Even More Practice

This time to some music by Kevin MacLeod.

Moe Practice

Tried a shot last night, was hot - had the fan on - ruined the shot (watch the screen), but was good practice none-the-less. Moonwalks are tough.

I also found a few ways around the quality aspect thanks to a comment by Rich Johnson! But for these tests I'm going to stick with the slightly blurred videos. (they're only 5-10 megs a piece and makes for superfast uploading to youtube).

2nd try


1st try

Moe Blink Test / Dragon Stopped Motion

I've got my little set up running now and it's taking a long time to get used to everything. I was hoping to use Dragon Stop Motion on this little 30 second dance animation but the trial wasn't working after I installed it. Dyami from the Dragon Stop Motion team is trying to figure out a fix as we speak. In the meantime I'm using AnimatorDV simple+ for video assist and Nikon Capture NX2 to capture the high res stills. This morning I watched Nick's "The Seventh Skol" short animation again:



Truly great and you can see why so many people have such high regards for Nick Hilligoss' work. It's just masterful stuff! It's videos like this that really pump you up and drive you to keep pushing forward.

So I thought I'd get my feet wet. I got through a very very small test animation:




Does this video look blurry or is it just me?

I'm still having problems with not shooting enough inbetweens. This animation would look better at 15 FPS, which means I have a lot of smoothing to work on. Another problem is that I can't export into true HD (1920 x 1080). Everytime I try to After Effects crashes. Maybe my desktop just can't handle it :) I'll try it all out on my laptop (which is twice the machine my desktop is) once I get a hold of the discs from my brother.

Till then I have a lot to think about in terms of what my animation is missing. Need more subtle, realistic movements and twice the amount of inbetweens. Better to shoot more and edit out later than to come up short and left caught with my tail between my legs.

I have a few kinks to workout with my setup - getting a better picture out of the video assist, learning more about lighting (so far it's just the Par 46 Can... which is awesome by the way), rigging the puppet better, etc. I'm really looking forward to using Dragon Stop Motion if /when I can and hope to figure out the problem with exporting to true HD - not to mention a loss of picture quality (though for these tests I do shoot with JPEGs). However, first things first - I really need to work on animating :/

Subtle, Flow, Real.

Saw this clip on Vimeo this morning. My goodness. The clip will speak for itself.

The story of Adi Dassler from Dario Nucci on Vimeo.

More inspiration to push me forward! Moe the test puppet is complete. After messing around with him the arms are obviously now way too long (I had to laugh at myself for that making such a big deal out of how long I wanted the arms in the first place). Never-the-less I have a puppet to really practice animating with. Now that the dust is clearing from the party I'll have to get back on track. I'm planning to move my stuff downstairs and setting up an actual shooting area. I'll try and post my tests next time!

Oh yeah I wanted to add: THAT TEA / COFFEE IN HIS CUP LOOKED AMAZING!

Won't... you be.. my neighbor.

I was getting ready to paint Moe last night when I realized I didn't know what color I wanted him to be. I went back and searched some sweater vest models to see what colors looked well. I knew the shoes were going to be black and the pants dark grey. Initially I was going to go with a black sweater vest via that Ryan Seacrest picture... but after putting it on paper it didn't seem to flow right. It was like he was trying to hide himself in darkness. I was thinking maybe Pink sweater vest to really go bold, with white dress shirt... looked off. Tried green sweater vest, white shirt, red tie - looked like Wallace's long lost brother. Tried brown, red (which was okay but a little over the top), and many others. I ended up going the calm Mr. Rogers route but I'm not sure if I'm happy with it. The colors look fine (though I think the tie is a mistake... maybe a red tie to complete the Mr. Rogers look. I always do this to myself, mess with colors at the last minute. Here it is:



I've yet to do the skin, pondering what his tone should be still. This of course is just a test puppet so maybe I should give myself some lee-way in terms of taking chances and making mistakes. I really think a red stripe on the tie would look better haha. But I have a bigger problem:

Don't know if you can see it but I'm still blotching the paint job too much. I had to use flash to get the details but my paint doesn't come out as smooth as I want it to. It could be the foam I'm using to do the coats. It doesn't do a really great job so I end up using the brush a lot - which I believe creates the blotchi-ness. It's definitely a step up from the Vanni doll though. Next time I may give his sweater vest a tri-diamond design across the belly.

My sister is getting ready to turn our house into an alchy-fest. Her going away party. Had to clean up my mess (which was huge) and won't be able to break it out for 2 days. All dandy though I could use the rest and draw a few doodles for a short animation. Gives me time to think about the colors too. I'll try a crazier color combo next time! Till then~