Sunday, 10. August 2008
A late Week 6 report
A very late Week 6 report. That Week 6 exercise was about changing the speed of our animation a bit. We had to deal with the same puppet, one time as a small and quick character, the other time as a large, heavy and slow giant or something like that. As a reference we could use a flower and a truck with a box made of aluminium foil. I decided to do a bee which was much easier than the big one. The problem with the bee was that I had to use a wire rigging to make her fly. This was actually not a real problem so far. But because I like dramatic lighting, the rig was sometimes crossing the shadows. This became a problem because I tried to repaint the shadows on Photoshop, which looks a bit messy now in the video. I'm actually not glad with it, but at the moment I don't want to redo it. The lesson I learned from that: use always a fitting rig and/or flat lighting. The part of the video I like most is the last part when the giant hits the car. I was so frustrated because I couldn't make the puppet behave like a giant. I tried it two times and after that, it was nearly 2:30 on Friday when we normally have our presentation. So I thought I had nothing to loose and just put all my anger into that giant hitting the car. It looks good, I think... No: I think, it was one of my best animation so far. Find out yourself:
Week 7 is over and as you may have found out, I didn't post the week 7 animation. There is a reason! No, seriously, week 7's exercise is also the one for week 8. We have do tell a small story containing two characters, a limb object like a rope, fabric, whatever and action cuts to have a closer look on storytelling. I really like Stop Motion. But at the moment, I like it best if somebody else does it. I'm going to show the results next week. If I would not have failed gloriously.
And then lip sync... We're growing on our challenges, aren't we?
Edit:
Here you can see the original shot from the footage with the rig, if you're interested in it. It's the same rig I used in the run I did in Week 4. I glued some pennys on it with the glue gun (the newer english pennys contains enough metal for that) to use it with the magnets to tie it down.
Comments
Jessica wrote on Monday, 11. August 2008 at 09:12:
I think there a several possibilities to hide a rig better than I did. The more you hide it, the you'll have to remove it. One possibility would be to hide it in the backdrops and with that, behind the puppet. This was difficult because the weeds is the background have an uneven surface. I would have kicked the puppet more than I would have animated it by moving the stabilising wire. Another thing could be fishing thread used from above. But I hate using fishing wire, although it's nearly unnoticeable. But with such a heavy puppet it's also un-animateable. Simon, a guy from my course, always uses fishing wire. But it's my less favourite material. The rig I used was the same as in the run. I'm going to post a photograph of the original captured picture.
Hehe, I'm sure, Strider and Nils will notice the bad shadows... ;)
Strider wrote on Thursday, 21. August 2008 at 09:07:
Hey Jessica!!!
Sorry it took me a while to get back here! I also really like the animation - great job of making the same puppet look both big and small!! I never thought to do anything like that... what a great exercise!
And I gotta admit... I didn't notice the shadows the first time I watched, even though you had mentioned it. Only after looking at the pic showing where the rig was positioned did I notice them, and even then only because I was looking for it. I agree with Shelley, the action of the puppet holds the eyes away from the minor distraction of the fidgetty shadow.
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Shelley Noble wrote on Monday, 11. August 2008 at 02:46:
Absolutely Excellent! I thought the timings were great, one looking small the other looking huge. Well done.
If you didn't use the wire flying rig, what would be a more fitting one?
By the way, I couldn't even notice the erasing in PS as a viewer, fyi. I was too busy watching the bee action.