When I decided to make a stop motion animation

It was in July 2024 at FEFICC in São Paulo that I premiered my first stop motion short film. And this invitation completely changed my life!

In my previous post, I shared a bit of my personal story and how March 2024 was the beginning of major changes. So then, I was determined to reconnect with my passion: Cinema, and decided to make a short stop motion film by myself, with the limited resources of an unemployed person with lots of free time. This always reminds me of that Parks and Recreation scene where Ben spends weeks on his stop motion only to end up with just a few seconds of footage. It's hilarious because it's true! Stop motion technique is animation through photos — you basically need to create all your miniatures, characters, sets, props and then animate, frame by frame, each movement.

To understand how many photos you need to take for your project, you need to understand how many frames are in a second. The cinema standard, and how most live action films we see in theaters, is 24fps — that is, 24 frames per second. So a 3-minute scene will have a total of 24 × 60 x 3. However, for stop motion animation, you can choose to have fewer frames or not. This will influence the fluidity of movements. 24fps was established as standard because it's the ideal amount for our eye not to notice the transition from one image to another and have the sensation of seeing movement in real time, aka what we now call a film. Yes, a film is nothing more than a sequence of images played very quickly.

This brief and terrible lesson was just to explain that to make a 3-minute short in stop motion I needed at least 4,320 photos. In my inexperience, I might have used a bit less. My calculation was based on 18 photos per second. But still, it's a lot of work and detail. I chose not to use any digital animation and do everything manually, which created extra work. Because I didn't have a studio space, but only free space in my bedroom, I opted for the smallest possible size for my characters and sets. The characters have an average height of 5cm. And they were all built with wires, clay, thread, and fabric. The sets were also made of paper, cardboard, and popsicle sticks. I wanted the film to have this handmade feel and for the base materials used to build the sets, objects, and characters to be noticeable.

Creating the miniatures was the easiest part! At least for me. The animation and photography part was the hardest, as I needed to maintain consistency and fluidity of movements, framing, lighting, focus, and interaction with objects so that when putting the photos in sequence during editing, I would have minimal work to do. It didn't work out, and I spent much more time than expected in editing to fix the capture problems. I had to make drastic decisions that would require less of my time, as my deadline was approaching. I started producing the short in February, refining the script and buying necessary materials, and finished editing two days before traveling to São Paulo to present it at FEFICC in July.

For those who don't know, FEFICC is Brazil's largest Christian Fiction and Culture Fair, conceived by author Sara Gusella — another girl from Belo Horizonte whom I greatly admire. It's simply an incredible place for those who want to meet Christian authors and creators and their respective works. Simply a paradise for those passionate about books and culture! And no, this post isn't sponsored, I wish! hehe... But if you're interested, you can follow the official profile on Instagram and prepare to participate in the 2025 edition in São Paulo from July 16 to 19.

Anyway, back to my short film. The most interesting thing about this whole process is that I had already planned to start preparing the short film and, when meeting with Sara at a mutual friend's wedding, I mentioned I was working on the short. Note that when I commented, I was still in the planning phase and hadn't even bought all the necessary materials. And then, from that comment, she invited me to premiere the short at FEFICC and give a lecture about Cinema. If it weren't for my decision to reconnect with Cinema, this door would never have been opened. And this personal challenge I set for myself taught me 3 precious lessons.

1 - Challenge myself constantly, testing my creative limits.

I learned to lose the fear of making mistakes, which I had developed over time. Some professional experiences marked me negatively and one of them was the constant demand for perfection; I've always been a detail-oriented person and even a bit too perfectionist, and working in an environment where missing a comma in a film subtitle was grounds for the death penalty didn't help. I ended up creating a huge aversion to mistakes and, without realizing it, this was killing my creativity. If you don't know, creativity needs permission to make mistakes, and the art of cinema has basically a 99% chance of everything going wrong. You bet everything on that 1% and create solutions to problems as they appear. If the environment you're in, whether it's a company or your own head, doesn't allow you to try and fail, you stop focusing on the 1% and focus on the 99%, which only generates frustrations and a pessimistic outlook on everything. Remember that to create something new you need to risk and bet everything on the 1%. That's what makes you test your limits and be creative.

2 - Trust in my ability to learn something new.

It's impossible to know everything before starting something. And that's why being able to trust in your ability to learn something new is important. This is what makes you a fearless and bold person. I had worked with stop motion only once in my life before doing this project and it was much simpler and poorly done than this one. But I wanted to try, wanted to prove to myself that if I have a goal I can pursue it and make it happen, even if it's not perfect. I was like this in college and when I started working and, again, I was losing that determination. But I knew that if I committed myself gradually I would regain that confidence. I think we all have a degree of boldness within us, we just need to find opportunities that allow us to act with confidence and see our boldness flourish.

3 - Rediscover my talents and dreams.

Adult life isn't kind, suddenly bills start arriving, personal relationships become increasingly complex, emotional wounds keep growing, and if we're not careful it runs over us with the force of a truck without brakes and kills our dreams. Everything becomes tedious routine and, in search of something to distract our mind, we surrender to scrolling the feed and consuming ready-made content as if it were a modern anxiolytic. That's why I needed something that would make me reconnect with what I genuinely liked and dreamed of doing. Without worrying about bills to pay. It's not easy to find that time, some call it a privilege to have time to do this. I partially agree, yes it was a privilege because I could invest my time in something that wasn't giving any financial return and I still had a roof to live under and food to eat. But I don't see it as a gift, because it cost me dearly to take that time. It cost my emotional and mental health. If I could advise you on something I would say to reconnect with your dreams and rediscover your talents as soon as possible, because your mental health is priceless. There's no salary that makes up for making you sick and leading you to self-destruct. Take advantage while your mind still has minimum sanity and take time for this, even if it's just a few hours of your day. Trust me, you won't regret replacing social networks or internet videos and streaming with something that helps you deal with your racing thoughts; ignoring them is not a good option, the ideal is to silence them, and for that you need to make an effort until you can feel peace being alone with your own thoughts without having the constant need to numb your mind with content.

It seemed like I was going to write something light, but I always end up returning to deeper themes. I think because everything is still recent, this subject is a recurring theme for me, especially when I see and know that there are people I know who are going through something similar to what I went through. It doesn't matter what you like to do — as long as it's not illegal and won't harm you or condemn your soul — I advise you to go for it. If what you desire is something bad for yourself, seek help, do therapy, seek God, but don't stay alone or isolate yourself; you may not think so now, but your life is indeed very precious and you do indeed have a purpose for being in this world.

I leave here the short film for you to see the result of almost 5 months of work, and maybe one day I'll finally edit the behind-the-scenes and share it here. Thanks for reading and see you next time!

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