This is a long post, but I would appreciate it if you read the whole thing.
I have been absent from this site for awhile now. I was exploring other animation disciplines. It started off when The Animator's Survival Kit inspired me to experiment with hand-drawn cartoons. Although I loved not being limited to the laws of the real world, it was too much work for someone like me who doesn't draw very well. I then tried using Anim8or, simple 3D freeware, and then Blender, a more complex free 3D program. Playing around with this was fun for awhile. The best part was making scenes. This was more like stop motion than I expected, since things were laid out in 3D space and filmed later, instead of being drawn in a cartoon world. Again, I was not limited by reality. In stop motion, if I needed a light, I would need to look for a desk lamp on sale some place, and probably ending up having to duct tape a flashlight to my bookshelf and then have it fall off mid-shot. These frustrations do not exist on the computer; all I have to do is click. I also like being able to change animation that isn't working. But the computer is far from perfect. I always ended up with great (I think) storyboards and unfinished films. 3D is just not a one person thing. Modeling, rigging, texturing, animating, and rendering are all necessary elements of a production, but they are difficult to perfect. Learning enough about all these subjects would take a lot of time. (Note: If you would like to try out 3D, get Blender, all the tutorials you can get -the user interface is unorthodox and many parts of the manual are outdated, and search for Ludwig, a free fully-rigged and very expressive generic character.) Another problem was that almost everyone in 3D is hoping to get a job. Instead of trying to make a great film they demonstrate their skills in modeling, animation, etc. I'd love a job at PIXAR too, but for me animation is primarily a hobby. The last straw was when I dropped a piece of paper and thought to press CTRL+Z. I knew I was spending too much time on the computer.
I took a few days off from the computer. When I got back on, I was searching for a free video editor (tell me if you know of vista compatible video editing freeware with alpha channel and chroma key). I looked for a webpage on stop motion software I had saved. It was from StopMotionWorks, a site I used to visit daily. I returned to that wealth of stop mo info, and remembered why I liked it. Then I went to Brickfilms.com, another website I used to enjoy. Their LEGO movies showed me why I love stop motion. The filmmakers are mostly amateurs, sometimes even kids, that simply want to tell great stories and experiment with directing (no offense professionals, you guys are wonderful teachers and inspiration). Nobody is trying to win a job with flashy demos of their skills in a specialized area. Building and design techniques are a fun part of stop motion, but story is always paramount. I am going to return to stop motion.
Note: I have also used Anime Studio. It is a lot of fun and easy to use. I would definately recommend it for films that have humans. It is sort of expensive, but you might want to give it a try.
