San Francisco

Sorry!  I haven't posted in an eon I know.  However I have a fairly good excuse.  Wilst finishing off the film, which is inches away from completion, I got a new job.  A job working on a stop motion feature in San Francisco!  So as you can imagine life has kicked into high gear.  Starting a new job in a new city has been one of the craziest things I've ever done.  So far so good.  I promise I will post some new stuff as soon as the film is done.  Cross your fingers it's soon!

My Film is a Talkie!

I've been working away on getting the film done and here is an example of what the mouth is gonna look like. I did some experiments to see how a traditional boil would look.  I found it to be a little too distracting for the style so I've gone with just a plain traditional 2d style.  It still has some movement and life but now it's easier to adjust to the mixed media.  I'm animating this all in flash and redrawing the mouth frames, but I've established symbols for the teeth so that the skull physics still works.

Me!

Portrait by Ian Kuba

Soo It's been a while since I tore down my set and started doing post production work and I thought I would post this.  A friend of mine, Ian Kuba, has just graduated from Senaca's photography program but before that he came by and shot some sweet stills.  I don't normally like being in front of the camera so this was a little bit of a stretch for me.  Thought you guys might like to see the size relation too.

Clip

So, because so many of you asked, here it is, a clip.  There's still no post work and the lips are still to come but I think it gives a feel for how the whole film will look.   Enjoy!!

A Treat

Its been a while since posted so here's a treat for you guys.  I love this shot!!

The Forest

Hey everyone, this is the last set to appear in my short.  As you can see its not quite finished still needs a little post and I'm hoping the sound of birds and foresty stuff will sell this.  I build the trees out of foam by sculpting them with an exacto  blade.  Then painting them in gray paint.  Getting close to finished the shoot, I can almost taste it!!

The Void

Here is a still from a recent shot.  Things start to get scary and the world around Tip begins to change a disappear.  Again a pop of color brings the story together.  The Crib prop was made by Chris Pounds and the teddy bear by Amy.

Adjusting to Ones

Shooting on ones is definitely and adjustment to twos.  Ones or twos the animators eternal debate.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, well its easy enough to find out.  It's kinda boring unless your an animator but it basically has do to with how many frames are displayed per second of footage.  Having worked mainly in television (they like two's cus they think its faster, but that's another topic) I had little to no experience with timing on ones.  I shot on ones a little in school but was shocked to realize what a big change it would be.  In fact its taken me several weeks of shooting non stop to feel like I'm getting a hang of it.  It's kinda like learning a new tool.  You may be an expert at painting with water colors but as soon as your try to learn acrylic everything you know about color theory goes out the window, temporarily.  It just takes time to adjust.  Above are just some still of key poses from a shot I animated this week.  As you can see my amazing lighting team has outdone themselves again and with limited resources too.

Color

So when it came down to deciding the look of my short I felt really strongly about letting the colors tell the story as well as the design.  The gray palette is designed to really punch out the colors when then show up.  Each lighting change directly correlates with a twist in the story as well as just looking pretty.  A red light, meant to look like emergency vehicle lights, passes across the screen repeatedly in this shot.  We achieved this look by moving a red gel from screen right to left in front of a directional light.

Story Boards

Here is a taste of my storyboards.  I played it hard and fast with my boards, sometimes going really rough.  I knew that I would be the main person referencing them aside from my Producer and DOP and kept them very simple.  Most of these frames have changed, once the puppet and camera were in place, but they are a good way to see where I'm going.

Face

I decided to do a really simple design with the face, round eyes, triangle nose, so that when it came down to animating I could push the expression as much as possible.  Knowing that I would be doing the mouth in post made me realize that I needed to get as much emotion out of the eyes and brows as I could.  Here are a few still from a close up dialogue shot.  When the mouth is added the expression will become more defined.  The brows and lids are both sculpted frame by frame in clay.

Lighting

So as you may or not know stop motion is a lot like live action in the sense that lighting is a huge deal.  It can make or break the look of a production.  Here is my team of awesome lighting tech's.  Dan Magnus, Sean Harvey, and Craig Hornby. This is from our first set of tests we did to establish the look of the short.

Close up

Here is a still of Tip from a close up I shot last week.  As you can see she has no mouth, the lipsyc will be added in post.  I want to animate the mouth with a traditional 2D look, giving the lines a little boil so they always appear to move slightly. 

First Shot on "Stuck"

I've been shooting like mad and here is a still from the very first shot I animated.  The puppet is partially ball and socket, partially wire.  The armature was built by Graham Read and the sculpt was done by Monique Knisley.  The hair and costume was made by Molly Grundy.  I built and designed the set with help from Dan Magnus, Craig Horby and Chris Pounds.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Character Rotaion

This is the character rotation for TIP.  She is the main character in the stop motion short I am currently shooting.  The story revolves around a young girl (Tip) who finds herself trapped in a small room.  She soon comes to realize that all is not normal when the room begins to display supernatural elements.  She must discover the nature of the room before she can escape her prison.