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 After a day of finagling I learned that it came down to my version of mac OS X being out of date.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.