First Claymation Test!

I'm in a bit of a rush so I'll make this quick. Here is the raw animation I finished last night!

I haven't tampered with it too much, I'm going to go through and do some color/light corrections on specific frames. I'm thinking about doing some extra compositing with birds, or maybe some paper cut-out splashes, or traditionally animated text. OR ALLLL OF THEM. I'll write a bit about the process and why it was the most fun/painful thing ever when I get home, but for now, enjoy!

Alright I'm back. At first run through, I was hoping this would be a little smoother. Then I kind of remembered this was my first try at this stuff haha. These things will get better, hopefully. Anyways, as I was talking about in the last entry, this was such a fun environment. It made me want to immediately start writing out some ideas to use the model and characters in the future. Also, just that sort of solitary, total focus was really awesome.

The downside of getting sucked into this process is leaning over a waist-level object and camera for 3+ hours. Towards the end, I was getting a little sick of it (and unfortunately that shows because the whole globe starts to rotate a bit faster) and that's one big rule I learned:

-Always follow through with your process, ye heathen

Another thing I found out was that the camera was automating some of the different things like exposure and white balance. It was really subtle, but enough to make a difference. So another rule I learned:

-Be in control of every aspect of yer dern camera

I think the last big thing I found was from when I would be going along, making up how things were animated on the spot. There were points when I'd think, "man I wish the camera was angled slightly more upward," and then try to ease into that in the next few frames. It really shows; it obstructs the smoothness of the overall motion, again leading to:

-Always follow through with your process, ye heathen

If you find something wrong mid-shoot, just go along and make the best changes you can with the objects you've already designated as "moveable". Or just be better at making those subtle changes. I had to go through and reposition some of the frames in after effects.

Anyways, that's all! I'll post up when I get through some of the additions I mentioned. To Wooork!!!