Experimental Animation Done Right

Awesome.

Stop Motion Animation

After god-only knows how long, it's finished. Or at least, finished enough for me to post it.

Sorry about the quality. I had to compress the mother out of it before it was small enough to upload.


Made with: beads, doublesided tape, cardboard, chalk pastels, craft glue, some clear plastic sleeves ripped out of a display folder, hairspray a Pentax K-100, $10 no-name tripod, my dining room table, and Adobe Premiere on the computers at school for all editing and post-processing.

Enjoy,

Still working on it...

The exciting life of an animation student.

We're like rockstars, I swear.

For the record, the white thing in front of the table is my light-reflector since I'm using natural light coming through the window behind me to shoot. It's just a piece of A3 paper folded and resting on top of some of my books, with a Terry Pratchett paperback making sure it doesn't blow away. The camera's not connected to any kind of laptop with stop-mo software, but I can pull up the images on the viewscreen on the top, though, and I regularly do movement checks to make sure my line of action is flowing smoothly and I haven't bumped the camera too much (though there have been some stuff-ups). I can't go back and fix serious problems so it's all pretty tedious moving the model on the background shot to shot, because I have to try and get the movement right each time.

I'm shooting on twos and trying to do it all with natural light (though I have the light on in this photo so you can see what I'm doing), but classes keep getting in the way and I may end up doing some final shoots with artificial lighting, which is annoying because the white balance on my camera gives everything a yellow tinge when I have tried this in the past. Oh well, that's what post-processing is for, I suppose.

This post brought to you by the letters C-O-F & E, and Dominos Online Pizza Ordering. Oh yeah.

Pixels

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. - Arts and animation videos.

Documentary Fundraising

There's a really cool documentary in the process of being made about the Cartoon College in Vermont. They're looking for funds to finish the film, so go to the site and donate if you want.

Here's the trailer.

BRAND NEW teaser

CARTOON COLLEGE — The Movie | MySpace Video

Experimental Animation: v2.3 - Test Animation Success!

Kind of proud of this...


Awwww yeah.

Experimental Animation: v2.2

This is my home-made rostrum setup on my dining table.

Awesome, eh? I can't show you the camera setup but that little wire-thing coming in from the left is a DSLR remote I use to take the photos so I don't bump the camera. Unfortunately it drains the battery like nobody's business and I had to stop shooting tonight because I ran out of power completely. I keep my laptop open with the animatic at the appropriate spot in Toon Boom so I get an idea of what kind of movement I should be making under the camera. The camera itself is just precariously perched on a tripod which I have manipulated around so the camera sits parrallel with the table when shooting.

Anyway, here, have some light tests...

Lamp too close on the right.

Done with my awesome vintage blue-shade lamp, but not strong enough for shooting.

Using the overhead light in the room. Lol camera shadow on background.


I call this one, "Kidney Failure".

Unfortunately, I can't seem to get rid of that yellow tint when shooting at night. The white balance on my camera is always hard to get right, even during the day.

More to come...