STOPMO JAM 4 Behind the Scenes!

Post your behind the scenes photos here. I took a couple of snaps from the Robot Dance Title sequence. I made the puppet out of Sculpey and Armature wire in about a week. Animation took 5 days and Rig removal took about the same. It was very last minute as I was extended on Pinocchio by 6 weeks which cut into my time a bit, but I got 'er done! Please feel free to post your pics and share your experience.

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    • I'm sorry James I forgot to answer you.

      "jib crane.. what that wasn't a slider then.. is it just instead of using a tripod is it.. why not just use a cheap tripod then?"

      Yes it is a full crane mounted on slider rails. The head can spin and rotate and it has bearings for turning and I mounted the entire thing on wheels and aluminum tubing. The winders allow to dolly in and dolly out and another winder can lock and control the angle of the boom. I have two tripods, one very old, costly and really strong and one super flimsy and cheap but I wanted a crane as I had visons of grandeur for my action flick.

      I have another thread on the site with some more info on it. The thread has links to the crane and the video I made my slider from. It was Anthony Scott that suggested teh winders which I 3D printed them from files I purchased. After those pictures were taken I replaced the aluminum tube center beam with teh 3D printed on from the original download.

      https://stopmotionanimation.com/forum/topics/dolly-camera-jib-crane... 

       

    • Hey Steve.. it's ok life often gets in the way, we lose track, I know I do,  I will try and have a look at your Jib crane later.. I'm full of a cold atm struggling ..   

    • wow! steve, what amount of work for only 20 seconds! very nice your robot and hoverboard, but the milk machine is my favorite, impressive finished!

       

    • Thank you. I love my milk machine and it didn't get the screen time it deserved plus I had to digitally remove the sign and shorten it and that made it evn worse. I am sure I am going to redo this jam as everything survived and i haven't had to throw anything away.

       

  • Hey guys! Here's the link to the Behind-the-Scenes video of my clip "The Sci-Fi Dreamers".

    I hope you enjoy ;)

    https://youtu.be/rosJelKf0nc

    • Hi Fex. Nice jam and nice BTS, a lot of work on both... I like your characters, simple but with personality. Good job.

    • Hey Fex, I enjoyed your bts video..  I liked the subtle results you got out of the clay with the mouth..  I fancy trying to do clay at some point.. yeah just like Nick I was curious interested in how you got that 'starfield' effect with the grey foam.. seems like a stroke of genius there.. interesting that you went back and brought out one of your first creations.. that's cool.. 

    • Fex - That's an original approach to creating a starfield, with the grey foam!  Looks like you just change the lighting so it comes up black, with lots of little stars in different sizes and intensities, all there instantly.  I've done starfields with a big roller blind painted black, and a layer of diffuser (could be tracing paper, or a white translucent shower curtain, or the Marex I used) behind, and a light behind to backlight it.  But that took lots of time to make.  Have also done it in Photoshop and keyed it in afterwards. Quicker, but still took more time than using the foam.  What made you even think of it?  

      Did you backlight the foam, or hit with a side light to just pick up the high spots?

      Are the space rocks made from an air dry clay, or is that plasticine?

      Nice work on the Jam clip.  Animating clay is hard enough, even without old brittle clay.  You got some nice character out of your two clay guys.  And thanks for sharing the making-of!

       

  • Hey Don, It's good to see some of your bts pics..  I like the downshooter and glass approach actually.. I wish I done more with it, when I had it set up.. but I got rid of it all a while back, trying to declutter, and dedicate to stopmotion with a large built set for puppets.. I found working on glass with the camera above though so so much easier, takes up much less room.. you could even set that up inside a cupboard so it's all hidden away..   how long did it take you to come up with your idea and animation itself?   

    • I come up with pretty much everything in life through improv. Running scenarios, usually starts as a gag, beginning, middle, end like the format for joke writing. 

      For the challenge of it, I didn't draw a storyboard, and there was no animatic. All timing was worked out via a script reading, timing it out like I was reading a book. Broke a rough audio track down, and ended up using it in the final animation. I love acting to audio, because my mind is very audio based, given the songwriting background.

       The whole idea came about in a few minutes, it was just sort of born- but it took months to figure out how to do it all. Went through a lot of lighting setups and framing tests. Only thing I'd do differently is not stop down so far. That caused flicker. Rather put a blue filter on the lens, and shoot at a lower F-stop, say f~5.6. For this, it was f~8.0. That's highest number I've ever used for exposure. Shutter speed was something like 1/2 second, with a correspondingly high ISO. ISO 400, if I remember correctly. Those were both firsts, as well. I usually like a higher shutter speed and lower ISO at f~5.6. Needed to get everything in focus, though. Depth of set is about 1 ft.

      This clay on glass setup has a computer monitor built into it, so the background can be anything. The stage framework is from a de-upholstered chair that I decided to destroy my fingers on one afternoon in 2020.

      Amimation was completed in one day. It's a mix of ones and twos. I had a drink, first. Animating on the sauce is fun if you don't overdo it.

       

       

       

       

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