What Is Stop Motion Animation?

Alexis Deprey & Scott DaRos • 2023-08-01

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Dylan Carnahan:Welcome to Simple Questions Podcast. This is your host, Dylan Carnahan. The question for this episode is, what is stop motion animation? You will learn in this episode, the amount of animation that can get completed in a day, essential animation tools, and the various subtypes of stop motion animation. Our guests, that's right, we have two. Our guests are both Emmy Award-winning animation professionals, have worked on projects independently for network shows, such as Robot Chicken, Super Mansion, SpongeBob Squarepants, Dinosaur Office, Mad, as well as feature films like Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, and The Owners of Threadwood, which is a boutique animation studio located in upstate New York. I introduce to you Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos. About 15 years ago, I was a little bit younger, and I was watching a couple of animated films, and I got some itch, and I said, hey, you know, this is kind of an interesting format. I'm not an actor, I don't have other actors, I can kind of like create what I see in my mind, and I can, you know, I got enough sculpting ability to make a little clay person, so I kind of made some stop motion animations. And I'm sure some, you know, the Sherlock Holmes portion of the audience base here could easily find those on YouTube, again, 15 years ago. But that was kind of my first introduction and kind of thought about like stop motion animation all those years ago. So I'm curious for the two of you, what initially drew each of you to stop motion animation as a form of creative expression?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:You want me to go? Yours is younger. So yeah, I started as a kid because me and my friend Evan, we would get together and we'd create movies together. And our favorite thing to do was to make like movies out of GI. Joe's. These weren't like structured movies. They were just like us playing with GI. Joe's in front of a camera. And then we wanted to figure out ways to get our hands out of the scene. So we would like hang them on fishing line at a frame or we'd like have our we'd be holding their feet at a frame. And then there was one time we were doing we were doing this shot and one of the GI. Joe's in the background kept falling over every time we go to start it. So we kept like stopping fixing him. He'd fall over, stop it, fix him. And then we were watching it back. And then we saw this little character move like a little bit in the background, like on its own, because we had kept moving a little bit every time we stood him back up. So then along with that, that same friend at his house, we had watched Creature Comfort by Aardman together, the claymation, like animals using just like regular audio of people talking. And I must have been just talking to my mom and my dad about how much I liked that show and how me and Evan had figured out this little GI Joe thing. And so then my mom bought me a brick of Sculpey clay, and then I also started making little stop motion movies on my own with our family camcorder just like pressing record, pause, move the clay, record, pause, move it, record, pause, move it. So it's kind of funny if you play it back, it's like the audio is insane because I was like recording next to a TV, so it's like all these little tiny clips of audio from different shows and stuff. And you have it put together as baby's first demo reel. I also have those posted, I think, on Vimeo, like my first animations. And then, you know, when you're a kid and stuff, and you go into like high school and college, you sort of, like in my mind, that wasn't a possibility as a career or anything like that. So I just kind of set it aside. And then I was doing illustration, so still artwork. And then eventually my illustration professor connected me with a guy who was doing stop motion animated ads for a furniture company. And then I can like picked back up my hobby of stop motion. And then like from then on, it's been my career.

Dylan Carnahan:That's awesome. Bob's Discount Furniture. Shout out to Bob's Discount Furniture. Alexis, how is your kind of exposure compared to that?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Mine was a little later. I was always like an animation kid. Like you can sit me in front of animation for weeks on end and I'd be totally fine. I didn't realize there was much difference between like mediums of animation. So like I didn't realize that I also love stop motion. Like Paddington Bear was like one of my favorite things as a little kid. And I didn't know that that was stop motion. But when I was in college, we had the same professor that we were a few years apart. And we were both illustration majors. So she was like by my class was like, okay, enough with the watercolor and colored pencil. Like can someone please do something else? We need to expand upon this medium a little bit more. So I started doing like some 3D illustrations and then my senior thesis, I kept going with that. And I basically just revived old like Barbie toys and made my own puppets and costumes. And so I did like a whole children's book, just like shooting different scenes. And I had no idea that I was like a few steps away from, you know, stop motion until she also put me in touch with the same boss at Bob's Discount Furniture, which is where we met. And so that was my like first foray into stop motion also. And it's just about the time, it was like very kismet timing because it's just about the time that Coraline came out in 2009. So the industry itself was just shifting into this like very digital, very much easier to work in medium like Dragon Frame, which is the software that we use to shoot and capture everything was developed like just before we had started working at Labs or just about that time. So we both learned like the older technique first and then like got to learn the new software like as it was available for the next generation of stop motion filmmakers. So it was very fortuitous timing.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that's awesome. You kind of have the barriers to entry drop a little bit. There's some new technology. And then also, you know, I think there's something to be said for the courage, you know, it takes to kind of step out, especially, you know, Scott, you mentioned. Yeah, not everyone, you know, I do think as we grow up, we kind of put our blinders up, you know, especially going through the college, educational institutions, it kind of strips away a little bit. And to kind of revisit that and then do that as a profession, I think that's extremely noble, the two of you.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Oh, thank you. Yeah, it is like because especially like we both grew up in Connecticut and I grew up in a very small town. And so Hollywood and the entertainment industry just seems like it's on a different planet. Like you're never going to be able to do anything there. But then I think when I got that job at the furniture company and I started learning stuff and my boss was guiding me along the way, different techniques and stuff. And then as you get better, you can start comparing yourself to the professional work that you're seeing. And you're like, I'm not that far off from the professional level of work. And so I just keep... Adding more tools to your toolkit. Yeah, have the confidence that you're going to keep improving. And then eventually you'll get to that level where you can take the next step.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, keep honing your skill set until you can kind of market it and get into just keep progressing, leveling up.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Yeah, and a lot of it also is networking. We were very lucky. Stop Motion is such a small industry that our old boss, Mike Bannon, used to have his own stop motion company in Connecticut prior to working at Bob's. And so he had hired a few folks, I don't know, maybe 10 years prior to us, 10 or 15 years prior. So there was like a little stop motion enclave in Connecticut before, you know, we were out of school or anything like that. But all of those people then left and worked on things like Celebrity Deathmatch or, you know, things up in Portland. So like this is kind of what happens in stop motion is the team kind of reconfigures all the time and people move around for different work. But some of those folks who had previously worked for him moved on to Robot Chicken and then had started a new company with the people who created Robot Chicken. So that's why we ended up moving out to LA was because we had this very tenuous connection from Connecticut to LA.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, you have that community. And once that community kind of disperses, you can kind of leverage those mutual connections. Oh, I know someone out here or someone that works there. And then that kind of again, as you progress, there's kind of more doors that open up through that.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Absolutely. And like it is just it keeps happening over and over again, because it's a very like moving heavy like industry. So people kind of end up all over the place. And the more people you meet, the wider your network is without even really realizing it.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. And I would kind of call back. I know the listeners, we just had a previous episode with Kamal Chung about, you know, challenges that entrepreneurs face. I think a big recurring theme here that you hear from a lot of guests and people on the podcast is do it. Just do it. I think, again, something seems so far away. How Hollywood kind of all of these things. And again, here another testament, the fact, hey, if you do something, you'd be amazed at how far you can go with it.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:And share and talk about what you're doing. You want to be able to finally reach the people who can help you get that next step forward. Because especially, I'm sure other industries are friendly, too. But because this one's so small, we really do need to be very friendly because we work in close proximity to each other when we're on bigger teams. So it's one of those where you don't want to be the jerk on the team. If you're friendly, if you're gregarious, if you can pick up skills and you're translating those things in real time, people want to continue to work with you. And they also want to help you get your foot in the door if you've been communicating with them outside of being like, hey, do you have any tips or anything like that? I love your work. I'd love to progress a little bit.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, your reputation. Got to have a reputation. OK, I'm going to hit you with some basic stuff. All right. Again, we got some novices listening here. We're going first off, how would you define stop motion animation and what makes it unique compared to other animation techniques?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Well, stop motion is basically taking photographs of physical objects in a sequence, and then when you compile those together, it creates the illusion of fluid movement. And stop motion is different from other techniques, because you'll hear the phrase straight ahead animation. With stop motion, it's like you can plan a lot, and you can, like, rehearse your shot and everything like that. But once you start, you're just going, you're going straight ahead, you're not, like, skipping around to, like, I'm going to make sure I'm going to, like, get this pose right, and this pose right, and then I'll fill in the in-between. It's like you go, if you're doing a 200 frame shot, you start at frame one, and you end at frame 200, unless you're doing something crazy. I mean, you can, like, mess around with the frames if you're doing something really cartoony, but typically it's straight ahead. And if you realize that you mess up, you can't just, like, go back and revisit those few frames and fix them. You have to, like, delete everything that you've done up to that point. Try to get the puppet or whatever you're animating back to where it was at that point and then and then move from there. So and it's also different because you're dealing with physical objects and gravity. So if you need something to jump or float, you need to figure out a way to hold the subject there for that frame that you're taking. And so you're dealing with, like, rigs. There's things called like winder rigs where you can turn these little knobs to move things up and down and left and right in the air. And then you have to keep in mind how you're going to erase those rigs later on. So there's a lot of dealing with physical challenges, whereas, you know, if you're doing 2D or CG, you're sitting at a computer, probably have like a nice ergonomic chair and stuff like that. Stop motion, you might have to be like reaching over some lights and underneath like a set piece and like slightly bending your back. So your back is killing you and stuff like that. And then you're looking at your computer monitor. It's like really painful. Well, you hope that you have like a good art of it and like lighting and camera team to like help you keep the obstructions to a minimum or, you know, get the effects team and stuff to like help you understand like, oh, that rig's not going to work if you do it this way, like do it behind and out this side or, you know, all these little like tricks that everyone kind of holds on to in their head as like part of their department knowledge. And then we all kind of like brainstorm on set to make it the best case scenario for the animator because it is their workspace, because you don't want them to do that gymnastics, like sometimes it's unavoidable, but like you really want to try and make the gymnastics like the not part of that shot because it's hard enough just to animate.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that's a lot. There's a lot to digest there.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Wow.

Dylan Carnahan:I mean, that's that's super interesting. I, you know, especially like you bring in the as far as like a, you know, challenge, you have gravity in this sequence. So you're starting from zero and going to 200. So to speak with these frames, like you've manipulated that puppet or whatever. So that that causes difficulty if you make a mistake, right? Because then it may be, say, 33, frame 33 is messed up. You realize that on step frame 37, like going back, you're like, you know, puppet looks completely different. I got to, you know, and I can see. And then you're also thrown out there to kind of the rig and kind of the the craftsmanship that goes in with, you know, how that's displayed that way. You can take that out and post.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Yeah, yeah. It's like there's, you know, usually if you're working on like at a studio on a show or something before you start animating, you'll have like the VFX people come to take a look at what you're about to do. And you'll be like, I need to make this character fly, so I'm going to use this rig. And they'll just be like, you know, all right, we'll just make sure. Yeah, either don't do it or make sure that the rig is only crossing like like a really simple area to like cut off and not like going behind a bunch of hair or something like that. So it's hard to erase. Yeah.

Dylan Carnahan:So maybe like more like a, you know, basic background rather than something really intricate, because then that would be difficult for them.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Right. And then like, you know, you after you've animated, you take a clean plate where like you remove your puppets or the subject from the background so that the VFX department has just like a clean pass at the background so that when they go to erase the rigs, they have the information that would be behind where the rig is. So yeah, it's complicated. You have to be aware of a lot of stuff. And yeah, cutting back is the worst part. What you were talking about, like you realize Frame 37, that Frame 33 is messed up. And if it's a character on a rig and they're doing crazy stuff, you're just like, oh, my God, I don't. Is it worth it to cut back? Should I cut back or should I just keep going and like deal with my mistake?

Dylan Carnahan:There's a and in talking about that, because you're trying to make things so smooth, which intuitively, I would think means more images to do that, you know, how to give like, what's a rough estimate? Like how many frames does it take to animate a basic action like waving or something?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Yeah, it depends. Like there's every action, there's so many different ways to do it and different speeds and everything like that. So it could be somebody waving excitedly, where it would just be like one frame here, one frame here, one frame here. Or somebody doing like a subtle little thing like that, you know, it could be like three frames, one directions, three frames. You kind of just like when you first start animating, you like map this stuff out, like how many frames am I going to do for this chunk of action? But then, like, as you get used to it, you just start to get a feel for how long it's going to take. And then if you're not sure how long something is going to take, you'll just overanimate and then you'll go back and like take out frames that don't need to be there to like make the timing a little bit tighter or something. And then also a lot of animators use video reference, so they'll just video themselves doing the action and then they'll just have it on the screen next to the animation so they don't really have to worry about like, am I going to hit my mark on time or anything like that? It's like the video is doing that work for you. So yeah, it's a lot of complicated animator math. Yeah, I call it like animator math because it's different from regular math and you find yourself doing a really weird math to figure certain things out, like if you're doing camera moves while somebody's walking and stuff like that, it's all kind of weird. So it's sort of like, you know, math of a curve, you know, because everything needs to like ease in and ease out, which means you have a lot of tiny increments on the ends and a lot of big increments in the middle of a move. So it's sort of like complicated math, but it is also very intuitive at a certain point. Yeah. Yeah.

Dylan Carnahan:Like, you know, again, we're going back to the proficiency like leveling up, you know, you have you gain a level of intuition after doing this for a while. But, yeah, I mean, OK, and then taking into account the different angles, like that's that's another whole aspect, I guess, because you think about you watch a sitcom or somewhere, you get a camera angle change, a close up on someone's face. Right. That's that's something also you have to calculate in. So let's say, you know, again, I know this is highly variable, as you mentioned, even just with a simple wave of the hand, it depends. There's a whole lot of things that go into that. But giving just as general as possible, you know, how long does it take to animate those frames? So even if you do have, you know, a two frame wave, let's say, like what all goes into that and how long does that take?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:So we try to think about averages for like animators time, mainly because, like, you know, when you're dealing with like a bigger production schedule, you have multiple shots to do. It's not usually just one single shot. And so, you know, some shots only take a few hours. Some shots take days or weeks like it depends on like the length of the shot, the complexity of the animation or the things that are happening in in that shot. Like if there's a camera move happening, that makes the animation more complicated for the animator. And then also you have to do a clean pass with that camera move. So you have to like have a programmable camera move like to repeat that move and or you have to be taking everything out every frame it's moving. So all these things kind of like factor into this like general average. And so you kind of want to do that based on the type of animation that you're doing. So if you're doing this like really high level like feature quality animation, you're not going to get very many seconds a day. Like you'd say what like two at the most for working on a feature. It's like you'll get somewhere between like two to four seconds of animation done per day.

Dylan Carnahan:So that's like eight hours of work. You're like, I got my wave. That's your whole day.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:That's your day. Just two seconds. And then if you're working on something like kind of fast and a little loose, more like a robot chicken, like our quotas for that were really high. So they were like between 10 and 15 seconds sometimes depending on crunch time. So it's sort of just like throw everything at it and see how fast you can go. Yeah, working in TV, it's unforgiving in terms of like they want you to get 10 seconds a day, no matter what. They don't care if you have a shot with like, you know, 20 characters in there or whatever. The goal is for you to get 20 seconds a day. So like as an animator, do whatever you can. Take shortcuts, this and that. Of course, there are like exceptions, you know, like the animation director will be like, this shot is crazy. You know, just do what you can. You know, like a couple of days. It's not like they're cracking away or punishing you. It's also like considered an average because it's your average. Like some days you might have a bunch of like frames. Like it's just a really easy shot for some reason. So you can get like 20 seconds that day. Like things that tend to be a little bit faster are things that have less things in them and generally less going on. So like a more like close up shot where no one's walking or gesticulating wildly, you know, like you can get a lot more frames that way. But if you have like seven characters walking through a set full body, that's going to take you a minute to get through all that. So your average that day is probably going to be pretty low. To throw some numbers at you, you're getting, if you're getting like 10 seconds a day and you're working, say you're doing 10 hour days at a studio because sometimes you do 10 hour days, then you're getting like a second of animation per hour, which means you're taking 24 frames per hour. But on TV, you usually shoot on twos, which means you shoot two pictures for every time you move the puppet. So really you're doing like 12 movement increments per hour to get 10 seconds a day and a 10 hour day.

Dylan Carnahan:You just heard it here, folks. There you go. It was a breakdown. That was a proof. First off, that's insane. I know that's kind of a generality. I know the variability, but that's crazy. I think one of the first things that anyone hears when they think about that, especially because I mean, talk about a delayed gratification, right? When you're talking about that little movement, it's really hard to be like, again, like, I got my wave, you know? That's what you're holding on to, right? It's just such a small portion. And you add that in with how tedious that is, and you obviously have a timeline. Like, you know, how do you keep patient?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Yeah, I'll say that there is like the idea that stop motion animators are like the most patient people. And our old boss, he used to say like, to be in stop motion animator, you need more patients than a large hospital or something like that. But like, at some point, you like, you will lose it. You'll lose your patience. Like every now and then that happens to me where, you know, I'm trying to just move the character in this certain direction, but no matter how many times I touch it and nudge it, it stays like in the same spot. So I just like lose it and I like crank it in one direction. I'm like, there, then I have to like fix it, of course. But it is like what you're saying is like you don't immediately see the results of what you're doing because you're doing it one frame at a time, but also it doesn't, it doesn't feel like that. You just kind of feels like you're just doing a task and you kind of get used to that pace. And at the end of the day, you hit play and you see what you've done for the whole day and you're like, it's nice work that I did. You're not really like, Oh God, I have, I've been working for three hours and I've only got like a few frames. What the hell? It makes me like, I'm sure some of your listeners have watched the Parks and Rec episode where Ben is so depressed, he makes a stop motion and he gets to play it back for Chris. It's like much shorter than he expects it to be. He's like, what? No, I've been doing this for days. And he's so upset, but he just hasn't really made any progress. I mean, it's kind of like that, but you expect that at a certain point that you're just not making that much progress, but you know that it's towards something that's going to make you more progress in the long run. I think it can get meditative at a certain point too. It's sort of like painting where you just kind of zone out after a little bit and you kind of just find your groove and keep going. But yeah, if you're expecting instant gratification, no, that is not the job for you. Yeah, I think on feature animation, if you're working on a feature film, I was feeling that when I was working on that because I was used to working on Robot Chicken where it's like 10 seconds a day and then I find out I'm going to work on a feature and I'm like, oh, I only have to get like three to four seconds a day? Easy. And then I got there and at the end of the day, I would have just over a second and I would feel terrible and be like, oh my God, I'm not going fast enough and blah, blah, blah, but on a feature. They really do want the quality. Yeah, they cared about the quality a lot. Yeah. But yeah, every now and then, yeah, you do get like that. Like, God, I've been working all day and I haven't gotten much done.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. But yeah, like you're saying, you have your moments. However, you are primed. You know that kind of going into it and you do have some level of enjoyment, so you get some fulfillment from that where you're not going. You remember maybe someone like me who's not familiar, you throw us in there, you're like, I'm a complete failure, kind of as you mentioned, the Parks and Rec episode, right? So uninitiated, they're going like, I'm not seeing anything. But you're going, hey, you know, and you also pick... Yeah, you pick up on those nuances. I know that even as a college baseball player, when I watch a baseball game, which is, I would say, a lot of people would say it's boring, there are subtleties that I pick up on that someone else may not. And so there's kind of those things that kind of drive you a little bit more.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Yeah, you can appreciate the craft of it when you know. Yeah, if you're like, if you're animating and you're trying something subtle and new with the acting or something like that, and you nail it, it's very exciting. So that's like something that keeps you going is like, I'm going to try new things and make it interesting for myself.

Dylan Carnahan:I want to tap in because stop motion, we mentioned there's kind of various different materials, I would assume, even just Robot Chicken versus just solely clay and things like that. So what types of materials and props are commonly used in stop motion animation projects? And is that kind of just dependent upon the art style or is it more functionally driven?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:It's a bit of both. I mean, I'd say your typical television or film production typically uses a puppet that has a charred body of some sort, like either silicone or foam, just so that way it's stable. They can put costuming on it, they can give it a firm face probably out of a resin of some sort, and either give it a wig with hair that's been treated to be stiff or movable or something firm. That's a more typical route for a puppet, just so that way it stays on model, which is something that is hard to do if you have a bunch of people working on something. That usually was the challenge with things like 2D animation or claymation because it's such a movable medium that if you have 20 different artists working on it, face can shift a lot. You can see that in old Disney movies and stuff sometimes when you look at a character and you're like, that doesn't quite look like the character anymore. Then it comes back and you're like, okay, that's the character again. It's because maybe the eyes have shifted or the eyebrow or something like that and it just feels a little different. But that can happen when you have lots of artists working on the same thing at the same time and maybe some of them are a little bit newer and don't have a grasp of that as well. It eliminates all of those variables by having these more firm bodies and faces to work with. You're not going to run off model with those. But with Clay, you are managing that face the whole time and the body probably.

Dylan Carnahan:When you say model, that's the base character and you're trying to maintain that as the continuity of it, which you kind of like the older Disney. You're like, hey, clearly, the 17th person to work on the film touched something and it's a little awful and this kind of short segment. That's interesting. So stop motion animation, is it usually Clay or is it usually, as you kind of mentioned, kind of these silicone models?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Yeah, it's usually silicone or foam with some sort of like resin head, just so that way all those things stay stable. Yeah, stop motion as a phrase or a term kind of. Like the umbrella. Yeah, there's all these different kinds of stop motion, like claymation, which uses clay. And only clay, really. And then there's like pixelation, which is when somebody uses like a human being as a stop motion puppet. Like you've seen probably ads before where like there's like a human being that's been photographed to look like stop motion. Or even just like hands in something. Yeah, yeah, that's called pixelation. So like stop motion is the term that's the umbrella for all of those. And clay, I think, used to be used more in like the 90s and stuff because, well, I don't know why, but it's used. Yeah, I know it's used less today. It's used less today because it takes way longer than all the other kinds of stop motion animation. Like if you have a foam puppet with a resin head, you're kind of animating it and you're not worried about like clay melting or like falling apart or having to re-sculpt or the clay getting dirty or anything like that. So clay takes a lot more time and these days when you're shooting something, it's like how fast can you do it and for how little money can you do it? So clay doesn't really fit in that. So there are some, at least Aardman we know, like protects clay in a lot of ways. So they still use it as like, you know, at least for their heads. If the bodies are, you know, something a little more rigid, like a foam with, you know, dressing on it, the head will still like have some clay element on it. So they still get that expression that they're like known for and those caricatures that they're known for.

Dylan Carnahan:You know, in talking about just the puppets, I'm just thinking, you know, trying to better grasp the scale of these things. So how large are these figures and sets?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:They range. It's like we've animated some really tiny things, but typically like a full body human is somewhere between like seven and nine inches. Most typically, sometimes they can be a little bit bigger. Sometimes they can be a little bit smaller. Also, sometimes you make a really big one or make a really small one for a specific shot for a specific need. So like scale is kind of a fluid thing for Stop Motion too, because it has to be whatever best suits the shot and what you don't want to clump in later. What do you want to see practical? So sometimes we'll do an oversized hand with an oversized prop so you get that close up shot nice and crisp without it looking a little funky because it's tiny, you know.

Dylan Carnahan:This is awesome. What are some essential tools and equipment needed to get started with stop motion animation? So I know we kind of talked a little bit about the model. I mean, puppet, what kind of other basic things would you need?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:I mean, you don't even need to start with puppet or model animation. Like, you could literally just start with an object, you know. A lot of folks start with toys. Lego is really popular just because they have little figures and they can move a little bit, but they're not like, you know, too articulate. So that way you can really focus on just controlling one thing or just a few things because really like Scott was saying before, getting to know just those like increments and that timing and like how things work on a timeline, that stuff takes a little bit to get to know. So the fewer variables you have with whatever you're working with, the better. Because then you can really like focus on understanding like how fast something moves in space if you're just moving like a little ball or something. But yeah, you really just need a camera, some capture software, stable light and a subject. I think if you go on online and you see people who are just starting with stop motion, they're asking like, how can I make this better? Usually, it's like, do it in a room where you can control the light. So like, when we do animation, the rooms are completely blacked off so that there's no outside light coming in. Because if there is, say you're doing it next to a window and as the time of day is changing, it's like, you know, flickering, it's making your footage look like it's flickering. So you want a room or a space where you have control over the light. And then also a common mistake is not having your camera locked down, whatever it is that you're using, an iPhone or whatever you need, a tripod or some sort of situation where that isn't moving. Like, I think a lot of beginners maybe just have it like weaned up against a book or something and they're like trying to click a button on the phone and it's moving the phone every time they take a picture or they're just, they think that they have to animate the camera moving around and so the camera is moving all over the place. It's just really hard to focus on the thing that you're trying to learn when you're trying to control everything else around you and all that keeps twitching. Like, it's much easier to just focus on, you know, your subject if you kind of control for the outside environment a little bit more. And it doesn't have to be like super high end or anything like that. You can do it with your phone. And there's some really cheap software. I think it's like $5. But even just having like a little like clicker, like a selfie clicker, you know, just so you have a remote shutter basically and you're not touching your phone over and over again, you won't get that jiggle in your camera either. Even if you have like a slightly not stable setup, as long as you're not touching it, it probably won't move. But yeah, and then like close all your curtains and have like one or two lights to help you focus your energies.

Dylan Carnahan:Reduction of variables and then being consistent.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Dylan Carnahan:Right. Because you know, now we're getting the light in here. We're not controlling that. That's that we're in that. Like, as you mentioned, maybe we're not not having a remote shutter. So we're clicking our phone, right. So now we're off a little bit, Scott, you mentioned you got maybe something in the background is falling over again and again. Back, like back in the old days. You know, you got all these different kind of variables. And then that cleared out. Yeah. You're diminishing the quality, right. And it's also distracting from whatever.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:It's distracting for you for learning too, because your eye keeps going to the thing that's moving that shouldn't be moving. And then it's also distracting. Like if you're trying to use that as your portfolio stuff to, you know, get some feedback or to maybe try and get an internship or an apprenticeship or something like, it's going to be harder to share your work because there's a lot going on. So it's hard for someone to focus on your work if everything is moving. So also shooting on something kind of firm is good. Like if it doesn't rock, better.

Dylan Carnahan:Maybe not like an old card table.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:That's not great. If you can do a setup that isn't on carpet, that's ideal too. Because if you have everything on carpet and you're stepping next to your tripod or your table, then everything's kind of like shifting just a little bit. And all of this is like a very ideal situation. Like we have shot on carpet before. We have shot on tables that are not super stable. If you want to like do that kind of thing, you just have to be very careful as you go and touch things. Like it's more ends up being the control of the animator at that point. But that's sort of like next level animator. So you kind of want to start on easy mode where everything is just very firm. And then, you know, if something's a little jiggly, then that be your next level like animation.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, there is kind of an aspect of that. I know like with, say, for instance, saltwater fish tanks, right? Like a smaller fish tank is actually very hard to handle. And the same thing with firearms. Larger firearms are it's easier to be proficient with them than smaller firearms. So you're kind of you start throwing in all these variables. You go down easy street. It actually requires more expertise to handle the carpet and to handle the unsteady thing and add in the camera angles. All of those things actually again require more expertise. One of the things that would seem very difficult to animate or maybe it maybe it is it is, you know, someone speaking. So how do you animate speaking?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:You know, I'm talking about like them. So how do you animate somebody speaking? So the the dialogue is recorded before you start. And then we use this software called Dragon Frame. And within Dragon Frame, you can drag in your audio. So you have like a waveform that shows the audio. And then it's hard to describe. But basically for every frame, you can like type in what sound the mouth is making. And then so when you're animating, and you have that information like on the screen next to your little animation window. And so you can see I'm on frame 24. And on that frame, the mouth is making like an O sound. So I make like, if you have like a sticker sheet of mouth, different shaped, you grab the O and you put it on the character. And so that's how you animate speaking. And that's one of the first jobs you would have to as like an animation assistant is doing the track reading for speech. So you'd be translating that like what you hear as to what the sounds are, which are the phonemes, you know? Right. And that's called track reading. Yes. Yeah, that's the track reading is doing that work for the animator before the animator gets to the shot. So that when the animator gets to the stage, they load up their software and then the shot is already track read, which means they have the information of what sounds the mouth is making at what frame. And then, you know, if you're the animator, you like act it out so that you know what sort of gestures and stuff the character is doing while they're talking. And sometimes you can like exaggerate, you know, what their mouth is doing, depending on what the sound is, too. Like even if they've said it's an O, like maybe it's like a huge one. Yeah, yeah, it's like, yeah, the animation assistant will basically they're suggesting what sound or what shape of mouth you should be using there. But it's ultimately up to the animator to decide unless maybe in like a feature film production, they have like people who specialize in just like animating the faces beforehand so that they do replacement faces for that. So then the stop motion animator just like puts on whatever face and mouth it tells them to do on that frame.

Dylan Carnahan:So it kind of be done, have a batch of kind of mouth mouths that they can kind of just put on there. So at that point, there's like less subjectivity. You're just going to throw that on there.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Yeah, you're really following the instructions for that because also sometimes it'll be like a brow piece and a lower face piece. So if you've seen puppets before that have like a seam line around their nose or their cheeks and their eyes, like it's because they've replaced like the whole lower face in case like they needed some cheek movement also with like the mouth movement or if the eyebrows are also doing something different.

Dylan Carnahan:It sounds like you're really grateful for that software coming out after Coraline.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Oh, yeah. It quickly became industry standard, like very, very quickly. Yeah, because before that came out, when we were working at like the furniture company, it's like you could do all that stuff. But it was kind of like all clunky, different pieces of software that you were using. And, you know, stop motion isn't super popular. So the software was very clunky and well, sort of like the older like film makers, like doing special effects and stuff. You just kind of made the tool that you needed to get to where you needed to go. So like we see Framed Thief, which was black and white, and it was hooked up to a little security camera that was running live footage that you then put in the viewfinder of the camera. And so you have this very grainy picture from the viewfinder of the camera to your computer projecting like this tiny image of like what this character looks like when you move it. It was very hard to like figure out what you were looking at with that one. Yeah, it's like very also, you know, the digital age has progressed significantly since then. Yeah, cameras have gotten much smaller. This, the software that we're using now that we're talking about Dragon Frame had like everything that you need in it. So it's like you can do the track reading for the talking, if you need to animate the camera and you have like a motion control system, you can animate the camera within the software, you can animate the lighting from the software. So they've made it a lot more user friendly than it used to be. It's like it's all sort of like plug and play, whereas before it was like you probably had to like do your own. You had to develop it yourself. Yeah, yeah.

Dylan Carnahan:You kind of had to cobble everything together. And you're saying like, especially being a kind of a niche, you know, animation way. It's like, yeah, every and someone's like, I need this done. Therefore, they kind of did have their own way of doing it. But no one kind of had some formal software that was kind of bundled a lot of these things together. And now you do have that. And it's greatly beneficial.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:And it actually has changed the game in other areas, like in terms of like motion control and stuff too, because other people are making motion control rigs for shooting differently, still with the same cameras that we're using or a smaller video camera for a more independent filmmaker or photographer doing time lapse photography or something. But we can use those because Dragon Frame is so ubiquitous for stop motion that these makers of the motion control rigs know that if they can sync up with Dragon Frame, that then they're more marketable to folks who are shooting stop motion in a more independent way. So there used to be these massive motion control rigs that were like, they're still one off, beautiful gigantic machines for doing large cinematography shots. But we get to use a much smaller rig that can still perform pretty well, considering how much cheaper it is for us to be able to use it and that it can still talk to the same software is also pretty awesome.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. Well, you mentioned about some job delegation when it comes to these various aspects of animation, to the uninitiated, what are some of these jobs and what are their responsibilities?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:There's so many jobs. So there's departments and within those departments, there's like a hierarchy, all these different titles and roles. And so I can speak for the animation department. This is what I'm most familiar with. And it's like starts with like the animation director is like the head of the department. And they sort of they'll visit each stage with the director and talk to the animator about the shot coming up, ask them if they need anything. They'll also be a part of meetings where like all the departments watch the episode together. And then the animation director will be like, Oh, can we do this instead? Because it's not physically possible to do what it's in. These are tech meetings where all the heads of department are there. So the animation director. Yeah. So that way you have everyone with their specialty offering.

Dylan Carnahan:We've got a cross-functional team meeting.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:We're like trying to brainstorm how this impossible shot. You know, the animation director is calling out like this isn't physically possible. Now you have like art director, the like DP, the director of photography, you know, the VFX supervisor, the head of puppets, the head of costumes all in there trying to think about like the little parts and pieces that are making up the shot and making it so complicated to like aid in what the animator is going to get in the end. Right. And then so to make it quick, because we can talk about the rules all day. It's like animation director and then below them would be like the lead animator. And it has all different kinds of titles because I don't know why. It will be like supervising the animator, lead animator, whatever else. But the lead animator will sort of be more in charge of just the animation and making sure that like all the other animators are staying on model for different characters or coming up with the way different characters act. And then there's like the animators do all the animation. And then there's, you know, animation assistants. There's also the animation coordinator up there somewhere who helps with like managing, you know, if an animator calls out sick and stuff like that. They're also the production liaison. So like they're directly talking with production. And so like some of these like hierarchies, they cross all of the departments. So like in the art department, you know, you have the art director and maybe the production designer sitting on top. Sometimes we don't have a production designer. The production designer would also talk to like puppets and costumes because they're kind of the eye in the sky for what all of fabrication is going to look like. Moving forward and maybe even to VFX and the DP, because like it really is the overall look of whatever we're working on.

Dylan Carnahan:It's kind of like a horizontal org structure.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:So and like everybody's just kind of like caked in across the top and then they all have a tree below them. And there's usually like a leader to especially if like in the department is like a little bit more complicated, like I was in the art department. So it'd be like scenic painting is a whole group. Then you have set dressing as a whole group. And then you have building as a whole group. So and even those can fracture into smaller leads and stuff, depending on how complicated your project is and how specialized certain things are for that project. And same thing like puppets. You know, you can have people who specialize in hair or molding and casting or the sculpture side of things or 3D printing or 3D modeling, because there is a lot of like, you know, 3D computer work that also happens in stop motion. And then in costuming, there's a whole range of different skill sets with soft goods. So, you know, there's a whole other like tree in there. The effects, you know, sometimes you have to make 3D models to build out areas of the set that you can't keep building on. So, and also just compositing. So there's like so many aspects of the effects in post and editing and all of that kind of stuff. Sometimes it's all in house. Sometimes, you know, you go to different houses for different things. Like, I know it's more common in the UK that they have like fabrication houses that create like all the fabricated assets for something and then they shoot it elsewhere. But in the States, they tend to be all in house. I think I covered my... Oh, and then, sorry, I missed camera and lighting, which is like on stages. You have the DP who's basically in charge of, you know, what the look of everything on camera is. And then they have specialists for, you know, how the electricity is run and how the lights go up and who's touching the lights and how do they arrange them and who handles the camera and the lenses and all of that. So it's like everyone kind of has a specialty in this whole process. And then you have the production team who's basically just talking to each individual like communicator on the coordinator level or the production manager level and the heads of department level. So all of those people are your communicators across the board and they all communicate to production. So they can keep track of your overall schedule and whether you're on budget, whether you're on time, and how far out of sync are we with what we said we're going to do and when we're going to land.

Dylan Carnahan:You get into all that good project management stuff, right? Especially the timelines. And that has its own hierarchy too over each individual project.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:And they all kind of have similar naming conventions. So that does help in each of those hierarchies.

Dylan Carnahan:You kind of carry that HR title again, that kind of different department, right? So you kind of have that synonymous.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Yeah, sort of like supervisor or lead and head of department and coordinator or manager. So yeah, those all kind of track in similar spots across departments. Yeah, it can be really big or it can be really small. Like Scott and I are our own studio, so we wear a bunch of different hats each. It's just the two of us. But we've worked on those teams that have 100 plus people.

Dylan Carnahan:So out of the, how do you, I guess, what's the separation of duties between the two of you? I mean, you got a bunch of different hats on. What are kind of the strengths? What are the strengths of each of you?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Yeah. We're very clearly split because when we're working in the big studios, I was in the animation department always. Alexis was in the art department. And it's like sort of the perfect blend because I think we also, we both started like towards the bottom and worked our way through both departments. So we sort of saw all the things that we have to know. And like as I would be animating, I'd be asking like the lighting people questions and stuff like that because I knew that at some point I'd want to do my own stuff. And I was more like concerned with making sure that I was communicating effectively to production. So my production brain was like a little bit more tuned in about like how to communicate budgets and scheduling. So it's like my skills were more in that reign of just like really highly organizational and fine-tuning math stuff to be able to communicate money basically. I don't know. It's a really silly way of saying that.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, you have to... There's something to be said. You have to kind of know what other people value and you have to learn how to communicate that. I mean, that's important. Whether we're reaching out to two people to talk about a podcast or whatever the case is, you kind of have to find those levers and be able to speak to those.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Yeah, Alexis is definitely like the... She's the front end person in this duo. Like she does a lot of the communication and... Like the design start. Yeah, like in a stop motion production, it's like you start with scheduling and budgeting and designs. Storyboarding. Yeah, and fabricating and stuff like that. And then at some point is when I'll step in and it will be like a lot of my responsibilities, which is like the lighting and camera stuff, the animating. And then we sort of both meet again at the end for like the VFX and the editing and that stuff. Yeah, because sometimes I like clean up shots as he drops them for me so that way I can keep on top of them and move them forward. But we don't really decide on any compositing magic until we're both together. And then you can kind of like brainstorm a little bit together, like if something's working or not working. And then, yeah, and then we also do our own sound a lot of times too.

Dylan Carnahan:It's great to hear kind of how you had two different areas. And again, you were able to kind of come up and get exposure to all these various different things and then come together with kind of these different, you know, things that you've been imprinted with to work on something together.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Yeah, yeah. Working in the studio system was like rough, but it was also very helpful for our skills and our careers. It's sort of like this accelerator that you enter that just like boosts everything very quickly because you're working a lot and you're working very quickly and you're learning from all the other people that are working around you. And so, yeah, we eventually got to the point where it was like, wow, we know enough where we could probably do our own stuff. And then you're also like deeply trying to remember, like how did I do that thing so long ago? And now how do I do it on my own when before I like handed it off to, you know, the lighting team or something. This time I have to remember like what pieces did they use to connect that light to this thing and it didn't blow the tiny light.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, the joys of delegation until then you're like, darn, I have to do that myself. You're like, what was that, right?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:You're like, I am the PA and the executive producer.

Dylan Carnahan:You know, for aspiring stop motion animators, what advice would you give them to get started and improve their skills? Outside of I know we kind of had some general things, but maybe just some general advice for them.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Well, one is just start. You don't want to drag your feet too long on just like the practicing part. There's lots of places you can look for just like beginner basics, like just kind of tutorial drills of like, oh, these are the things we need to start practicing. There's a lot of good books for beginner animators. Yeah, there's this animation book that everybody has, everybody who's in animation. It's Richard Williams. And I think it's called the Animation Bible or no, the Animator Survival Kit. Yes, but it is like the Bible for animation. It is. It's like it's basically all of the things you need to practice because there are all the things that you're going to get thrown at some point in your career. Actually, when we moved to LA and you're like, I've never done four legged animal animation before. Didn't you refer back to that? Yeah, it was funny because when I got the job in LA, I was joking with my friends like, oh, that'd be crazy if like I got there and I had to do like an animal walking or something like that because I'd never done that before. And as soon as I got there, I was on a show called Dinosaur Office, which was a bunch of dinosaurs like walking around and interacting. So I would bring the animator survival kit with me to work and like very desperately like study like how do you what leg moves first? Yeah. But yeah, I think what Alexis is saying, most importantly, for like people who want to get into it is is just to do it because it's like so easy to sit back and be like, well, I don't have this thing. So I guess I can't start. And then maybe you go online and ask people like, how do I get started when really like you want to do it if you're just starting and you want to figure out how to do it. You don't need to have the best equipment in your your final product doesn't need to be able to be screened on theaters, theaters and stuff like that. So it's like just do some experimenting. And I do find that sometimes when folks just want to get to that final project product to like they skip the part that is the most beneficial for them in the long run, which is just the like getting to know how it works. Like when you just want to get to the end, like you're going to be less happy with how it looks because you didn't practice all those skills to like get you to that performance that you really want. Or sometimes people get really focused on the like fabrication side, like I need a set, I need a puppet. And like if you're really drawn to those things, you can just make those things and go for fabrication. Like you don't have to then animate them if you are not that interested in animation. Because sometimes I find that too where like a lot of folks will get to the point where they're like, I'm animating this thing and I really hate it. Like animation sucks. And then they're like, but I really enjoyed making this chair and you know, this other thing. And it's like, well, that's a job too. Like you can do that part instead of the part you really don't make.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. I think there's definitely something to be said for, you know, enjoy the journey. Right? You know, if you're over here, you're doing something and you're laboring over something and it's not enjoyable, maybe pick the journey you enjoy. You know, and I think you pick up on that for people that don't enjoy that journey because you get that kind of, I don't want to learn how to fish. I want to fish kind of mentality. Like I just want that end product. Right? And maybe, you know, maybe because it seems cool or is popular, you know, maybe there's another journey out there that you can take that you will, you know, find satisfaction in that process. Maybe it is just making the chair or whatever the occasion may be outside.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:You can make a really awesome chair.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. You can. You absolutely can. Last thing here.

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:All right.

Dylan Carnahan:What can people do to find out more about the two of you and the work you do?

Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos:Our website is threadwood.com and you can find us at Threadwood for a lot of things and at underscore for some stuff. Yeah. We are all over social media. We try to keep up with all that stuff. So we are on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, or I guess it's X now. And we have our own website and it's all connected. In our little blurbs, we have links to our personal profiles if you want to see our separate individual artwork and stuff like that. But yeah, it's pretty easy to find us, I think. And we're on YouTube and Vimeo, everywhere that we can figure out how to use. We'll look for it there. We tried Snapchat once. I don't think that's set up for what we're doing. I couldn't figure it out. I feel like I just didn't get it.

Dylan Carnahan:We'll be sure to include all the links to the things that you've referred to, as well as the things that promote you and your accounts in the description of this podcast episode. I just want to say again, Alexis, Scott, thank you for sharing your time and knowledge today. I greatly appreciate it. That wraps up our conversation with Alexis and Scott. We talked about how speaking is animated, the different animation jobs available, and the difficulties you'll face when animating with clay. Go to this episode's show notes to see any resources Alexis and Scott mentioned during our episode. And lastly, subscribe to the Simple Questions Podcast to get notified when our latest episodes are released. Thank you for listening, and remember to keep asking questions.