Year in triptychs

1 Year3 pics for each month

A few words
Click to Biggify

January 2009

Digging for Sandcrabs right before the wave comes in.
Frozen Yogurt dripping down sunburnt arms.
Dancing on the top of Topanga Canyon.

I almost forgot!

I almost forgot to mention that "Everything" is online now for the masses. It is in that lovely cruddy Youtube quality, and looks like a lot of frames got cut out in the downgrade from full to small quality, but enjoy none the less!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBsmtKHUcU8

My Interview for DPI Magazine

So much has happened in the last few months that I feel like I have been neglecting this blog.

I will explain further down below, but for now I wanted to post up the Interview I did for the Taiwanese magazine, DPI magazine.

Busy Bee

I feel like I dropped off the blogplanet a wee bit. I have been super busy both interning at Buddy System Studios, and working on this commissioned wedding bit I will explain below.

wee

I am the new intern at Buddy System Studios, which is a place full of awesomeness and stop motion goodness.

I know it seems like it's been awhile since I posted any progress on the music video, and that's because it's basically done but I can't post the final version here. You will have to wait until the band puts it up online, when I will promptly publish a link to take you all to see it.

final day of animating

I am on my last day of animating! I can't believe how quickly this project has come along... it wasn't even a thought a month and a half ago. 3/4 is done being edited and color corrected. I will have a first cut up for approval in a few days. Til then, here are a couple stills.








The last week has also been really lucky regarding what I am gonna do next. I will have a couple pages of interview and pictures for DPI Magazine(a taiwanese publication that looks really neato), I have an interview on tuesday for an internship at a lovely little stop motion studio here in LA, and a few people have contacted me that are interested in possibly working on commissions. I say "interested" and "possibly" because I never like to get too excited about things that aren't in writing, but I had a few interested groups so maybe at least one will pan out. We will see.

Bubblegum and Lip synching and Color Correction, oh my!

Only one more week of animation left. I can't believe how quick this project has flown by. I have never done a project with this much to do in such a short amount of time. Yesterday alone I animated 30 seconds. I didn't have to, but I was on a bit of a role.

Some more stills....


Once I cluttered up her apartment with all the assorted goodies I made and acquired from ebay, I was highly pleased with the outcome.

You can't tell in this picture... but when the camera rack focuses onto Isadora stirring something in a pitcher, you can see all the cool kitchen stuff I got on ebay. there is even a miniature working cheese grater!


String man is about to pull out the gum,


a little example of some of the post production before and after work...

I do quite a bit in After effects with my footage, I usually add all of my practical light sources like lamps and suns etc... using the "generate, light rays" in after effects. It is a fabulous little effect that is so customizable, and even refracts light on items within the image as they move. Really sophisticated effect. You can see it here in use by the lamp and the sunlight from the window. I also use desaturate and curves in color correction a lot.


Here I add light rays to the objects in the background to give a glow, and I adjusted the Curves to give the image the "tealish, red, and yellow" hues I picked out for the film.

I used a new technique today when animating to get light on the puppet faces without putting a light below them... for a nice soft bounce of light on their faces, I put a paper towel down on the set floor, it bounced light nicely.

I am always open to questions on after effects if anyone needs any help.

And here is a tad little bit more animation... some lip-synching! I have actually never done much lip synching before, so it's been a really fun experience. The pig did a line in Siberian Farmland, but I am doing a few lines this time around in both stop motion and traditional form. This isn't entirely done yet, since I am adding the mouths in after effects, I have to move the mouths around while his head moves. It's not perfect yet, needs a bit of tweaking. I am really happy with how the gum flops around though! I apologize again for the cruddy, washed out internet quality.

buttons and paper dolls

I don't remember if I mentioned before, but in the "floor sequences", that Isadora creates for String man there are paper cut out versions of them that move around to create the memory sequence from their past. These will blur out, then blur back in with the real memory and real 3d puppets.

Ryan gently pointed out while we were shooting that it looks like Isadora is doing the "soulja boy" dance. You have no idea until you see the video. Either that or the Hula, but Soulja boy is much more funny.


Um... yes, that is a mouth in the floor made out of a wad of gum. Yes, it sings. And Yes, it spits out a bunch of stuff when it is done singing. It's made out of Sculpy actually, which I had to put in the fridge so it wouldn't melt to itself so quickly with the hot lights.

The gum is one of those weird things String man finds in a jar on her side table. He takes it out, gets it all stuck on his hands and then drops it on the ground, where it rollspast the carpet and forms into a snail, slugs along to this one spot, and then forms a mouth.

a really bad Flash picture of the paper puppet next to Isadora.


string man's puppet. I'll have to take a pic of the back of the paper puppets to show how I connected them together in a way that was animateable. I drew and water colored them on watercolor paper, cut them out, reinforced them with cardboard from a Cereal box, then glued and taped rubber bands onto them at the joints.


In the end of the memory sequence in the flower field, string man kisses Isadora, only to find that he gets stuck to her lips with this blasted gum(a symbol throughout the video of things that just won't go away... and one of the lyrics in the song), and that the gum lips are attached to a pile of stuff, no longer Isadora(Howard's idea!) It transitions back to the paper puppets on the floor, and that's what you see here.


The last shot in the video. After String Man takes her back to the flower field, in the last 4 seconds of the song after the last line is sung, the image transitions back to the paper puppets on the floor, who float up off screen. All the items on the ground scatter off screen. She lets go of the flower as they float away and te flower tumbles off screen last.


I am alllllll done with the floor animation, now onto the real puppets.

Good morning

I woke up this morning to a lovely e-mail from Chris Walsh, a teacher at Sheridan College, telling me he was going to write a little blurb about my blog and my work on his animation blog. You can see it if you go here http://walsh-o-matic.blogspot.com/2009/07/curious-spoon.html

Ever since I started blogging my production work, I have really enjoyed making more connections with animators. It doesn't seem such a lonely place anymore! Without further ado, I give you the first 7 seconds... I know the very end is a tad offbeat, I have since fixed it, just haven't exported it. I have just started noticing this minor sound effect in the background of Howard's song that sounds like scissors cutting, pay attention for it!

First stills

Started shooting, and while I can't put any footage up yet, I thought I would just give a couple stills from the opening shot. I must be off to continue!