Stop Motion Animation of Falling

The Last Leaf

It wasn't easy to animate a falling leaf in stop motion. I recorded several reference videos, but realistically, a leaf would just fall straight down onto the ground, with no real interesting and dynamic movement. So instead, my reference is based on a falling piece of paper. And not too surprisingly, animating an object, even something as mundane and seemingly simple was incredibly difficult, especially if that object is something suspended and moving in the air.

Basically, the way I do it is animate it completely by holding and swinging the leaf in the air the entire time, like a string puppet. With my camera's voice command, I was able to shoot a photo for every frame without the need to press a button, allowing me to keep both hands controlling the leaf. For an object that's flat and very light, keeping it still in the right position was nigh-impossible. The biggest challenge for this assignment was shooting and animating all of the frames all in one shot from beginning to end, as returning to the precise position of the next frame would be far too difficult.

I started out by drawing an approximate line of motion loosely based on my video reference, making notes on which point to slow down, which direction to tilt and rotate the leaf, and then, after many many times re-positioning myself and my setup to a more manageable position and many many many more takes to animate the leaf, this is my result.

The final result was not too bad considering that it's my first try, and that my premise may have been a little too ambitious for me. And I doubt that was the most efficient method to animate what I was trying to do.

 

The tools of the job were very simple: chopsticks taped together for a longer reach, and suspending the paper leaf on each end to each chopstick. I also kept the leaf in a constant curved shape using a small metal wire, the kind used to tie plastic bags closed at the grocery store. And the basic tree for prop is simply cut out from Bristol paper.

After many many takes, I got a videoclip I can settle on, and afterwards, I can edit out the strings and chopsticks using Photoshop.

It was a challenge, but I'm looking forward to trying stop motion animation again. Maybe next time with a puppet character!