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artist's way open studio (december)
December 19, 2006
stopmo teaser: dad gesticulating
by sven at 12:26 pm
Here's a little taste of the animation I've been doing.
The eyeballs are solid; the pupils are made from black Van Aken plastilina. After enough handling, the plastilina eventually stops sticking... One of the most peculiar moments while filming so far was when a pupil fell off and lodged itself in Dad's mouth.
Just prior to this project, I watched Robot Chicken season 1 in order to get inspiration for how to move the pups. I think you can tell... I'm having a lot of fun with the wild and exaggerated gesticulating.
As I've said many times now, I'm working "quick and dirty"... Resolving certain problems as I go, not backtracking to fix anything.
I've found a way to weigh down the camera tripod so it's less vulnerable to bumps. I've filled plastic jugs with sand, and made little wire loops for hanging them from the tripod. (I have photos I want to get around to posting.)
I just noticed last night that I'm getting a lot of flicker. I'm hoping that it's just due to me forgetting to put the camera's exposure on manual.
I've shot about a fourth of the film at this point -- even though I've had little time to work during the past few weeks. Feeling optimistic about getting this done in time for the Dec. 31 deadline.
posted by sven | December 19, 2006 12:26 PM | comments (7) | categories: stopmo
Comments
.....having trouble seeing the clip, but maybe its my computer/connection :( Congrats on your progress though, can't wait to see it of course!
Posted by: ubatuber at December 19, 2006 3:51 PM
Drat! Do you know if you can view things encoded with the H.264 codec?
I've been trying it out lately and liking the results... But maybe I need to go back to using Sorenson 3 if I want to maximize audience?
Posted by: sven at December 19, 2006 4:02 PM
No problems seeing it here (I do have QT7).
Nice gesticulatin'! I was looking at the flickerage to determine if it might be your shadow falling on the set or maybe reflections from your shirt or your skin (common beginner problems) but it doesn't seem to be... it really does look like changing exposure levels.
Looking forwar do tmore of Angrydad!
Posted by: Darkstrider at December 19, 2006 6:01 PM
I absolutely love this, Sven! The style, the gesture animation, the pupil animation, everything. Personally, I think you've hit upon a great signature style!
Posted by: shelley Noble at December 20, 2006 11:35 AM
H264 could be the problemo, I tried rendering a clip in H264 around the Widow days, as a suggestion from Grant, who I believe also has trouble with the codec....I couldn't get any results....the clip I was working with rendered, took 45 minutes or so, but there was nothing there when I went to play it....
I'm not all that happy with Sorenson 3 either....
Posted by: ubatuber at December 21, 2006 7:47 AM
Sor3 is actually a good codec, but not if you render it in Quicktime Pro. For some reason it's always crap that way. If I use Discreet Cleaner it makes a crisp beautiful file with small filesize, where as QTPro ends up making a big oversized file that looks like crap!
Posted by: Darkstrider at December 21, 2006 10:04 PM
I usually render Sor3 through Sony Vegas and it looks like crap that way too....I'll check out Discreet Cleaner, I think you've mentioned it before....
Posted by: ubatuber at December 22, 2006 7:51 AM