A Sprout’s Wish
This is my second sprout themed Christmas card, my previous one was incredibly silly and featured a farting baby sprout. I was a little over ambitious and decided to have a go at making some 2D lip synced animation on top, although I didn’t quite figure out how to track is successfully to the stop motion. In my 2020 Christmas card, once again I set my sights on making something a touch beyond my skills, which is the best way to learn something in my opinion. I conceived of multiple scenes in which to tell the story of a sprout lacking in the self belief to achieve his dream of becoming a Christmas decoration. It’s a subject that’s close to my heart, as being a freelancer creator you often have to be your own cheerleader and can easily find yourself struggling with feelings of self doubt. I reached out to Ruby Bell, a great editor who also does motion graphics to help me with the animated text graphics, so I could focus on completing the scenes.
Our hero, the sprout was going to go on a journey to find his self belief. I knew that I wanted him to head to the North Pole in the hope of asking Santa to grant his wish, and would instead find a helpful Snow Man who might be Santa in disguise. I was heavily influenced by the film Elf, in my design of the set for the North Pole, although I also took my limited experience into consideration and aimed to make something endearingly simple, using materials I could easily work with and access from my local arts and craft shop.
I had absolutely no experience making puppets for animation, despite this I wanted to have a go at making the snowman move and appear like he was responding to the sprout. So the snowman was constructed out of cotton wool covered polystyrene balls and held together by long cocktail sticks and wire for the arms. I put some wire in the scarf to make it hold more firmly and pinned the hat in place. It wasn’t very easy to control. Since making this film I’ve learned a little more about making puppets and would certainly approach this differently, but in my enthusiasm at the time I was more concerned about the story and the making the scene look good.
I’ve animated food before and know it can be challenging for a variety of reasons, from the mess it can make to the degrading of the item you’re working with. As I needed to shoot this over a few days, my sprout did start to suffer. Due to the range of different angles I used, I was able to swap in a similar looking sprout for the last two scenes I shot. The gingerbread man was the real deal, that I decided to buy from a local bakery instead of attempting to make myself. The icing however was made with plasticine so I could easily make the various mouth shapes. I’m looking forward to learning how to lip sync stop motion to an audio track in the future.
