Asterism
Full Moon
Dev Blog #20
24 February 2023
Behind the Scenes: Claymation
I took a little break fromm my blog posts over Christmas and New Year, so I wanted to return with something really cool to show you! I've been working on a new level this month, which uses clay models and claymation as the main art style. I thought it would be interesting to show my whole process of sculpting, photographing, editing and importing into Unity, which overall is pretty similar whatever art medium I am using if I'm doing static images or stop-motion animation (paper, fabric etc.).
The main things I would recommend for a setup if you want to do claymation is to have an environment with consistent lighting (i.e. not natural lighting). This can be achieved most easily with a lightbox, but I used to do this just with desk lamps before this project. Ensure that you lock the focus on whatever camera/phone you use for the duration of your photography session, do not change the focus between photos.
My equipment and materials:
- Scola Colour Clay
- Havox Light Box (large size)
- Orbit300 photography turntable
- Samsung Galaxy A40 phone
- Wacom graphics tablet, e.g. this one (mine is an older 'One' model)
- "Gooseneck" phone holder (unbranded, cheap from Ebay)
- Small phone/camera tripod(unsure of brand, had it many years)
- Kitchen knife, pencils / chopsticks, garden wire (modelling wire is probably better but I don't have any) and wire cutters
- Photoshop (or a free editing tool such as GIMP or Photopea)
- Unity (v 2021.3.5f1)
Thanks for reading this moon's blog :)
Next Full Moon Dev Blog on 25 March 2024
Previous Full Moon Dev Blog
Sign up to my newsletter to get updates about the project!