It’s closing time at Nina’s library. Goodnight, patrons!
Animated in Dragonframe 5, Edited in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Animated in Dragonframe 5, Edited in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Nina - Tierra Mason
Liam - Zenon Reece
Emmett - Teagan Brannan
Alan - Carter Baskin
Costume Assistant: Kate Stammler
Sound Consultant: Eric Law
The Library is my baby! It was a largely independent project that took place over the course of about a year (although about half of that year was spent in the Foley doldrums). Stop-motion has been one of my favorite things for more than a decade, but aside from a few small practice projects, I hadn't done it myself for a few years. Diving back into the world of stop-motion in full force was invigorating the full way through.
The story idea came from a playwriting exercise I heard in passing: No more than four characters, only one location. I knew immediately that if I were to do such an exercise, I'd set it in a library. The idea slowly snowballed over the next few days, and I knew I had to make it.
All my previous stop-motion was with LEGO, clay, paper, or some mix of the three. Set and puppet construction from scratch were both brand new to me, so there was a lot of trying, failing, and trying again as I went (I'll definitely never use quarter-inch foam board as a base material ever again). Most of the clothes and heads I sewed for the puppets took at least two tries, since I hadn't used my old manual Singer since I was a tween. The entire process became a way of gaining new crafting skills and refreshing old ones.
The animation was completed from start to finish in about a week– I'd been slow on construction and had to hustle before I left home for college. Even so, the stop-motion process was just as relaxing and meditative as it's always been.
