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Clay Animation

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
By: Mildred D. Taylor

The Making of...
Chapters 3 & 4 in Clay Animation

The Making of Clay Characters by Chelsie

First, to make our clay animation characters we folded pipe cleaners to make stick figures the shape of our people that we chose. We learned that you have to put layers of foil to fill out the pipe cleaners stick figures so they were not so skinny. Then we had to crush a Styrofoam ball to make a head. The Styrofoam balls were round and heads aren’t round.  Next, we rolled out clay very flat and added the clay like a skin on our stick figure.  Finally, we sculpted our face and added eyes so they could pretend to see.   We found out that our feet were not strong enough for the clay figures to stand up straight, so we added big clumps of clay and put magnets on the bottom of their feet.  The magnets helped them stand up straight because we put the characters on top of a metal stage. Some of our main characters were Cassie, Little Man, Christopher-John, Stacey, Big Ma, Papa, Mr. Morrison, T.J, and Jeremy.

The Making of the Scene by Chelsea

     Our scene was made out of cardboard.  We drew clouds, lightning, and raindrops on it.  To get the raindrops to move we put clay on strings of fishing line then someone moved the fishing lines up and down.

     For the next scene we drew stores.  That scene was about the kids going to the Wallace Store because there was a fight.

To make the scenes we covered cardboard with white paper.  We then colored the paper so it looked like three stores with rain clouds and raindrops.

Animation by Thomas

     Making the movie was hard in some parts, and easy in others. The hard part was keeping the camera still and making the clay people stand because they where weak, and bony. We resolved that by putting more clay on the body.

      The easy part was working together with my friends Chelsie, Tabby, and Chelsea. They helped out a lot because I was the only boy in our group. girls at first but it was fun working with my friends.

       We switched roles to give everyone a chance to participate.  To make a clay character move you need to take three pictures for each frame.  This will make the animation look smoother when you put all of the frames together for a movie.  Don’t move the background or the camera, only the character.  To make it look realistic move one foot at a time to make a character looks like they’re walking.  Add narration to the movie by recording your voice into the computer and adding the narration into the sound track.  We used iMovie to edit our movie scenes together and add the narration and sound.

Brainstorming and Ideas by Tabitha

We got most of are ideas from other clay animation examples that we saw.  The raindrops were made up with clay. We made the scenery according to the book Roll Of Thunder Hear My Cry. We made the storyboard using organized pictures according to the scenes and used the script the write the words.  We put it all together and it was a success!