Back to business...

Hi everyone,

Hope everyone had a pleasant and productive Christmas. We are back into Hey Negrita full swing now so lets make the last final push to the finish line.

In terms of footage we are not dreadfully far off completion. I'm sure some of us will be able to animate some more shots before we start back at uni on the 4th. Dave, if you want I will be able to come round tomorrow afternoon, and Saturday and Sunday evening (after 5pm) to animate some more shots, but while you have access to the set it would be obviously be worth you doing some more yourself.

Grace, your shot looks very good, although the jump is quite evident in the middle, but that can be easily fixed. I think you just need to shift the image down in After Effects so it is aligned with the frames either side.

Myself, I have been finessing shots that we have completed so far, by which I mean adding eyeballs, eyelids, and where necessary freezing backgrounds to stop the trees falling over. I'm not doing any colour correction for the moment because we can do the lot in one batch near the very end of the project to get a consistancy. Please could this apply to anyone who is working on their shots at home, do everything to it that it needs, but leave the colour correction for later.

Talking of eyeballs, we have a lot to add. Most shots are filmed without the physical drawn on eyes, so this means we'll have to add them all in post production, some frames involving 5 characters. This is a time consuming but key step, and after a little research me and Dave discovered that tracking a black dot to characters' eyes in After Effecs is the quickest and easiest method for doing this. Hopefuly one of us'll get a step by step tutorial of how to do this up on the blog, for everyone's use.

So not much else needs to be said... apart from let's all be in Monday morning at 9am (you may have all got the same e-mail from Jordan telling you this), and it will be very important so we can collate all our shots and have a looks at where we are and what needs to be done. Basically we'll have a week after we start back to have the film all but finished.

Let's keep going, I salute you all and trust our finished film wil be excellent.

- James

Late Merry Christmas to all...

I hope everyone had a very merry and relaxing Christmas, i didn't do any work in the end, between travailing home and back and seeing friends there really wasn't time for anything but sleep. It was nice to have a little break though.

Yesterday I set up the cabin set in its new location (my room) and then James and Ben came round and did some animating. James got one shot done and Ben got three so we had quite a productive day.

Hey grace, it’s nice to hear from you. I think the effect you’re looking for is the 'simple choker' under the 'matte' option in the effects panel. The shot is looking good so far. A few things you might want to consider though; there seems to be a frame that jumps a bit at around the 1second mark (you’ve probably noticed) (we found out the other day that if you hold ctrl and press the direction buttons, on after effects, you can scroll through the clip frame by frame), maybe try adding a pause at the start and when bill is at the window so that its clear bills looking out the window and play about with the lighting and colour a little bit, the shot takes place around about afternoon time, if that’s any help.

Looking forward to seeing your other shots, keep us posted.

~Dave

question to dave

hey man, merry xmas to all!!
i just want to know whilst blue screening on after fx where do i find that tool thats like a tighterning for the blue screen?do you know what i mean? Grace

a test.

i done this test of bill, let me know what you guys think. i have been working on the shots we have done over the holidays. my after fx is abit slowand crappy been having trouble with the raw files cus they so big and blue screening. Grace

Its been quite a while since my last post, the vids comming along well, although a bit behind schedule (which was to be expected) we're over half way now and overall its lookin good.

Today me and james did more of the boat scene, 3 quite long shots which involved a fair bit of action and a camera move (i had hoped to get these done last fri but due to camera and lighing issues they took longer than expected) whilst james was animating i made a few more engine parts for the next shots.

We also had a little play about with adding in pupils on after effects, which i think will work quite well. This has also made me realise just how much post production work there is to do, finishing the animation is just the beginning of a whole new world of work.

(I'll try and post more next time).

~Dave

post number 60 whoop whoop!

where to start, its been a while since i last posted.

feedback:

Hayley's post #1...
firstly as you know we have been using both the background for the set, so it wasn't a waste of time for either of you, which is always a good thing.
yeah it is aparent that we have been a bit ambitious, and there are many ways in which we could have aproached the project that might have been easier, but who knows. we're here now so lets just work with what we've got. the stuff we've produced so far, allbeit minnimal, does look pretty good and if we work hard hopefully we'll get it done.
sorry about the camera hayley, i didn't actually mean to leave it in uni, if i had i would have left the charger, but done well for gettin on.

Jordan's post...
i beat you to it with that little gem of a music vid, was one of my first posts i think.

James's post...
those dungerees really did the trick, bills looking sutably awesome, which is nice.

i think if we put a bit more time into it, that float shot could work, but as grace said we might avoid this shot if it becomes too much work, good job for such a short amount of time.

Grace's post...
the boats lookin good, although as we found out the depth wasn't figured out correctly (sorry about that), but thats been sorted out now.
One thing about Paul S's walk is that it needs arm movement, that aside, nice work on the animation.

Hayley's post #2...
I do agree with hayley on the shirt, they shouldn't have been cut off so hastely. but i don't think there gonna fall apart and there would be no reason to point figures if they did, everyones doing the best they can with what they have and learning as they go, and that all you can really ask of someone.

Grace's post #2...
good job on the turn arounds. and its nice to see some of the trees, the only thing is if we're wanting to use them for blue screening we might have to do them again, as they might need to be from a lower angle and off the set so that theres no twigs in the background.

That shuffle walkin came in handy the other day, i agree with grace that this is the way foward for alot of the shots with most/all of the band in, although it woul be nice to have some full band walking we probably don't have the time.

What have i been doing...

i've been workin on the schedual quite a bit lately, and although its been hard to keep to it for the past couple of days, i'll e-mail everyone an updated version by the end of today. also, i was thinking its gonna be very hard to complete this by the 23rd so i think we should be prepaird to move the sets to another location and continue after christmas. The options we have here are either Ben's spair room or my room. I'm lucky enough to have quite a big bedroom and i think it wouldn't be hard to fit one or both of the sets in my unused floor space (i also have a spare table to put it on already in my room). So we can either have one at mine and one at bens or both at one persons, the only thing is that we only have one set of lights. what does everyone think about this?

Bill's head development....


Heres a test animation of Bill, firstly the aspect raitio is wrong because i shot it with the camera too close, so when i re-scaled it too much was cropped off, also the table props and chair move at points, so i need to make sure to stick everything down next time and it could do with a few more inbetweens. Overall, although it has its fualts i am quite pleased with the outcome.

Well heres a test i've done for the blue screen walking camera pan shot, i used the animation hayley did of Niel walking in front of the blue screen, a photo of the set i found on my hard drive, and the foreground trees from the animatic with a few ajustments.

As you can see its far from perfect but it only took a max of an hour to complete, from figuring it out to final render; and as you can see, i used quite a poor image for the background with terrilble lighting and the foreground trees are 2D, so with a little bit more work i think it could work really well. what does everyone think?

woow that was a long post for those of you who made it this far, thanks for puttin the time in.

i forgot this test.

i done this test of them walking by shuffling, i think this technique will work for medium shots eg waiste upwards. let me know what you guys think.

james and hayley have started shooting now and we will continue into next week and as long as it takes for everybody to shoot really.

Grace

tests and turnaround

here are the turn arounds we done , me and hayley done them, i done the trees.

Grace

Character Line Up - Responce

I love how prolific the stop motion team is, you are certainly the most active on th blog

Live is really coming together.

I'm sure you have noticed/worked on many of teh things i am about to say but here they are anyway.

All charcters need hands
Armature can been seen on PROFT T's leg and neck, fix some how
Felix could do with some dark red braces (or other suitable colour)
Ogre is awesome, head needs to match hand skin tone

Another photo with instruments and completed characters would be great.

Jordan

Nice

Also, in next line up add digital pupils so I can show client

Accident?

Firstly I was disapointed to see that my 2 hour effort on Paul's shirt had gone to waiste as someone seems to have hacked at the sleeves with a pair of scissors to shorten the metal armature. I take alot of pride in my sewing so I'm not mentioning this to be anal but it reflects badly on me as it looks like I've been lazy on the sleeves when actaully they were hemmed so they didnt fray. Now someones cut off the hems, I won't be suprised if its still me who gets the blame later when the clothes fall apart.

I respect other people's work and possesions, I don't touch without asking permission first. Please show me the same respect. I don't understand why the sleeve wasn't rolled back and the excess metal just clipped off, or alternatively I was in there all day today and didn't leave till 8.30pm when we got kicked out, I only ever left the room for toilet breaks and to get a USB stick from the vending machine in the libary, someone could have asked me to roll it back and hold it up with some stiches. Now it looks a mess and by the end of the animation would probably have frayed noticably up his arm, it wasn't even cut straight.

I have included a before picture when I was making it last night and an after picture of how I found it not long before leaving.

On a more positive note we now have a fully operational team of armatures and the day ended with a nice photo of them.

I think on the whole everything is looking good from what people are posting.

~Hayley Warner

this is the boat. what do people think?

This is my turn around for razor. i think the shirt is terrible so i am going to make another one tomorow. also here is a walk test of him. terrible lighting i know.

.

In reply to James's posts. cool man, nice dunagrees i like teh fact that the teddy fits in the pouch :) if you can get that shot to look good and it doesnt ruien the whole feel of the thing it maybe worth a shot but i know your aware of my feelings for cgi... but your blinkin an such looks good so. but maybe time wasted adam C did say no point in havin close ups we maybe better off cutting that shot out all together, we speak tomorow bout it i am sure. also i have made the boat as you can see. we shall talk tomorow as im sure everybody accept dave is in bed :P

also Hayley i sorry but im to tired to read your post tonight.. i hope to read it tomrow or you can speak it to me. we have that stop mo guy at like what 11-3?'till then.

Grace.

Gone Fishin'

I whipped this crude composite up quickly to assuage certain anxieties we all had about this particular shot:



THIS IS NOT A FINAL SHOT. It is a crude mock up of the idea I had on how to complete it. It didn't take me very long, and while the results are far from perfect it's pretty allright for the time I spent on it and bearing in mind that I didn't touch After Effects (which is a necessary tool for making this shot look really great).

Additionally, since we havn't made the boat or float props yet the individual elements of the above composite are all wrong (e.g, the boat in the background is some random Google Image search result); our photographed boat will of course be inserted in its place.

But basically I put this up to show one way it could be done. I'm all for using cling-film ripples and waves if we have the time and if it looks convincing.

And just so you know what my above shot started out like:



Yeah. Exactly. So now imagine how much better it'll look when we construct it using our real props and sets, and give it proper lighting.

TTFN.

- James

Clothes make the man (or ogre)...

Forgive the poor quality of my pictures in this post, I didn't have my tripod and anyway, these are just progress pics.

What you see below is Billy's Dungaree's as expertly made by my mum and as weathered by myself. They are in fact hard to photograph well and look much better in reality:



A few points:

in the above pics the dungarees are very loosely hung over Bill's portly frame. They are not yet sewn onto him but they will have a lot more form when they are. Additionally his trouser legs are going to be tied at the ankles with a length of rope to conform better to his skinny little legs, and finally of course the dungaree straps are going over his shoulders and will clasp at the front.
I will give the dungarees a final layer of ageing (i.e fray them up, add specific splots of dirt/mud) and they should look awesome.

Note Bill's little teddy bear at his feet, (I've discovered the bear can nicely ride along in the pouch at the front).

Stay tuned for a look at my cardboard double bass...

- James

Fleet Foxes - Stop Motion

Here is a stop motion music video for Fleet Foxes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQRS40OKNE&feature=PlayList&p=116F80290BCD3028&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=1

Might be worth a look for you guys

Jordan

How I feel (Hayley Warner)

Unfortunately I think I over complicated my point about the background. I just personally never saw the point of those trees painted delicately on the background board. I painted a black background it was done, and a waste of time as James’ went and painted a new background with the trees. Yes it is very pretty and a work of art and I do take back what I said about the patterns as it was proven once the camera got it in focus it did add more depth, I was proven wrong and I’m very sorry.

Though the point remains what is there a point of having a background with pretty trees painted on it when we already had backgrounds and I believe we are missing two sets, don’t have a fully operational team of armatures raring to go and probably will not have all of Jordan’s requirements for character spins ready for Monday morning. Basically James time I feel could have been better spent whenever he was painting that doing more important things first then going back and doing nice touches like that if there was time later. Not everything can be perfect and of Harry Hausen quality. I believe we’ve been given insufficient time and guidance from the teachers to achieve anything of that level, but we still seem to be aiming for it, but if we hadn’t we probably would be animating by now. That is just my personal opinion.

As for the armatures I think there is a world of pain ahead. I’m ignorant of what to do with the feet, Ben’s ideas for those are the best I’ve heard. My only suggestion would have been those magnetic footed armatures I mentioned at the start of the project (see near beginning of blog) but that’s much outdated as the budget and Adam C advised against it. I tried to do a spin on Neil and I had to pin his feet onto the disk, but the clay heads are too heavy for the wires he falls over every five minutes. I’ve noticed this to with Grace’s completed armature but the head wasn’t glued on at the time so it came off when I saw her animating with it. This sounds bad but I think we need something of ping pong ball weight to fix that instead of a clay head or the rigs idea, but we don’t currently have any rigs and smiley faces on ping pong balls I admit isn’t very appealing.

I have done half a spin for Neil however the batteries on the camera died in the stop motion room and I don’t know how to charge or change it so it will have to be done on Monday as I don’t have an SLR here. I would have borrowed one from the uni, but it was coming to chuck out time at 8.00pm when I thought of that so I missed the boat.

I think the best thing to do would be to get Adam C to have a look or Jordan and ask them how to fix the problem with the resources we have available to us. I have emailed Jordan already about Neil’s weight problem but have yet to receive a reply. To be honest as a group I think so far we’ve done an amazing job considering we were handed an empty room with a table in to begin with, had to resource everything at our own cost so far (I will say own until and if we are reimbursed) and I think as a whole we haven’t been given any credit for the amount of running around Southampton and time consuming buying things is without a car. I think for next year’s stop motion group a little welcome pack should be in there at the universities expense with some wire and wire cutters etc so people can get started straight away. The 3D max people don’t have to go and buy and install 3D max onto the university computers, the need of tools and physical objects to make our sets is our equivalent of software. Ben pointed out the university had a tool cupboard all along, where we informed of this by the uni no.

I do feel annoyed when Adam C came in to complain about the mess. I do agree that room has been in a horrendous state and health and safety could have a field day. I am only annoyed because the uni couldn’t provide a dust pan and broom even when I asked a cleaner and tried to find a cleaning cupboard it seemed to fall on deaf ears and Adam C said for me to go to ASDA and buy one and add it to the budget so I did. That took 10 minutes to cross the roads to get over there, 4 minutes to go find them in the shop, 10 to queue and another 10 to walk back because of all the traffic lights. So that’s 34 minutes wasted getting a broom and dustpan and £2.74 more that even with receipts I have the feeling I will never see again (I think I must have spent over £20 now altogether David has them written on the budget sheet) on something that could have been provided by the uni in five seconds had anyone truly helped me, when I walked round saying where’s the cleaner cupboard etc. Am I over reacting or does anyone else feel incredibly frustrated by such things?

Mon 7th Dec...

Just incase people haven't read their e-mails this is what needs to be done by mon:

Photographs/turn arounds for completed Reverend puppet
Photographs/turn arounds for completed Prof T. puppet
Photographs/turn arounds for completed Mattord puppet
Photographs/turn arounds for completed Razor puppet
Photographs/turn arounds for completed Captain Bliss puppet
Photographs/turn arounds for completed BILL/Ogre puppet


Finished Hut set

Finished Boat / engine set

Finished foliage / trees / bushes etc for replacement in shots

At least One Walk Cycle or Shot for each of the Main characters

Each animator should do at least 1 animation with the chacaters

Photographs / turn around for all characters lined up with correct costumes / hats / instruments

After Effects compositions for each shot…with correct length, aspect ratio

As much animation as possible so it can be added to the animatic.

Each Animator must have copies of the current (dated) schedule, animatic



It would be good to see everyone tomorrow to talk this over and sort out jobs for the weekend. if possable we need the armatures by friday so that everyone can have a go at animating before monday, i don't know what facilities for stop motion everyone has at home, but i'm assuming we won't be able to animate over the weekend.

the armatures are coming along well most of the heads have been sculpted now and steven started on the hands today, which were lookin really good. i'm still a bit hazy on the feet front but i think we are goin for Ben's disign.

we'll go through the rest tomorrow.

~Dave

Post a la Dave...(does that make sense)

Blogger By Ben...
those test animations are a great start ben, the only thing is, as you were sayin today, they could do with more inbetweens, but the key frames are very strong (shame this isn't 2D). also the feet you've designed seem to work really well.

Hayley...
sorry hayley, but i agree with ben, the sky isn't just black and also i feel, from the photos, if the background board was painted with the suggestion of more trees it would add more depth to the set rather than overwhelm the viewer.

Grace...
those posable leaves seem to hold there pose well in your animations, although i'm sure you noticed the rest of the environment is a but twitchy. this a problem i had aswell when animating a test today, so we will need to secure the trees down and be extra careful in future.


Although we didn't get the schedual done the on monday it was good to see everyone in.
i've mostly been organising our after effects project and working folder so that everyone can understand it when we come to uploading shots and editing.

On mon made another head for bill this time out of clay, using a beed for the small eye and clay for the large eye.


me and james also did a couple of tests with one of the armatures on the forest set. heres mine...

As you can see i crush the plant in the forground which is annoying and the end i tried to do a little look round but i needed loads more inbetweens for it to work. Also, i've found the body rocks a bit as he walks, so keep note of his posture. The lighting could do with a bit of work, and there is a bit of flickering from my shadow in shot, so, obviously, we'll have the make sure we're not obscuring any of the light sources when we animate. any critique would be great.
I think we're all in agreement now that blue tack really wont cut it. i found it very hard to keep the armature stable throughout and the un-even forest surface didn't help matters (this might need to be ajusted somehow); and although the feet ben has made are far more stable there is still the problem of how to hold the the figure in the passing position of a walk cycle (and other actions in which the character is falling/off balence). one solution was mentioned by Adam O, that we could use rigs to hold our characters up. which would mean we'd have to remove it from every frame but we would of had to do the same with the blue tack anyway. the other option is pushing pins through the feet and into the set. are there any other mothods people can think of?

~Dave

Yesterday

This is the head i made for the armiture i made for Razor (paul sandy). i also made his clothes.

Dave making Bills head out of clay.

Heyley making more clothes for the puppets.

Im sorry but coudn't resist the urge to put this of adam C up...

James starting on the cabbin walls

The armetyre lineup feat dave steven n guest star laura we hope to have her featering more oftern from now on.

dave + line up.


Plus a short test i done as the last one was so rubbish. James's tests are awsome so are Bens, my armiture has yet to have feet to test walking ect.

I made this short test of a armeture interacing with some folidge.. im going to make the head tomorow when we get some fimo and i have yet to finish off the clothes.

I cant write a big essay like Hayley but we have all been working very hard mainly on set building so far. tomorow morning we will be assigning shots in the shcedule for people to animate.

Grace

Hello peeps! -Bloggery by Ben...

Hello there all u fine specimens, im takin th time to finally write sum stuff here; hope u enjoy... Id like to start by saying this is my first propa blog entry cos computers scare me sumwhat, so here i am facing my fears...
Ok, a big hand to dave (n james) for th animatic, looks wicked, tho it was a shame we cudnt hav all got stuff in th final cut, i do think havin dave focus on it has helped it 2 look unified and entirely awesome.. Whilst on th subject of big hands; i thought ur big hand was great james; tho what did i kno?
Onto the set; those photos grace took look great, they really wowed me and it made all th work on trees n stuff seem worthwhile, and i kno it can look even better! The mini planks also look great dave, realistic lookin and cheap; good stuff, i might hav to get involved.. Simialarly th boat looks very much like a boat; jus what we need!
To hayley; that post was long; u hurt my brain, but im gona get revenge by tellin u a really long n borin story nex time i see u! And th nite sky outside my window has a kinda dull orangey pink glow, which diffuses into grey as it gets higher- not in fact black, tis one of th reasons i love cities...
Cool, so what hav i been doin? Panicing, fretting and general shilly shallying aside, ive been visitin hardware shops, doin trees(see graces pix) and general foliage, making puppets, trying to solve issues to do with th puppets and doin (finally) a bit of animatin with th puppets..
Old skool hardware shops r great, if u hav one nearby, go (its free 2 get in) and has a rare breed of shopkeeper(one who knows his business), worth it for th hard stares alone...
The trees i made using an ancient technique i got from an old white dwarf, scaled up, and i think they look great(wire wrapped round with bandages soaked in plaster), the bandages n plaster really kinda resemble bark when painted n lit rite... Leaves n foliage made out of trusty cartridge paper painted green- ok, but obviosly not quite as good as jamess bought stuff, which defnitly adds a good quality of realism...
The puppets hav been fun, from plan to drillin th wire to puttin th lil buggas together- and then watchin em grow foam muscles and plastacine arses...sniff...its been emotional..
On a technical note th slightly thicker of the two wires(we had) is best for th armatures(16mm i think..) and feet can b annoying.. I went first for wooden ones(solid enuff for screwin down), but these died on my first test. Ther gluin again now, but i dont think ther gona b as good as these ones i made from wire(see pic attached). What i like bout these ones is ther flexible and r movable in two parts like all good feet(see toe tapping man in vid attached).
Which brings me to th test vids; a walk, a walk cycle and a bit of a mess around to punish the puppet and see what mad positions u can make him do. What i got most from these vids(sorry ther a bit shaky and blurry- no tripod, used an eisel n frame blend was on..) was th need to fix positions for steps and to work in really small increments; there r quite a few more inbetweens needed.
Anyway, sorry for th long post, if u read it all, well done, let me kno what u think..if u skim read it; fair does i probly wudve too, let me kno what u think still.. Im excited bout 2moro, hope u all r 2, lets do this thang...big hugs....latas.

Ben

What I've done this week (Hayley)

Here’s everything I’ve done this week

Painted a black background (I believe this is the same one shown in Grace’s picks). Adam C asked why it is black on Monday. Because a good portion of the animation is set outside at night. Looks outside window just to check for reference; yep the night sky is definitely black, not bright orange or any other colour. Why do I think a plain black background is the best rather than a mottled, 3 toned streaky painted tree one? Because for one its cheaper less paint is used, takes less time and it gives the viewers eyes a rest.

I believe giving the viewers eyes a rest is the most important thing in that list. The background will probably be out of focus and we will have the 3D trees we have made and the 2D trees and plants before it anyway. I believe you can have too many patterns. If you decorate a room and everything is covered in different patterned material it looks garish and your eyes can’t rest. I believe by painting the board 3 different colours you’re adding another pattern to an already heavily patterned set (metaphorically looking at the different trees, grasses, rocks as individual patterns). Also the 2D trees David made out of cardboard will stand out nicer against a solid background, they’d merge and be lost in a 3 colour background when the camera’s out of focus and we might as well have painted them directly on so thus to me they would become a bit pointless. James’ refuses to agree with me on this and wants to paint over my background with streaky trees and no one has joined in on this discussion so I think we should have a vote, because I’m not going to back down this time unless more than one person disagrees with me.

Second thing I’ve done this week was paint David’s 2D trees brown for him while he was busy with the animatic. There the flat cardboard trees that I’ve seen already posted in this blog.

Third thing I’ve done was I went out and sourced the materials for the characters clothes. I now regret how much I bigged up John Lewis’s material department down here and there free samples. When I went in on Tuesday they had absolutely nothing of any use. Why wasn’t there stuff of any use? Because all they had was very elasticity cotton material that’s very difficult to sew, overly thick curtain material, lots of patterned Christmas material and tonnes of shiny satin for ball gowns and wedding dresses. In short they had nothing that real clothes are made of. They then upset me further when they refused my 25% off staff discount card because even though it’s in date they’ve changed the system this month to a new card. So I had to have a polite moan at customer services where they did give me the discount on the fabric glue I got. David has a record of what I’ve purchased for the project and I’ve still got the receipts so I’m not going to list prices here today.

So I went off to fabric land (my apologies to grace who suggested I go there in the first place) had fun in there off cut bucket and came back with a bounty of some nice lumberjack coat material some denim etc.

Now Adam C did come in on Monday slightly confused on our justifications for using material clothes so I’m going to answer everything I can recall him mentioning with my opinion. I can’t directly quote anything he said but this is the gist of what I remember him asking and saying and since he’s marking I believe it important to answer every point.

None of you has any tailoring ability, has made miniature clothes before etc? Wrong. I personally have a 12 week dress making course behind me. I cosplay as a hobby. I make my costumes from scratch. I have come 1^st place in three cosplay competitions. Have appeared in Neo magazine twice, am in the new cosplay fever book, and have been featured in a long list of websites and smaller publications here and abroad. I have more tailoring ability then the average Joe and I believe yourself, so please don’t make out tiny costumes are impossible complicated things to me. I have also made small scale costumes before I will put up proof of all this if I have time by the end of writing all this or later.

Why not just glue the clothes to the armatures? Well just to say I took your advice to humour you I tried using fabric glues on the material when I tested out techniques on my Neil Armature. I didn’t personally think it would be a good idea in the first place as I know glue on fabric rips easily same problem with iron hemming glues from previous cosplay experience, and stitches are normally the only thing to do for a lasting hold as well as neatness. This is because a glue seam never seems to be straight as the glue absorbs and spreads (like ink bleeds on paper) into the fabric at random along the line. I could appreciate the speed of this idea but when I tested this on Neil it just meant his shirt looks naff because the glue has warped the material causing it to curl and loose shape.

Jordan asked if material and the way Neil was slightly soft (he’s wrapped with wadding along the plastercine in the inside) would cause ripples and unwanted movement during filming? I have already thought about the fabric appearing to boil problem. The jeans are made out of denim and I have sewed them to fit Neil perfectly. The denim is tough so it won’t boil like a soft fabric, if at all and bends nicely and handily gives added strength and support to the armature.

Now with the shirt and this soft wadding beneath it also has anti boiling properties. This is because when you move Neil it doesn’t matter how much you brush or accidently knock your finger against his shirt it will pop back out again to the same position. Like when you squeeze a soft bear toy, it will pop back out again into the form it was before. If your bear was made out of plastercine it wouldn’t pop back out again at all.

This is what surprises me the most out of all the questions bombarded by teachers and please correct me if I’m wrong no one asked the obvious which was why did no one decide to make the clothes out of plastercine? So I’m going to ask myself that question to be completely thorough. We could of I suppose, but it would have cost a lot of money in different coloured plastercine to achieve the same range that we currently have with the material. So basically I see it as a money thing, bargain bucket at fabric land, very cheap. Perry’s plastercine, extremely limited colour range and not cheap. Ok we may have been able to mix the plastercine colours together for the same amount of money, but our range would have been limited. Also material is a mass reduction in weight and stress upon the armature skeleton. I made Neil keeping weight in mind so he didn’t become top or bottom heavy and thus when I make his shoes out of fimo he should be supported by them fine, with plastercine balls as feet he can still stand up rather happily at the moment.

No one has asked either what about strobing? That’s the effect you get sometimes on TV when someone wears a stripy shirt if flashes and causes strange patterns. Well none of the fabric has strobed at all on the camera. However I am a little worried because when I photographed Neil his jeans did rainbow a bit in a couple of pictures. However we think this is due to my camera’s display and it is a much outdated low res (4mp) digital camera. Though if they do strobe on David or Grace’s cameras what I will do is run over it with a blue pen because what will be causing it are the white threads in the fabric against the dark blue. Problem solved.

Another thing I would like to highlight is apparently something has been said along the lines I have taken all the milliput, plastercine, and fimo from the stop motion room and thus this apparently slowed down any armature progress today. Now I’m not going to point fingers at people, but I’m not going to keep my mouth shut if I have been used as a scape goat or accused of being a thief either. Firstly I have taken only a golf ball piece of plastercine, from that giant block on the desk and I asked James’ permission first and he Ok’d it and David and Grace where there to at the time.

Now it annoys me when it has been said I have taken all the fimo. What fimo? The only fimo we have ever had in that room are the tiny squares I bought myself from Perry’s. One brown square for Matt Ord’s guitar, one flesh tonne for Neil’s head and hands, and one black square for Neils boots. These squares are tiny and the only reason they appeared in the room was I was asking people if it was ok I use them to make the guitar and to test the flesh tone on Neil. I’d only bought tiny squares because no one had agreed on what we were using for the faces and hands, because everyone had their own idea so I wasn’t going to waste loads of money on fimo if no one had agreed or tested it. So this large amount of fimo that was enough to build the entire cast was never purchased by me or stolen by me. All I can see is that someone has got it into their head I had bought enough for an entire cast of characters and run off with it. No someone needs to go out and buy it still, I would have bought loads on Tuesday but no one had agreed as a group what we where using, so I’d only bought one square for Neil just to test it at the time. I’ve made that clear more than once this week.

So if any amount of anything has been stolen or taken from that room that meant you couldn’t finish your armatures today. It’s wasn’t me and not my soul fault either if they weren’t purchased in the first place. I also said I would be showing people how to make clothes for there armatures and finishing the clothes on the armatures that people didn’t want to dress themselves today. I went in today there at about 2ish there was no one about. Grace was leaving for the dentist and no armatures on the desk other then bill who isn’t finished enough for me to dress. I can’t just make clothes without the actual armature the clothes are being made for in front of me as they are all slightly different shapes and sizes and I sew parts onto the armatures as well.

I’m sorry if the above sounds as a rant, it is not intended to be malicious in any way or anything personal, I just don’t want people turning around to me on Monday and saying it’s my fault the armatures are not finished.

I don’t have time to put up photo’s today as I have to catch the train now home and it’s a half an hour job to upload on photos on this blog, so I will upload them with captions on Monday probably with anyluck.

Hayley Warner

Making stuff...

heres my atempt at makin the boat, i know what your thinkin, its too small and its made of cardboard...and you would be right, but i thought we could maybe use card as a base for paper mashe and then paint it or somethin; and about the size, well yeah i'll have to make a bigger one if people think it'll work. otherwise i guess another option is to buy a modle boat, but not sure where we would be able to get one to fit our specific requierments. any suggestions?



heres how bill is commin on...


I thought i would test out the floorboards for the cabin set, i used PVA glue to stick the single plie to cardboard and then painted it. i think its turned out well and feel we should use this method for the cabin. what does everyone think?



i stole James's pictures off the blog and had a little play about with the colours and saturation, this is what i came out with.

Here i added more of a green tint, trying to emulate the pirates of the carribien screen shot we used as reference in the pitch.


In this one i added a bit more blue to the last and toned down the saturation.


feedback for grace:
yeah those photos were a bit rushed today would be good to spend a bit more time and thought on them tomorrow. One thing i notice from the photos as they are, is that the background trees look too obviously 2D so we might have to make sure there lit less or/and more out of focus. otherwise i'm really liking the way the set is looking.

~ Dave

Today

Today we carried on with set building in general. Dave and I done some test shots with layers of trees and test lighting. Feedback appreciated. I want to do more lighting experiments with filters, shadows ect tomorow.

Tomorow i want to know if anybody else is going into uni, mainly James ( i text you )as he has the putty stuff for the armiture heads (and beads for eyes) and i want to make mine tomorow i am going into uni for about 11/12 leaving at 2 for dentist, will be in the stop mo room if you read this before tomorow James let me know if you have that stuff ect otherwise i shall just use plastacine for the time being.

Grace

hey peeps,

good work james, i love the top right one although it migh look a bit too tranquil and not quite creepy enough, looks awesome none the less though.

yeah grace, i should be up for that tomorrow. i'll see you at ron-puter's information download.

i've been tryin to get the shot list, duration, etc. sheet done tonight. its not gonna be completely finished for tomorrow but the bulk of its out of the way. also, i've worked a little more on Bills armature, tis getting there.

~ Dave

yo

Hey guys all is looking pretty good. James did you get that latex stuff?that could be good for the heads/faces maybe then we could add mouths, like Adam C was sayin' about plastacine with latex over it? and i think we have to have abit of lip sync n doubt wer guna get round to makin crocs ect. Also are we all going to the other photo tutorial dec 2nd i think tis?could be very helpfull if everybody knows the same amount of info on the cameras before we start shooting/ whilst we are shooting, will make life easyer.

Also i am planning on going into jm46 between rons lessons and after to do more set building hope you all can make it :)

Grace

Eat Your Greens...

Here is a very quck picture I snapped of our set today. It is not completed yet, and the photo is a wee bit blurry cos I didn't use a tripod but you get the idea. The content for now isn't important... I was messing about with digital grading in Paint Shop Pro to see what kind of hue, saturation and brightness we wanted. Take a looksy... (clicky = biggy).


Ok so we have from top to bottom, left to right:

- No adjustments
- Darkend with heightened contrast and a blue filter... simulates night
- Tinged with green... moist looking
- Sort of a lim greeny/yellow hue... sort of looks verdant and swamp-like
- Slight desaturation and pale blue overlay... bathed in a tranquil moonlight
- Almost entirely desaturated with hints of greenery... less vibrant, not as inviting

I don't know which I prefer of the above but these are just a few of many options... we'll have the addition of physical filters on-set as well so we could achieve pretty much any colourisation we desire, this was only a quick experimentation.

- James

I can't think of a witty title... Armature Test

Sorry its a bit late James, heres the test animation you did today.




~ Dave (the post) James (the vid)

feedback and what i've been up to...

Regarding the real .vs. hand made trees… I think what anon. meant was that sticks look like small trees not that the trees we’ve made look too small. I think it might be good to use a combination of the two. As mentioned before, Steven brought in some drift wood that would fit in well with the setting of our animation, but then again if this in turn doesn’t fit with the overall materiality of the set then it might be best to stick with the hand made ones.

Give him a big hand...
That hand is awesome. Not sure how to do the joints though. I just looked over a book I’ve got on stop motion and I’m really not sure how they do it, it doesn't mention anything about it as far as I can see. I know that now days they use latex a lot more, which would solve that problem. I think it might just be a case of smoothing over the cracks when using plastacine.

Shoppin' for Fishin'...
I can’t think of anything else we might need at the moment.

2D trees for the background...
James mentioned the other day about the possablity of using 2D trees to create further depth in the background, so I’ve made a few to see how they go.


Heres a test model of bills head…


adam mentioned it might be hard to animate a big character like the current design, so heres another possible design for bill, let me know what you think?



At Uni on Wednesday (I think it was) me and James went skip diving for materials. One thing we found was a box made of really thin wood, which will be perfect for floor boards and wood panels in the cabin. I was thinking we could maybe just stick them on to a cardboard structure, as it would be easy to make. I might test this out on Monday, unless anyone had any other ideas for the cabin.

And finally, I don’t know if anyone’s checked evil as sin lately but there’s a camera and lighting tutorial on wed so it would be great if the bulk of the set was done by then, so that they can help us with lighting the set in specific.

25th november
level 2
2 groups
10 to 12
jm046
dslr workshop

--------------------

2nd december
level 2 and 3
1 group of puppeteers only
10 to 12
jm046
studio lighting workshop


~ Dave

Shoppin' for Fishin'

I'm off to HobbyCraft this afternoon and just wondered if anyone can add any supplies we need to my below list. This stuff will be for both set building and armature construction. I'll try to keep the costs down cos while not overly expensive there it does add up. So I am interested in getting:

• Balsa wood/foam core (for armatures)
• Modelling foliage/grass
• A craft knife that actually cuts
• A big sheet of green card (this may seem unecessary cos we could just paint a bit of card green, but it's worth it as consistancy of colour is key to getting a clean edge.
• Some latexy type stuff I've used before which is like a 2 part mixing thing that you just sculpt onto a form and it sets but is entirely flexible (wow, that was clear).
• Sundry tools that we may need.
• Fimo/clay..?

I may or may not get all or none of the above, but that is what we basically need.

As I say I'll keep cost in mind but I'm not too concerned if I dont get money back for some of the tools etc, as this is all stuff I'd happily pay for and use myself after we've finished the project.

Can anyone else add to this list..?

-James

Animatic Feedback

Hiya

Client has passed feedback on to me regarding your animatic, I have emailed it to each of you.

If you have trouble accessing it check with another member of your team.

On the whole it was very positive, read/discuss/crack on...fast

Jordan

PS - REMEMBER TO PUT YOUR NAME IF YOU POST

Give Him a Big Hand..!

Hey guys,

So after finally finishing lockdown 1 (yay) I could once again set sail on the good ship Hey Negrita, destination Fishin'.

We are in desperate need of puppets to be able to start animating. Our main jungle set is on its way to completion, but we can't animate without characters. So we need to make that our next priority.

Today I made a large scale hand armature for use in our close up shots, of which there are many. Eventually it'll be covered in Plasticine to hide the armature of course. Below is a quick articulation test I created using it:

(Forgive the compressed quality of the video, I couldn't upload it in any larger file format).

Or click here for a bigger version of the above.

Update: Ok So I have covered the above armature in flesh tone Plastacine, but the annoying thing is whenever the joints are articulated the Plastacine 'rips' apart. Does anyone know how to prevent this..? I've always wondered when watching Aardman stuff how they stop this from happening. I image we just have to let it rip, and then smooth the plastacine over the gaping tear. I'll continue experimenting though...

-James

better late than never... i hope...

its probably a bit late in the game to suddenly reallise that i have never done a walk in stop motion before, but thats exactly what has happened. so heres my first steps (in stop motion)...although it needs alot of work, i really enjoyed animating, twas very refreshing. any constructive crit would be muchos welcome.



~ Dave

Budget Sheet

Hey everybody,

I'm putting together a budget sheet, so can everyone let me know what they've brought so far, the reason for purchase (just briefly as i presume we will be asked) and the price. Keep all receipts and hopefully you’ll get your money back.

~ Dave

Hello people. that stuff your looking at dave is cool, my boyfreind can get some for free backhome and post it to me but then you will have to waite a fue days for it.so its upto you if you want to buy it and start making or waite but time is of teh essance.

Also in regards to Hayleys reply to the no named post, Hayley is compleatly right, we are making tres as the trees of the environment our set is baised in cannot be found in England, and finding sticks that look like magroves would be long. we do however have many sticks and bits of wood we have collected to be the fallen trees/logs.

Grace.

Polyfoam

I went to B&Q on Friday and there was this polyfoam board for £3.78 for a sheet 120cm x 50cm, its about 2inches thick and I recon it would be good for creating mounds or hilly terrain for the set. In the animatic there are a few shots where this will be essential. Also, I was thinking of building the bulk of bill's armature with it; as its light wait and easy to craft. what does everyone think? I didn't buy any yet, but was thinking about going back on Monday.

~Dave