Live Art Research - Photographic Animation

The next step on from looking at animated paintings captured by photography, is to look at photography itself.

These videos take the concept of photographing each frame in an animation, then assembling them together to set it in motion. Each is presented differently, but each utilize the same idea of piecing together single frames as part of a bigger picture, which leads to a wealth of creative opportunities, as what each photo contains is open to adaption.

This first one shows the method clearly, piecing together individual imagery to form an ongoing motion piece. Each shot was set up separately  recorded in sequence, then run as one. It looks like the method of recording the images is actually by a video camera as opposed to a still one, but i'm sure a lot of time and money was saved in this way, being essentially the same thing anyway.

This second one doesn't so much have a narrative, nor do I think each individual frame is a single photo as it looks more like selected stills from video footage, and while that makes it a cop out somewhat for the method, the idea is still the same, and it allows the sequence here to drift seamlessly into multiple paths which then all come to a head at the end.

This last video looks like is also takes video footage as a starting point for recording the source material, but goes one step further in that it actually prints off each desired frame, and presents them in a way that makes the video what it is. The placement and assortment of each frame is what gives the video it's charm, and leads to some original and creative thinking indeed!

An interesting method that could prove quite useful, as even though the process seems basic and straight forward enough, harking back to the very roots of traditional animation as we know it, I think a lot of creativity can be put into what each actual shot contains, and also, as the last video showed, how they are represented and assembled. It might be worth looking into this method more, as it certainly is in line with my initial desire to not rely on After Effects to do the work for me.