Mingran‘s Blog❤️

Final work-Slippery Little Guy

Length：20s

12 frames per second

Video viewing address：https://youtu.be/McP8-QykcqE?feature=shared

1.The concept of this animation

First, for the story creation: I started by outlining a rough plot. Since I personally love fun, slightly absurd stories that feel grounded in reality, I created this “little monster.”

In the original draft, the story begins when the protagonist (myself) suddenly finds a liquid-like, shape-shifting “monster” in my home. I try to catch it with my hands, but the little slippery guy always slips right out of my grasp. In the end, I tame the monster with a bag of potato chips.

In the original plan, I chose slime as the material for the little monster. Its general design was inspired by Ditto from Pokémon. For its eyes, I initially planned to use stick-on googly eyes.

However, during later tests, I found that slime was much too soft. Being transparent, it also caused constant changes in lighting during filming, making it easy to give away the effect. After many tests, I switched to using ultra-light clay for the little monster instead. This material is easy to shape and holds its form well without collapsing. I also changed the eyes to clay ones, allowing me to freely switch the character’s expressions and give it more emotional range

2.Shooting Process

I shot this on my phone using the Stop Motion app, right in my own home. To keep the camera steady, I built a simple filming rig to avoid any shaky footage. For lighting, I used indoor lights, which prevented any flickering or inconsistent lighting.

Before shooting, I sketched out a simple storyboard for the animation, which gave me a clear shooting process to follow during filming.

Since there are two scenes in the video, I decided to film them separately and then edit them together later.
During shooting, I ran into quite a few problems. For example, some characters appeared stiff when moving and lacked that smooth, flowing effect.
To fix this, I studied some animation references and reshot many times until I was satisfied with the result.
Through this process, I also learned a lot of practical skills for making stop-motion animation.

3.Post-editing

After filming all the clips I needed, I imported them into an editing software to edit and dub the video. I used CapCut, a Chinese editing app, which is really convenient! It also has a free audio library that allows me to choose suitable sound effects for the characters.

I think the hardest part of this process was finding the right sound effects. I had to look for lots of interesting sounds to show the traits of the slimy little monster, such as squelching sounds, rolling sounds, and all kinds of funny noises. I compared many options before finalizing the sound effects used in the finished work.

4.Reflection

Making this stop-motion animation was a meaningful learning experience. I planned my shots with storyboards and built a simple setup to keep the camera steady. Although I faced issues like stiff character movements, I improved by watching examples and reshooting many times. Using CapCut for editing and sound design was efficient, but choosing suitable slimy and funny sound effects was challenging. Through this project, I mastered basic filming and editing skills and understood that patience and repeated practice are key to creating smooth and lively animation.