Tuesday, January 29, 2013

I Gotta Question

Alright, I've been working on this "Fionn" story for a bit. And, as I've said, this is what I'm using as a big push for the "I dream about the earth" series (to present it as a more thought out, genuine project). I still intend for it to be used like that, the only thing is that initially I wanted to create a couple of other good episodes along with it using random claymation bits. These would have been really simple, just stuff like planets revolving/rotating, random little creatures in spaces, etc. Is this something that can be accomplished along with making a really good narrative episode?

I see after working on this for a while that I'm going to have to devote quite a bit of time to animating the story. I think I've gotten the hardest part (the quick fight scene) out of the way. Other than this, it's a lot of ambient kind of 'character's interacting' sort of work. The only other complex scene I can think of is when Fionn catches the "salmon of knowledge" out of the river. There was also a paper cutout animation I was going to quickly put together telling Fionn's birth and his father's death; that should be pretty fast and simple though.

But yeah, anyways, my question is to anyone involved with my school or anyone who cares about thesis. Would you be sorely disappointed seeing one really worked out episode with a lot of claymation as apposed to a few episodes with claymation spread out a bit more? Do you think that since it is suppose to be a series it would be stronger if it were spread out among different episodes? If I go with the first option, I would still have footage from the first few bits that I could edit together for some kind of promotional trailer. It would still show that it exists as a series outside of thesis, just not super worked out or as interesting.

Help a brothuh out, dudes!

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Favorite Angle

Sorry for spamming these animation stills, but this may be my favorite thing I've captured with a camera:


Yay!! shot another 100 or so frames today. This is so much fun.

Progress!!

Hey doods!

Got a few stills from my day of shooting yesterday. I figured out a way to bypass a lot of the nonsense that was giving me trouble. I rented out a T2i, which is a lesser generation of the DSLR I was using. Still the same quality, I just threw on my fancy schmancy lens and hooked it up to my computer. It worked immediately, woooo!








Anyways, I won't load a whole lot on here, I was just excited. The two shots outside of the set were taken by my friend, Benjamin Mcnulty.

I'm shooting again today, so hopefully I'll be able to load a full test up here pretty soon! Thanks for checkin' it out YaLL!

Friday, January 25, 2013

Complications

First off, here is a photo my friend, Tyler Potnek, snagged from when I was working on the first claymation:


I suppose now you can get an idea of the actual scale of that model. I mean, I already mentioned that is was constructed out of a grill lid haha. I think this size was particularly fun because there wasn't really anything obstructing the manipulation of the characters. Using a real-life backdrop like that curtain freed up the physical space around the model, unlike the one I'm using now that functions more like a diorama, and that has walls enclosing the space. Anyways, fun stuff

The shooting process right now is not going so smoothly. As I was saying earlier, I really wanted to use dragonframe with this next animation because being able to see the differences in a frame I just shot vs a frame I'm about to shoot would make a world of difference. It functions the same way as using a tracing/light table, just with photos. The problem is that I keep running into issues getting access to the program in the first place.

I was going to work with a trial version on my laptop until they could re-image the other laptops at the school. The program functioned fine, but could not connect to my camera. After a day of finagling I learned that it came down to my version of mac OS X being out of date. Right now, I'm running leopard, which is about 4 years behind what is currently being advertised. I tried with a friend's laptop that had snow leopard and it worked fine. So now, the only way to get the snow leopard update is by ordering the physical disk. They aren't allowing people to download the update, nor are we able to just go to a mac store and buy it there. I can't just jump to the more readily attainable lion update because you need snow leopard first. SO MUCH FUN. So anyways, I have to wait for that to get here before I can use my own laptop.

In the mean time, I was able to get dragonframe unlocked on one of the school laptops. However with things like classes and work jumping up during the week, it has been difficult to get a solid chunk of work time. Also, you can only check out the laptops for 4 hours at a time. So, that's difficult. Not to mention the chance that someone will have checked out the specific one that is functioning before I do.

There are a lot of things standing between me and getting this done, which has been really frustrating this week. Hopefully this weekend I will have the available technology and time to start chipping away at this project.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Shooting Today! Finally...

Yay! It has taken a while to get it to a good point, but the set is all natured and mossed up and ready to light. Here was a quick snapshot I did in the shooting room to see what it may look like.


This first day of shooting, I was going to try for a really minimal scene lit by a tiny bonfire that Fionn is sitting near. Not too sure where it would be used in the story, but if it moves/looks okay I'll find a spot for it. Luckily for me, the episode is going to go through it in a nonlinear manner, making animating it go a little more loosely. Which is good! because I imagine I'm going to find a lot of pitfalls in shooting this. This will be a pretty new experience because I'm jumping around a lot with the shots, and focusing in on a lot of smaller areas. Anyways, looks like my camera battery is good to go. (Unfortunately I work in about an hour, so I'm only going to be able to do a quick test.)

this will also be the first time I've used dragonframe. I'm a little nervous about new technology, but from the looks of it, it will definitely be worth the effort. For instance, I'll be able to see what the previous frame was, overlaid on the new shot, and be able to gauge how much movement has occurred.

But yeah, anyways here is one of my favorite music videos/stop motion animations, which used dragonframe to compile and edit everything.


Wish me luck! I'll try to get the exported test out tonight or tomorrow!
WEEEE