Walk-on Part

In the subterranean, after-hours world that is stop motion animation, I often hear agonised screams on  the wires as people desperately try to get unwilling puppets to enact convincing walk cycles.  It's hard.  Really hard.  Many of us take walking for granted and have done so for so long we don't know any better, but imagine yourself an infant again.  You've never put one foot in front of the other.  You don't know how to balance on two points, you don't even have an inner ear!  Then imagine you have no muscles and you begin to see the problem....

Sometimes, though, I think animators of all disciplines place too much emphasis on walking.  Seriously, how many other kinds of movies do you see people walking around a lot.  Because audiences predominantly take walking for granted, movie makers seldom think to incorporate legs into a shot let alone focus on the action of walking across a room.

This clip is from an earlier project.  Seventeen minutes of animation in which there's just under 40 seconds of walking.  I seem to have got away with it.

I have found it's far better to go to the riggers department (my old Meccano set; it lives under the sofa) and see a man about a device that bobs your puppet up and down on a stick, the way a normal puppeteer would do it. Then you can shoot the whole scene quite happily in medium and close up and never have to do any hard work.

I have a notion in future to do a jazz dance routine - but it won't be on this film.