When my mom jokingly called me “boring” and said I needed hobbies, it stung a little. “School is a hobby!” I retorted, but deep down, I knew she had a point. My days felt like a routine, missing the spark of creative passion I used to have.
Growing up, I was a whirlwind of after-school activities. Soccer practice, art classes, guitar lessons, even Hebrew school filled my afternoons, and I always had my nose buried in a book. But somewhere along the way, life got busy, and those vibrant hobbies faded into the background.
One of my more unique childhood passions was claymation. I stumbled upon this quirky art form in a very 21st-century way: a stop-motion app on my old iPod Touch. Suddenly, my Playmobil figures, LEGO bricks, and plastic animals became movie stars in countless homemade films. My friends and I even had stop-motion competitions, vying to create the smoothest animation of, say, a plastic dinosaur majestically gliding across a carpet (I usually took home the imaginary trophy). After years of these fun, if somewhat messy, experiments, I signed up for a real claymation camp at Glen Echo Park when I was twelve.
That camp was a revelation. On day one, we dove right into sculpting our characters. The rest of the week was a collaborative whirlwind as we filmed an epic tale of an alien invasion on a beach. Each camper’s creation played a part, and we took turns painstakingly moving our clay figures frame by frame, adding sound effects to bring our story to life. I still remember the thrill when my character was given a line in the movie!
I completely fell in love with claymation that week. However, as seventh grade approached, bat mitzvah preparations took over my schedule, and my claymation dreams were quietly shelved. This year, though, spurred by my mom’s “hobby intervention” and a genuine desire to reconnect with my creative side, I decided to set myself a challenge. I was going to direct my own claymation movie, from start to finish.
DAY 1: Clay and a Blank Canvas
The excitement of revisiting a childhood hobby was palpable. A tiny part of me even dared to dream of creating a masterpiece, maybe even discovering a hidden career path. But first things first: supplies. A trip to Plaza Artist Materials & Picture Framing was in order, and I came home armed with the essentials – two hefty blocks of clay. It was time to get creative! But the claymation ideas weren’t exactly flowing as freely as they had in my childhood.
I found myself in our somewhat-dreaded basement, surrounded by… well, let’s just say it has character. For a good thirty minutes, I just sat there, staring at the clay, wondering where to even begin.
Slowly, my set started to take shape. A simple white shoebox became my stage, and a LEGO structure emerged to stabilize my phone. I had no plot, no clear vision of my current skill level, but I decided to just dive in and let the clay guide me.
My starting point? A blob of bright yellow clay. I opened the “Stop Motion” app on my phone, placed it in the LEGO stand, and began. The app’s overlay feature, showing a transparent image of the previous frame, was incredibly helpful for judging movements and keeping the camera steady. I set an interval timer, and the app automatically snapped pictures every few seconds.
I began with an empty set. Then, frame by frame, the yellow clay blob crept further into the shot. I tried to make it look like it was rolling, but the clay was stubbornly uncooperative, refusing to stay exactly where I positioned it. Frustration started to creep in.
Once the blob reached the center of the frame, I hit a creative wall. What next? On a whim, I decided to split the blob in half. Frame after frame, I’d pick up the clay, make a deeper and deeper indentation, until it became two distinct blobs.
After what felt like an eternity, I called it a day. The result? A grand total of six seconds of footage, born from forty minutes of work.
The lighting was inconsistent, shadows danced across the scene, and my thumb made cameo appearances in a surprising number of shots. But it was late, and I decided to take the night to reflect, shadows and all.
DAY 2: Yellow Men Take Center Stage
Day two dawned with a surge of confidence and creative energy. I set up my phone in the stabilizer, carefully aligning it with the position of the last shot from the previous day. From my blobs of yellow clay, I sculpted two little figures, channeling memories from my claymation summer camp five years prior. Body and legs from one piece of clay, a “u” cut to create the legs – the process was coming back to me. Okay, maybe my clay-men were a bit short, a little bulky, and perhaps slightly pyramid-shaped, but I was still proud of them. I gazed into their tiny black dot eyes and prepared for the day’s production.
Their mission: to walk into the frame, smoothly and convincingly. Between each frame, I gingerly moved their legs back and forth, inching them closer and closer to each other. But clay is a fickle medium. Legs kept detaching, and the figures frequently toppled over before I could snap a picture. Finally, after much patience (and a few near-meltdowns), I finished the sequence and watched the video. Relief and a surprising amount of pride washed over me. The blobs of clay actually looked like they were walking!
I watched the short clip over and over, and despite the obvious sloppiness and my ever-present shadow, you could roughly make out what was happening. The next day, I excitedly showed my friends, proclaiming, “This walking scene is totally my favorite part!”
DAY 3: Introducing the Yellow Cat and a New Adventure
For the final day of my claymation challenge, I decided to shake things up. Goodbye basement, goodbye white shoebox, and farewell to the somewhat grubby yellow clay I’d been exclusively using. It was time for a fresh start, a new movie, a new set, and new characters. Enter: a red man and a yellow cat – a dynamic duo, iconic and original (or so I thought at the time!).
This time, animating the walking motion felt less daunting. I made the red man’s legs longer, which made them easier to manipulate between frames, though they still had a tendency to crumble after each step. To minimize the walking, I introduced a large LEGO truck as a prop. The yellow cat took the driver’s seat, cruising along my black kitchen counter-island, now transformed into a road. The red man rode in style in a small bowl in the truck bed. The storyline might have been a bit… abstract, but the movements were definitely smoother and more consistent. Watching the footage, I was genuinely awestruck as my red man character climbed out of the bowl and dramatically morphed into a clay snake that slithered off-screen. Unexpected? Yes. Impressive? To my beginner claymation eyes, absolutely.
Conclusion: Passion Rediscovered
My claymation movies weren’t exactly Hollywood material, but I was genuinely proud of them – and, more importantly, proud of myself. The characters, for the most part, moved in a way that made sense, and I could clearly see the progress from my first shaky animation to the more fluid movements of the later clips.
The process of making these mini-movies reminded me why I had put stop-motion aside in the first place: it’s hard work! But, like any skill, claymation gets easier and the results get better with practice. I learned practical techniques – how to better handle the clay, the benefits of longer legs on clay figures, the strategic use of props to simplify animation.
Most importantly, I rediscovered the reason I started this hobby years ago: the sheer joy of creation. It was incredibly rewarding to watch something come to life that I had made with my own hands. It transported me back to a time when my biggest passions were making movies and playing with plastic animals. And, much to my mom’s relief, I officially had a hobby again.
