Stopmotion: Scene 2 Take 4

So, yeah. Over a month and I only have one more good take to show for it. I did two more takes in between this one and the last. The first one I hit the camera with my shoulder by accident and never could find the right position again. The second one, the puppet slid way down and I couldn't ever get him to get back up again. I don't love this one. It's passable I guess. It's better than the horrible first take. I'm going to try one more time to give myself another shot at doing it right. It's not just the stiff camera boom and pan. It's not just the awkward, slow animation, it's also that he slids down the whole time and I can't control where he pivots. It's very frustrating. A real professional would have a huge key green rig that holds him up and would just get taken out in post. I don't know how to do that. 

Stopmotion: Scene 2 Take 2

Yeesh. This is rough. The pan down and across are nice, but everything after that is a bit of a massacre. I also lost my fill flashlight on his body, which sucks. The batteries died or something. I ran downstairs and put in the other only two D batteries we own in it, but they didn't work either. Bulb might be burned out. 

Anyway! This was just a test run. I didn't think I'd come flying out the gate on my first try and nail it. I'm going to film this one four times or so to try and get it good. Or at least, not so crappy.

Stopmotion: Shot 2 test shot 2!

Well, I've failed massively at providing a blog that can help people on their way into stopmotion if I can't even be bothered to update it regularly. 

Here's the short version of what I've been up to. 

I spent weeks making custom legs and arms for SDS out of metal ball sockets and sandwiched between custom metal brackets.... They failed because the bolts would loosen themselves over time. He's a very small puppet, so lifting up the thick felt to access bolts and screws is very difficult. The solution KEEP IT SIMPLE. I went back to the original wire armature that I had replaced. It's simple and not much can go wrong.

I finished lighting the set! Keep in mind, the lighting has to match the establishing shot (done early last year). The pan from the establishing shot goes right into this shot. 

I used some old non-LED flashlights to help direct sunlight onto the foreground tree and help light SDS a little bit more. 

Above, you are watching my second test shot to determine length, get a feel for the timing, get a feel for the new camera crane etc etc. SDS doesn't have hands yet. They're downstairs awaiting a third and final coat of paint. I realized I needed his hands to bend 90 degrees to look more like he's holding the bag. I think I'll drill the bag down tomorrow and start testing the animation of him struggling with it. 

Tee hee!

Stopmotion: First set lighting!

  The ONLY thing left do do on the set is add more grass. Everything else I wanted to get done is done. What you're seeing here are iphone photos of the initial lighting setup. I delineate 'iphone' as it's important. Iphones don't like LED lighting and that's all this is. The actual colors aren't this overly saturated. I hung a lightweight metal L bracket (galvanized steel or something) to hang the backdrop with. The backdrop is a single sheet of 12' x4' white paper that has been very lightly dusted with grey spray can primer to create a sort of cloudy effect. Maria slowly unrolled the paper while I attached it with magnets to the rail. The lights are mounted to two more L shaped metal brackets. I'll have to find the actual name of them later. One bracket, or more accurately 'Rail' is hung from the ceiling with a string of color changable leds on them. That rail is set to the darkest blue that the remote has. The other rail is attached to supports just underneath the table. That rail is set to red for the rising morning sun. Even in these overly saturated photos I like a lot of what is happening. It definitely reads as early morning. I love the concentrated red glow from the faraway trees and how the black paper looks more like silhouettes than the closer trees!

A word of warning since this blog is here to educate and inform. The paper backdrop is actually the SECOND one I hung up! The first set of metal rails I hung with monofillament and ducktape. The monofilament was an okay choice as far as strength goes, but when you attach fishing line to ANYTHING with ducktape, it will very slowly slide it's way free. I came in the next morning and the entire backdrop had crumpled to the floor, metal railing and all! I hung the current ones up with picture hanging wire. Nothing will fall this time!!!!!

Stopmotion: Still at it!

We're at 4 months with this set build. It's almost done! I just need to paint the muddy water, add more grass, another row of trees on the very end, tie up the lefthand background perspective (not shown here) paint and hang the sky, and light the whole thing..... 

Well, it's almost, almost done....

Stopmotion: Barb Wire Fence

I'm working on the set for the second shot. I need barb wire fence and found that gluing tiny wire pieces to the wire fence works quite nicely! A bit stylized, but communicates the barb wire well!

Stopmotion: $64 Camera Crane!

   The next shot is complicated for a bunch of reasons. There's a real background, the camera movement is infinitely more complicated, I have to build a whole set. I'm sure the list is longer than I can think of right now. I spent last weekend building a camera crane from scratch. I need to pan down (finishing the establishing pan) then move the camera over and into the main character as he struggles to move the heavy bag of letters. I found a great video on youtube:

https://youtu.be/YF9FcSiL0Ho

edu Puertas has been a great resource! His videos are a well I've barely tapped into! I watched the one up above and simplified his version for my own purposes. Mine isn't controlled by Adruino's and engines, but it should (hopefully) serve my purposes. In fact, I'm hoping this will serve as my main rig from now on! It's all nuts and bolts I can tighten and loosen as I need. Everything seems smooth enough movement-wise.

I went to skycraft and bought bearings and steel square tubing, then went to Lowes and got a bunch of 3/4 inch wide aluminum bars. The rest of it is wood. When I assembled it, it became immediately apparent that It needed a really heavy base, so I cleaned and prepped one of the Train track steel plates I had laying around. I even JB welded lego plates to the bottom to make it level and now I can add and remove wheels whenever I want!

I built a 3' x 5' table and now I need to build the snowy forest scene on top of it!