#kevinparry

Kevin Parry 

This is pure stop-motion. Love the guy.

Kevin Parry 

Kevin Parry is currently a very popular stop motion animator who gained a majority of his fame through short animation videos on the internet, where he would perform mind bending illusions using both stop motion and video editing. He was a key animator in The Boxtrolls, Kubo and The Two Strings and Missing Link. It was very refreshing to look at Parry’s work due to the fact that he does not seem to take himself too seriously and just seems to be having fun with what he does. This for me is very encouraging, doubled with his very simple to follow tutorials I believe Parry would be great source of reference if I do decide to take on stop motion further in my career. 

Parry’s YouTube channel is gold mine for reference of day to day activities that can be used both for stop motion or any other sort of animation. I already used his ‘100 ways to walk’ video in the past and continue to use his other videos not just for animation reference but also poses for drawings.

After looking at Kevin Parry’s show reel and other time lapse videos of him animating I have learned that I need to be more patience with every frame and constantly remember my 12 principles of animation for the best possible outcome. I feel like when I started stop motion I completely disregarded the principles and thought if just made sure to move the object in every frame that the final outcome would be fine. However, just because I’m experiment with a different style of animation it does not mean I should ignore the principles. I realised this when watching Parry’s video ‘ Elf on the Shelf does Fortnite Dances‘. He manages to create such smooth animation with only a few frames and highlights which frames were key to convey the right movements. He uses timing to show a leap which is rather springy and explains the back leg is important as it takes the weight and springs back up, when the leg makes contact to the floor it compresses the puppet and the frame after that is a slight bounce up to slow In and slow out. He explains that leg compression and those frames are the key to making that whole animation believable. This also a clear example of squash and stretch which i thought was impossible to achieve using the style of puppet he used in the video, but squashing just means reducing the object or puppet to a smaller size and then suddenly stretching him the most on the next frame.