Experimental back-lit claymation

At my stop-motion class a few weeks ago we watched a very unique animated film by Ishu Patel called Afterlife. The media he used was plasticine on a back-lit surface. The amount of light that shone through the plasticine depended on how deeply he carved into it, thus he was able to create images of interesting forms and depth.

I was intrigued by this technique and decided to try it out. My draft table has a glass surface that's meant to be used as a light box if one ever decides to install one. I never got around to installing one so I made do by sticking my overhead light under it and shining it upward. With Russ's help it actually worked out okay.

I slapped a big chunk of clay on the glass surface and used a rolling pin to flatten it into a thin layer. The light under the glass warmed up the clay well so I was able to work with it quite easily. I turned off all the lights in the room and started filming.

Clay provides a lot of flexibility when done free-handed, so it allows more artistic expression than some other forms of animation. I hadn't planned beforehand on the images to create so they were done on the fly. It took me about an hour and a half. It's definitely a different experience from the other media I've used so far and I liked it.

Here is the result of my experiment. Enjoy.