"Minute Pikmin" Movie Blog Debut!

Thank goodness, it's done! The kids and I have been working on and off with this project almost the entire summer, but we finally completed our Pikmin claymation video. If you didn't see my gleeful Twitter post, here's your chance to see our work for the first time.

This really was a labour of love! You've already heard about our trips to Michaels (the craft store) to find the right shade of clay for Olimar's skin ... we also spent a great deal of time searching for something to use as a helmet (and a candy jar from Bulk Barn did the trick). This also involved a lot of manual labour making dozens of little Pikmin. The filming stage was a challenge because the children chose to film it outside so they could get the nature feel of the game. I even used a lawnmower all by myself to tame the grass and make it a length suitable for seeing our little figures. The lawnmower didn't help with uneven ground and toppling characters. It also meant we were limited to filming when the weather conditions were ideal (i.e. no rain and shaded on a certain side of the house). Our difficulties didn't end with filming. During post-production, it took a while to figure out how to gather and import audio. We used StoMo for the video and iMovie to edit it together. I downloaded AudioMemos for the sound. Originally we added the sound to the clips directly on iMovie but when we uploaded it to YouTube, it arrived without sound. AudioMemos created a .wav file I was able to add without issue.

Despite all the challenges (and the boy's reluctance to follow through, despite the fact that this was all his idea), we are all extremely proud of our accomplishment.