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Attention Surplus Disorder (ASD)
January 6, 2006
while moon baby's in the hospital...
by sven at 11:59 pm
Tuesday and Wednesday I did a few more simple stopmo experiments. Can't let Moon Baby being in the hospital bring everything to a halt!
Tuesday night I went over to the studio; threw together a bit of 2"x2" pine scrap, masonite, and bronze (?) wire; painted it all white, and taped on a paper face. ...Voila! New puppet.
It only took about an hour to make; I consider it a throw-away. The masonite base is so I don't have to worry about tie-downs and walking for a while; it just slides around. The arms are too stiff to do much with... However, I did try something new: drilling holes in the torso, and weaving the strands of wire through -- a good idea that I'm borrowing from Nick Hilligoss. I also gave this puppet some fingers using very thin aluminum wire, just to get a feeling for what that would be like.
Earlier Tuesday afternoon I was brainstorming story ideas. When I was making this clip, I had this story germ in mind:
"a solitary artist [...] nightly looks at the stars, paints them and paints them, and ultimately releases a star into the sky from his own chest"
I liked the look of the puppet interacting with the paintbrush -- but it also turned out to be pretty difficult making it grip the prop. Puppet hands aren't people hands; that's something I'll have to remember. Maybe they'd grip better if I exaggerated the length of the fingers?
When the painter in the first clip is making his spiral line, that was drawn in with a black crayola marker. ...I wanted something without fumes! The look was so appealing, I decided to try something else with the markers.
The light in this second clip is pretty awful -- I've been doing my work on the livingroom floor again. Gretchin was typing on the couch, so I wanted to hang out with her. ...This experiment was a nice surprise for her when she finally looked up, too. :-)
I did this third clip the following night, after being out doing Artist's Way postering all day. Again, terrible lighting in the livingroom -- and I forgot to turn off the camera's auto-focus for the first bit. Still, this was my longest stopmo clip to date -- 363 frames @ 24 fps for 15 sec.
Like I said in my last post, I'm thinking now that the final project ought to be done animating objects rather than puppets -- hence the blocks. The blocks were cut off the same 2"x2" piece of pine that the artist puppet came from -- using a miter saw to get straight lines. I taped on photocopies of my face just to make them a bit more interesting. I chose to go with black and white because the Super8 final project will ultimately be shot on b/w filmstock.
My lesson while working on this clip: it's easy to make things zip around on screen way too fast! Move the objects in even tinier increments, and have them pause longer -- 24 frames per second is a lot of space to fill.
posted by sven | January 6, 2006 11:59 PM | comments (4) | categories: movies, stopmo
Comments
You must get yourself some fun-tac (AKA blue-tac). It's an animator's secret weapon for making puppets hold onto things. I couldn't have made Buster tip his hat without it! For even stronger holding power there's also sticky wax, and sometimes you might need to stick a pin right through the hand into an object and cut off the pin, or just wrap with very thin wire or thread. Lots o little tricks.
Posted by: Darkstrider at January 8, 2006 2:26 AM
Thanks for the tip! I'll pick some up the next time I'm doing my "stopmo grocery shopping" at Ace hardware.
I remember in your excellent tutorial on "Simple Wire Puppet Hands" that you were using sticky wax in place of epoxy putty for the purpose of getting good photos. Now that you put sticky wax in the context of blue-tac, I'm pretty sure I know where to find it: in the adhesives aisle. Sweet!
Posted by: sven at January 9, 2006 12:04 AM
Just wanted to emphasize on how great this is. You made me smile for the first time today (I hate getting up early ;)). Keep up the good work!
I read every post of yours ;).
Posted by: Hauke Rehfeld at January 9, 2006 1:56 AM
Thanks Hauke! Your comment made my day. :-)
Posted by: sven at January 18, 2006 12:34 PM