Stopmotion - Tumblr Posts
Zzzzzzzzz...
It's 2am and I'm still not done for the night. But that's ok, just a few more days and all this will be over. Shooting starts on Saturday morning, bright and early, which means it would be nice if...oh, I don't know...my puppets actually had heads by then.
Because they don't.
So I spent 6:30-1:30 at the studio, patching and painting the puppets. I finished three of the nine completely, two more just need heads (a minor detail), and the other four need one more coat of paint before they catch up to their headless brethren. Which means that now, I'm going to sit here and catch up on House while I sculpt a half-dozen heads as fast as my little hands can go.
Oh, and here's Marion and Monster #1 for my mom, because I promised a picture days ago but didn't finish until now:
World, meet Mina.
Or some semblance of Mina, anyway. Those aren't her glasses (hers will have eyes on them). And she needs a haircut. But still--!
As of 3:03am, I am officially considering myself done with these puppets. Am I actually done? Technically, no. But the remaining work is all non-essential touch-ups and about ten minutes of construction that I couldn't do tonight. So, for all intents and purposes, done.
Phew.
We started filming today. :)
Eyeless Mina and about 5% of my tools.
Sara and Jim, setting up the shot.
Little Mina could use some friends.
And that's a wrap! I can't even believe it. I mean...we're done? Seriously?
It's amazing how much better we got as we went along. By the time we were done, I was almost tempted to go back and reshoot the first scenes.
Almost.
The film has a completion deadline of December 1, which means the final product will be done in the next couple of weeks. I can't wait to see it! I also can't wait to finally get some sleep, which would be a nice change of pace at this point.
Here's Mina, waiting in the clovers for her big scene.
Thanks for all the moral support, everyone. And thanks especially to Dayna and Sean, who actually got their hands dirty with me on a couple of occasions. It made a huge difference!
Super Sculpey, Laguna clay, GM foam latex, armature wire, PAX paint, and Hydrocal, ~100 hours
This is what I feel elevates Tokusatsu above all other forms of special effects: sheer spontaneity. You would never see Ray Harryhausen spend hours recreating Thriller with the Argonauts skeletons or have Stan Winston program his hydraulic Tyrannosaurus to take someone on a lovely stroll through downtown, but with Tokusatsu, all you need is a costume and a wiling suit performer to create something amazing.
Never forget the video of Ultra monsters doing “Thriller” (X).
reminds me of Monty Python
Jan Švankmajer’s Castle of Otranto (1977) is an animated adaptation of Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel of the same name. This novel is credited with the start of the genre of gothic fiction, and was heavily influential on the horror genre as a whole.
The Loneanimator does Ray Harryhausen Style Stop Motion Animation Film. Which I Iove. It’s a Dying art, really. Check him out.
Lesson #56 of Stop Motion:
Check your fucking aspect ratio before you start the next scene.
Frog Wizard! Be safe with that spell, last time you lost your leg!
aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh! Practicing threading limbs for my cutouts. Not near my actual camera set up though so had to rely on my phone.
This gif maker is killing me but I don’t feel like doing the extra work in GIMP to make it flow. At least I learned some more about threading my cutouts before I take them to my webcam instead of my phone.
Finally finished animating this short and now it’s time for post production stuff. Here’s a bit of it until then. I need to find something better than JellyCam, this whole 320x240 thing is killing me.
Practiced jointing with this big, dumb bird last night.