Master in Stop-Motion Animation

As a university course, the Master’s Degree in Stop Motion Animation provides unique training at the national and international level, delivered by a team of highly qualified multidisciplinary professionals that includes internationally renowned auteurs/animators with extensive experience in both the professional and educational fields.

Through a pedagogical approach, the objective of the programme is to prepare stop-motion animation professionals in both the authorial and technical sides of the discipline, so they can learn to create and articulate a narrative discourse, animate, experiment with the immense plastic possibilities, and construct conceptual and aesthetic proposals.

Animators of the future will develop the ability to move the audience through the eminently expressive, direct, three-dimensional and cross-disciplinary language of stop-motion animation, and to exploit all the available resources, both narrative and technical, thereby preparing them to become artists and versatile professionals in the audiovisual sector.

The programme is structured in three highly practical modules that cover the phases of stop-motion audiovisual production and culminate in a final project consisting of a short film.

This Master’s degree is targeted at professionals from the design, communication and animation sectors or general creatives who lack specific qualifications but wish to redirect their professional career towards stop-motion animation. A technique that is increasing its following day by day and provides clear career opportunities in fields such as advertising, film, video clip creation, video art and auteur animation.

Module 1 – Directing and producing animation

Module 2 – Specialisation in stop motion

Module 3 – Master’s degree final project

The syllabus includes a series of workshops with national and foreign guests who are experts in some of the programme’s topics.

Module 1 – Directing and producing animation

Practical analysis of the direction, pre-production and production processes specific to stop-motion animation, based on the comprehensive study of their cultural references.

The necessary knowledge will be provided to enable entry into a professional audiovisual environment that requires proficiency in stop-motion animation.

A stop-motion project will be developed and managed, covering all the production phases and the implications for the budget, with the aim of solving basic technical problems.

• Direction and production.
• Screenplay. Audiovisual narrative.
• Production, methodology and budget.
• Story board/animatic.
• Direction of photography.
• Soundtracks for animation.
• Character design.

Module 2 – Specialisation in stop motion

Theoretical-practical workshops will be carried out, including viewings and analyses of outstanding examples of each technique. During these workshops, students must experiment with the principles of animation and apply them to the various stop-motion techniques by completing exercises and guided practice in each technique and sub-technique.

Fundamentals

• Theory of animation.
• ‘Dragonframe’ (stop-motion software).

Character construction

• Structure/skeletons/rigs.
• Modelling.
• Wardrobe.

Staging construction

• Basic fundamentals of construction.

Animation techniques

• Animation of characters (watch video).
• Cut-out animation.
• Animation with sand (watch video).
• Animation in pixilation.
• Experimental animation.
• Paint-on-glass animation (watch video).
• Animation with light.
• Animation with rotoscoping.

Module 3 – Master’s Degree Final Project

Production of a final project (in groups of 3 to 4) which will require students to demonstrate all the skills they have acquired as well as their autonomy. This project must be presented and justified before a panel of expert professionals.

• Screenplay: proposals and the development of the definitive proposal.
• Production plan.
• Directing/producing the project.
• Monitoring of project animation.
• Final project editing.
• Preparation of the report on the project.