For me, one of my favorite parts of stop motion is not even the animating or the writing, but actually building. I always say that my favorite stage is just fabrication. It's just sitting on a workbench, making a little thing out of clay or whatever. That just totally excites me.
I feel like there's a lot of drama in weather. It's something that's done really often in live action, so I figure, why not translate that to animation?
Having animation as this time-based medium made a lot of sense for me, and then stop motion was even more fun because it was so hands-on and physical in a way that I really liked.
I really like incorporating elements, and it's also difficult to do in stop motion, which means sometimes I run into problems.
I was always really fascinated with animation, but just in a way all kids are with watching Disney movies and all that, but I had no idea how animation was done.
I was one of those kids that always drew all the time.
One of the biggest things for me was driving two hours to the location everyday, and then having to lug out two carts of equipment alone, and I always had to consider - I was shooting on a beach - I'm like, "Okay, bring out the props first that no one will steal," because I have to leave it unattended for a couple minutes while I grab my second cart of things.
I played a lot of music all throughout my life, actually, but in high school I was in marching band and all the bands. So, I was big into music, I was big into drawing and sculpture, and all these different things.
I grew up camping with my family. We took so many trips. We had an RV, actually, when we were growing up. We did a ton of camping trips and went across the country.
The lighting changes were definitely the biggest thing and the biggest reason that people don't shoot stop motion outdoors.
