8.2 Inside the Making of "Don't Litter"

The first step of the animation process was gathering materials. This was probably the worst and most difficult part of the process because it involved actively looking for trash (which is obviously gross). Since I don't smoke, I ended up finding the two cigarette butts on a walk home, as well as the used nib bottle. The rest of the trash was found via a dumpster dive in my suite.

Once I gathered the materials, a huge part of the process was figuring out how I wanted to arrange the trash within the frame (different placements depicted below). Since I already had an idea of what I wanted to do for the animation, really the main thing to consider was the placement of everything. The main "characters" of the animation were my fingers, so I had to figure a way to place the trash in a manner where my fingers could easily "walk" through the rubbish. 

 One thing I really wanted to do was add an iStopMotion preset background so that it would appear as though my fingers were on the beach. I though this would add more potency to the narrative, but I ended up going without the preset background because it interfered with the placement of my trash items (as shown below).

After I completed the animation, I really wanted to the add this sign at the end of the narrative to seal the deal. Ultimately, I ended up going without it because I wanted to let the message I was communicating speak for itself. Often art is a bit less impactful if you spoon feed the viewers the message your are trying to convey as an artist. In the case of this narrative, I thought it would be more appropriate to go without "beating the viewer over the head."