also learned a lot about making stop frames. Someday I hope to make my own claymation show on YouTube with my partner Garret and let Thomson-Jones Inc. become a big hit!

The best thing part of this project was working with the clay and computers. The most difficult part about the claymation was that my partner Garret was gone, he was in Europe. What I learned was more about a famous explorer, and I learned more about computers, and the most important thing was that showed myself that I can do any thing as long as I work hard to accomplish it. I loved working on this project and I really hope that we get to do another claymation project again this year.