SET CONSTRUCTION

As with characters, a set can literally be made from anything. In fact, sometimes you don't even need to construct a set at all. The first film that I ever made was of a Plasticine character climbing out of a plastic box. I made the film on the floor of my bedroom, which wasn't ideal as I ended up with some unexpected results. Without realising it, I had inadvertently animated the carpet. As it happened the look was quite good, but it certainly wasn't something that I had planned. That early experience taught me a valuable lesson; anything that is within your set has to be under your control. Consequently items that you do not intend to move must be held firmly in place.

There are a couple of other "rules", which you must be aware of when making a set. The first of which, is that you will need to decide how to fix (usually temporally) your character to the base of the set. This is called tie down and there are several ways of doing this, including using bolts or pins. The best results, however, are achieved by the use of magnets, as they do not damage your set in any way. See the diagram (left) for a suggested method of tie down, using a pair of magnets. Also visit our online shop for more information.

The second thing that you should consider when making a set, is accessibility. You must ensure that your set offers easy access to your characters, which will make for more straigh tforward animation.

When it's time to animate, your set can be as simple or as complicated as you want. It maybe that you will use a computer generated image as your background, and that your set will simply consist of a blue screen. It could be, however, that your set is used as an integral part of the mise-en-scene (overall appearance) of your film and therefore requires a great deal of attention to detail. Whichever you require, I believe it is essential that you construct a robust set, as it will undoubtedly save time in the long run.