Book Animation

I worked out of order on my current 'Ordinary vs Extraordinary' project but storyboarded a long time ago to know what I would be doing and when. I always planned to open the film with the change between the growing of the plant with the growing of a beanstalk. I wanted to state the fairytale reference quite clearly at the start of the film so that the audience were aware that that is where the inspiration has come from so I decided to make the flwer and beanstalk grow from a book as if they are growing directly from the Jack and the Beanstalk story.
This was primarily set out to be a puppetry but on thinking about it, if I was to create this piece with puppetry I would need holes in desk to hide in and string pulling everywhere and I came to the conclusion that it would be neater and more interesting if I did it wit stop motion animation anyway.

I had never used stop motion before and really wanted to give it a go so I started out with some test runs, practising making the initial flower 'grow' out of the page. I did this by taking photos as I cut the shape out of the page and then as I slowly peel it away. My first attempt is above and it is fairly jerky and slow moving but I thought it was best to make these mistakes now and improve on them.
After about 4 attempts I seemed to get the hang of it and continued t do the whole beanstalk part. I took inspiration from old 60s B-movies with the direction of the animation having quick shots of rumbling pages and then tentacles breaking out made from the book pages. I wanted to build up the growth so that it does seem like this beanstalk is a big contrast to the little flower, that is shown quivering as it grows.
The actual beanstalk is a cloth sleeve that has ripped book pages stuck to it and then to give the effect of it growing from the book I cut a hole into the book and tucked the sleeve into it and then photographed it as it grew out.
For my first animation, I was actually quite surprised by it and I will definitely use animation again.