Above is a great claymation video made by four 17-year-olds during a workshop last summer. It is one of my favorites because of its great design.

Design Balance

They did a fantastic job balancing the styles of the background and characters.. The colors have a good contrast. And The three-dimensional clay looks good against the two-dimensional background.

Characters

All the characters have a simple structure due to the time restraint of the workshop and the fact we did not have any armature (skeletal reinforcements) for the clay to sit on.

The lack of armature means limited motion. They got around this by keeping the video short and having the photos be from the back/side. This angle limited the number of things that needed to move.

Eyes, mouth, tongue, both arms, etc. These body parts didn’t have to show motion because we don’t see them on screen.

Background

The use of the “crude” drawing as the cityscape is excellent. It gives the viewer an understanding of where this event takes place while not distracting from the main character.

If they had colored the background, it would detract from the action.

Possible Changes

The only thing I would have changed is the green notebook cover used as the ground. I like that it is a notebook and we can see the spirals, but the color was a bad choice. Green on green makes the action feel a little uneasy.

This may have been the artists’ intention. Which would make the choice not wrong, but a stylistic decision that is part of the creators’ vision.

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
-Scott Adams