Claymation

Stop Frame Reflection Essay

I have just finished a stop frame animation project with my two partners, Tommy and Couran. It was about Juan Ponce De Leon. Who was an explorer who tried to find the fountain of youth and was unsuccessful. On his expedition he was shot by and Indian and died. This was a fun and difficult project, but it was worth doing. We also put it on You Tube for people all over the world to watch. This is the last part of my project; the project was very long and took a number of weeks.

The part of this project I thought was most fun was working with the clay and audio. I thought this was the most fun because we got to choose what we wanted our characters to look like and what we wanted them to say. We also added some music in the beginning and ending of our animation. That was also fun because the music kind of fitted the parts where we put it in. I liked watching the animation once it was done, because I thought we did an excellent job on the project and it makes me proud.

I thought the most difficult part of the project was trying to get all of the information about Juan into the animation. This was hard because our scenes weren’t very long and it was hard to talk about it in our audio part of the animation. But we did get most of the information we needed into the animation and it turned out better than I thought it would. Another thing that was difficult was getting all of our audio in the right place. The reason this was difficult was because we did our audio before our last scene. When we put the last scene in it moved the audio and we had to fix it.

The most important thing I learned while doing this project was to take your time and do a good job on every part of a project. I think if we had taken more time on our backgrounds, and done a better job on them it would have made our animation look a lot better. That is one thing I learned, and we I had done a better job on. The backgrounds we made were just slapped together so we would have more time for our animation, which made our animation look not as good as it could have.

Even though I am finished with my stop frame animation I still wish I could go back and do more on some parts of it. I did have fun on this project and I wish we could do another stop frame animation as a project because I liked it so much. But it was also very difficult and I would take more time on it if we did another one. I would choose to do it on something other than an explorer because it would be kind of boring if we did it again. Other than the backgrounds I thought we did really good on this project and if we do it again I will be sure to spend more time on them.

Coast Hike.

Last week our Adventure Ed. Class traveled to the Washington Coast for a five-day hike. There were many very fun and difficult things that happened on the trip. There were also some important things I learned while hiking on this trip. On thing that was hard to get used to was the food. We ate dehydrated food for five days straight, which was kind of weird. It was also hard to get used to sleeping on the ground in a two-person tent for five days. It felt very good to finally come home to a real bed.

The event that was the most fun for me was going swimming on the second day in the ocean and Cedar Creek. The reason I liked this the most was because I hadn’t had a shower in a while and it kind of cleaned me off, I think. It also got me awake after that long hike. It was also fun because it was so exiting jumping into the frigid cold-water wit the other guys. I was exhausted and sore from the hike and the swimming and warming up by the fire woke me up nicely. When I was washing my pot before we all swam I didn’t know when the other boys were going. It surprised me to look up and see everyone already in the water. I ran up to camp and stripped down to my underwear, then sprinted straight for the water. It was extremely cold but as I got knee high in the chilled, salt water Sam Lee tackled me and that got me used to the water quickly. It was a good thing Sam tackled me too because if he hadn’t of, I might not have gone in all the way.

The most difficult part of the trip was hiking in the rain. On the fourth morning I got up and it was still raining. I left my rain gear in my pack so it could get dried off before I had to put it on. We went down to the fire and the rain suddenly stopped. I left my gear in my pack because I didn’t think it would start again. We soon started hiking and we all hoped the rain wouldn’t start again. Not soon after the start of our march Mr. Sage spotted a Sea Lion sitting on the beach. It was cool to see one on land, and we saw that it had a bite mark on its flipper so we left it alone. About twenty minutes later it started raining again and I got soaked. The wind was behind us so we found a big rock to shield us from the rain while we got our raincoats and pants on. The reason I thought this was the hardest was because we all were freezing cold and soaking wet.

I learned that you always need to be prepared for the worst, and have enough warm dry clothes to last. The reason this would be important is because if you get wet and you don’t have extra clothes you will be stuck in cold wet clothes and be miserable the entire trip. You also need fire materials, to make a fire if it’s cold and windy. Another reason you would need fire is to cook food, boil water, or dry clothes. Those were the most important things I had on this trip. If I hadn’t had those things, this hike would have been one of the worst experiences of my life.

Even though there were a few things that were bad we all made it through and had a great time. I liked this trip more than the hike up Mount Pilchuck because it was longer and it taught us to be prepared for anything. This was a great adventure that I will never forget for the rest of my life. Sleeping in two person tents, eating dehydrated food, and hiking through the rain was all worth it to be able to go on a trip like this one. Hopefully when I get older I will go on that same hike and remember some of the things that happened to us on the hike in my 8th grade Adventure Education Class.