Animação facial em stop motion por mecanismos internos de acionamento indireto: estudos de casos e projeto construtivo

Abstract

The stop-motion with puppets is distinguished from other animation techniques in that it occurs through real photography. It is a technique that requires a three-dimensional physical space, being more analogous to live-action cinema than these cinematographic forms that produce images through images. But, in live-action cinema, the characters borrow the bodies of the actors to materialize them. In terms of design, be it analog or digital, perspectivist or planar - anything is possible. But how expressive can be a character that is in fact an inanimate object? What can make a puppet an instrument for constructing a performance of subtle behavior? And more specifically: how can the character's facial expression be constructed by a movement system that offers maximum control to the animator without losing the specificity of stop-motion with hybridization of other animation techniques and/or live performance? The present study starts from the analysis of the few cases of facial animation in stop motion by internal mechanisms of indirect activation and contemplates the design and development of a prototype of an animable head in this modality, in an approximate scale of 1:5 using the hydropneumatic technique. For this, were applied miniaturized artisanal manufacturing techniques assisted by subtractive and additive digital fabrication resources.