Nomination
With Stop-Motion VR, the project team uses Stop-Motion Animation to transport one of the oldest and most traditional methods of film production into the interactive world of virtual reality. One of the motivations for bringing two seemingly antagonistic technologies together was the team’s observation that, due to the simplicity and special charm of the animation method, stop-motion films and clips are still created and shared on the Internet even in the age of YouTube.
Based on the conviction that especially individual creatives and smaller creative teams would benefit from a simple and direct method to realize their ideas in Virtual Reality, the goal was to develop an easy-to-use and comprehensive workflow and an accompanying manual.
In order to be able to develop the workflow on the basis of real and demanding production conditions, the team at Babelsberg (Potsdam, Germany) cooperates with the puppet film production Laika & Nemo of the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF and the company merger Metropolis VR.
The technical developments in the field of processing real objects for use in virtual space were also a great incentive for the team to implement the project. Photogrammetry is a technology available for the digitalization of static objects that allows three-dimensional models to be reconstructed from rows of individual photographs. Since stop-motion animations are a series of individual static, photographed animation phases, this method offers an optimal technical basis for the development of a workflow.
Credits
The project was made possible with the support of MIZ – Media Innovation Center Babelsberg (Medieninnovationszentrum Babelsberg)
Denny Koch studied interface design at the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences and wrote his bachelor thesis on virtual reality there in early 2015. On the basis of the theses developed during his bachelor thesis, Denny taught a course on Presence in Virtual Reality in the winter semester 2015/16 on behalf of the FH Potsdam as a lecturer in the field of interface design. Parallel to his teaching activities, he co-founded the company SCENID in Berlin in 2015, where he works as an interface designer and in software and hardware development.
Johannes Schubert is a Berlin/Vienna/London based independent film producer of fiction, animation, and documentary films. Born and raised in Vienna, Johannes studied at Film University Babelsberg close to Berlin, where he passionately produced films that went to over 100 festivals around the world, won numerous awards, got cinema released all over Germany, and were nominated for the European Film Awards.