1) It's not as simple as youtubers make it look
2) It's not a full-time specialism choice
When you tell your lecturer that you want to be a stop-motion animator and their reply is '..so what's your REAL job going to be?' it makes you wonder.
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Originally, you think that out of the three choices (CG, Stop-Mo and Drawn), Stop-Motion is going to be the easiest to learn and produce - I mean, it's just moving things about and clicking a camera right? Obviously the other two are more complex, when drawing requires artistic pencil skills and CG involves having a computer in your head?
Well that has turned about completely! Guess what? Stop-Motion is HARD! With CG, you learn a handful of button clicks and things will move (albeit not very well!) and the wonder of computer graphics will distract the viewer from the fact that, in reality, your animation is crap! The same goes for drawn animation to an extent, sure it's a bit jerky but do you know how many drawings they've done? Wow!
When it comes to stop motion, your not the only one who assumes it's easy - so the margin for error is gone! If it's only 'moving things about under a camera' the expectation is set pretty high - especially with the rise in homemade stop-motion videos on youtube - you sit and watch thinking 'I could do that!' Also, as everything is stop-motion is 'real' - i.e tangible in the real world - it is expected to look and act real. In CG and drawn animation, it's obvious that it's not real and makes no attempt to allude to such. With stop-motion, it seems that the illusion of life is far greater as the characters and the worlds they interact with ARE real in some sense - so the jump to the idea they have life is far shorter. This has meant that in order for stop-motion to compete with the magic of CG and Drawn animation, the level of 'real-ness' has to be near perfect.
Who said stop-motion was easy?
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