Glasgow Women's Library Project

Charlotte Mannya Maxeke

For my project for Glasgow Women's Library (GWL), highlighting the story of a woman from the suffrage movement, I decided to animate my video with a fun, experimental method I had barely touched on in the past. Stop motion is my favorite animation technique, and I have animated a lot of films under-the-camera. However, other than a quick experiment I made when I was younger, I had never animated with sand before. I decided that for my GWL project, I will animate Charlotte's story with sand, as well as spices that will add some color. I went shopping for spices, and bought bags of turmeric, red pepper flakes, citric acid, lentils, basil seeds, and coffee, and ordered bags of sand online. I made some loose storyboards where I drew the basic images I'd like to include in my animation, using the voice over GWL provided as a guide, but kept my mind open to experimentation that will arise while animating. 

Reference photograph of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke

Document I created for brainstorming purposes, with screenshots from inspiring videos
I found on Vimeo, and bullet points of materials and ideas for scenes

Notes/storyboards from my sketchbook

After animating Charlotte's story with sand and spices on the downshooter, I brought my clips into Premiere and began to edit them. I changed the speed of clips that need to be sped up/slowed down to fit with the narration, and made minor colour, brightness, and contrast adjustments. Finally, I added some sound effects from freesound.org to compliment my animation, such as crunchy sand sounds for sections where one image morphs into another, footstep sounds for when Charlotte walks on screen, the sound of clapping for when Charlotte gets her graduate's degree, or the sound of singing for when Charlotte sings. 

Screencaps from animation

I am very proud of how this animation turned out, and I had a lot of fun experimenting with my materials. It was definitely a challenge to animate with sand and spices, and there were many moments where I had to stop and problem solve how to successfully animate my vision. However, I'm glad I challenged myself with this medium, and I think I learned a lot from it. I hope I did Charlotte's story justice.