Pre-Final Claymation: Phagocytosis

The Name of our Group

Claymation is an animated motion-picture process using clay figurines that are moved and filmed so as to create lifelike imagery and motion (Encarta Dictionary, 2013). This task was given to us by Prof. Rutchelle Enriquez during ICT in Biology class. The concept must be related to Biology and must have a minimum duration of 30 seconds. Our group has decided to pick Phagocytosis as the concept and make HUCHAI Film as our group name. This is a concept of Biology wherein macrophages “eat” up foreign invaders and digest it with the aid of the lysozyme. The foreign invader near the macrophage is engulfed to the vacuole of which. Lysosomes will release enzymes specifically lysozymes to digest the foreign invader (McGraw Hill). Below is a video from Cellsalive.com of a macrophage engulfing a yeast cell, Candida albicans:

Wikihow.com has established tips on making Claymation and here are the following:

• Setting up 0.125 seconds makes the claymation 8 frames a second. To make a smoother claymation, increase the number of frames per second (read the warnings). Try 10 frames/second or 0.1 if you need a smoother animation.
• Try to move the claymen in tiny increments, taking exactly three pictures each time.
• The claymen shouldn't be very big; about two inches is good.
• Focus your webcam so that the animation is crisper.
• A mini tripod works very well if there is a place in the bottom of the webcam that you can screw it into.
• If your lighting looks bad because it is in color then make it grayscale in Windows Movie Maker by selecting all pictures, right-clicking on 'video effects', scrolling to 'grayscale' and clicking 'add'.
• It may take a lot of tries to make the movie clip size to 1/4th of a second. It usually doesn't work the first time, but follow the steps mentioned above. An alternative to this is to set the default picture duration to 1/4 sec before you incorporate your photos into the movie. Do this (XP version) from the Tools > Options > Advanced tab and set Picture Duration to .250 sec.
• Adding grayscale might not work the way mentioned. If it doesn't then you need take the finished movie file, put it back into Windows Movie Maker, put it into the time line and then add the grayscale effect.
• If you have problems getting your clay figures to not flop over, then make them a simple skeleton out of wire, it'll give them structure.
• In Claymation motion pictures, they take 24 frames (or photos) for every one second of film.

Here is also an example of our partial Claymation which we presented last Thursday, September 27, 2013:

The Last Part of our Claymation

References:

www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Simple-Claymation-With-a-Webcam-and-Windows-Movie-Maker
www.highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072495855/student_view0/chapter2/animation__phagocytosis .html
www.cellsalive.comEncarta Dictionary (2013). Microsoft Corporation (Computer Aplication).