The right trousers

Pixilation is a stop motion technique where live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film, by repeatedly posing while one or more frame is taken and changing pose slightly before the next frame or frames. The actor becomes a kind of living stop motion puppet. This technique is often used as a way to blend live actors with animated ones in a film, such as in The Secret Adventures Of Tom Thumb by the Bolex Brothers, which used the technique to compelling and eerie effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixilation).

We watched some short films to get some idea of how Pixilation works, one of these, “Neighbours” is an award-winning 1952 short film by Scottish-Canadian filmmaker Norman McLaren.

"I was inspired to make Neighbours by a stay of almost a year in the People's Republic of China. Although I only saw the beginnings of Mao's revolution, my faith in human nature was reinvigorated by it. Then I came back to Quebec and the Korean War began. I decided to make a really strong film about anti-militarism and against war." — Norman McLaren

I found the film surprised me, I was expecting something for children and because of that was genuinly shocked by the violence in it. The pixilated technique lent itself well to the fight scenes as the jarred movement created by the stop motion filming created a feeling of agression and a sense of discomfort.

McLaren Based his film on a single idea, we used this method in the creation of our own pixilated video animation although it has to be said our idea was not exactly politically motivated, ours was based on the idea that our clothes are not inanimate objects but alive!! Really though it was just an excuse for Richee to get half naked!?

For the sound I wanted to mimic the jagged random feel of the peice. Glitch a dance music sub-genre lends itself well to this form of animation. I created the sounds using reason 3.5