I am working on a new male puppet. Well actually it's an old one that I never finished. I should be working on my animation, but procrastination is creeping in. I need to make a set for Pepper and the midwife and make animal puppets for pms. It is never gonna end, there's always things to do! Sometimes, I wish the computer would turn off for the day and tell you: "Your time has expired using this computer, please get up and work on your animation instead".
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Since I've been watching the cute Zombigotchi short, it got me in a zombie mood and I thought of this video. It's called Meow by Cyriak. Not really stop motion, but still animation, Meow is full of zombie cats dancing and little kitties committing suicide! Cyriak uses photoshop and after effects (which I want to learn!) to acheive amazing video manipulation. He also did the music. Check out his YouTube channel for more videos.
While watching tutorials on Dragonframe's page, I checked out their blog. It's full of stop motion short films, broadcast series, music videos and much more, from people around the world that use the Dragonframe software. I would not have known about any of these shorts if it wasn't for their blog. So here is one I picked out that I liked. The short is called ZOMBIGOTCHI and it's by Michael Please. He also made an award winning short called The Eagleman Stag.
I really don't know much about Lee Hardcastle, except I really like his clay animation adaption of Evil Dead II. It's super fast, fun and well done! I haven't animated with clay at all, but the above video is all clay, all insane, all brilliant clay stop motion! ps I hate saying the popular term, claymation, but hey I guess that's what it is.
Pinback has a new album coming out in October! They are one of my favorite bands, and I will never stop listening to them. Simple music, but great playing, with beautiful melodies and harmonies. I have 4 of their albums. My 2 favorites are: Summer in Abaddon, and Blue Screen Life. Enjoy their 2 videos!
Yes, I finally did it. My first stop motion video. It is for my mom, a stop motion card saying Happy Birthday, and ending with a photo of me sitting next to my mom, when I was a little kid with dirty blond hair! I had to start somewhere.. I cut up letters from magazines and used them to spell the words. Problems: #1 Depth of Field. I wanted everything to be in focus but sadly, only the middle part was in focus. I don't know how to change/fix it. Should I change camera settings, and/or Dragon parameters to solve this? Problem #2 Flickering Light. I bought a continuous light from Adorama and used it as an overhead light. Maybe light from the window is sneaking in or that light is not really good for stop motion? Should I put up black paper on the window or use different lights around the house to fix this problem? I can't buy nice lights like these. So I have to figure out my dilemmas. I still have a lot to learn, tutorials to read, forums to join, etc! Stay Tuned...
The Berlin Reunion, a huge puppet/ marionette show by France's Royal de Luxe street theatre company was shown in Germany in 2009. It had two characters: The Big Giant and the Little Giantess. It is a story representing the collapse of the wall and their reunion, right on the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin wall. I totally forgot about this show until I saw an upcoming documentary about puppets by Byrne Power, from the Darkstrider.Net website.
Maybe one day I will move to Portland, Oregon and work for LAIKA! Yeah right, keep dreaming, me.. Anyway they have a new movie out called ParaNorman and the New York Times wrote an article about it. What amazes me is the 3D printing. I remember my stop motion teacher Voltaire, told the class he went to visit Laika, and he saw this printer that prints out different facial expressions, instead of paper! I was blown away. They use computer modeling to create the different facial expressions of a character and then the expressions are printed on a 3 dimensional face. See above photos and links.
The story is about this little, strange boy who has the ability to speak with ghosts, zombies, witches etc. who apparently cursed his town. Norman and his "friends" team up and try to stop them from taking over. I am still reading Barry Purves' book: Stop Motion. Upon reading it, he recommends The Astronomer's Sun by Simon Cartwright and Jessica Cope, animation by Steve Warne. Above is the YouTube video. He praises this stop motion short because of the expressive eyes and story. In my opinion, it is way too short and I want more!! I love that little teddy bear and I want a sequel or something, prequel or anything done by these marvelous animators, directors, writers, musicians.. Well you get the idea! ps. I have watched it 3 times already in one day, and I will probably watch it everyday until I die!
Just found out about this movie. It is called, In the Attic (or Toys in the Attic or Who has a birthday today?) by Czech stop motion animator, Jiri Barta (See picture below). Compared to the Toy Story movie here in the United States, it is a story about toys coming to life in an attic, when no humans are around. I haven't seen it, but I'm sure it is better than Toy Story. I thought TS was ok, but too main stream and the voices are way too high (Tom Hanks). This movie looks darker, older, and has more character than TS. I can't wait to see it! Above is a picture of Jiri Barta. I don't know anything about him, but he's part of the European stop motion puppet animation movement, like Starevich or Svankmajer (I think he is the protege of Svankmajer). So I looked into the internet/netflix a little bit more, and watched The Club of the Laid off. It's about retired mannequins living in an attic. Pretty clever!
Introducing Pepper Maxine Singleton and the midwife. I finally finished making my puppets! Pepper the mom, is going to give birth to the camera, guitar and erlenmeyer flask. The midwife with very long arms is going to help out with the delivery. Did you know that midwives have to be licensed and certified before they can start practicing? And also, have you heard about Vanishing Twin Syndrome? Read about it here. I am sure there are more horror stories or topics regarding Pregnancy Complications. I am afraid but curious to find out. Animation coming soon! OMG, OMG! Last night I went to see Brothers Quay at the MOMA. They had an exhibit called: Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets. My friend, Lucas hooked me up by sneaking me in, well not really, but I pretended. It was a members only sneak peak! I also saw the Quay Brothers there! They looked happy mingling with the crowd. Anyway, the upstairs galleries showed puppets, drawings, posters, videos and work on paper, which was really great. But my favorite part was downstairs! The downstairs was called Dormitorium, which showed Dioramas or actual SETS from some of their stop motion films! For example they had The Street of Crocodiles set, (my favorite) the part with the tailor shop. The last photo is with me posing with it! The sets are incredible! They are intense, with lots of detail, dust, and strange creatures that lure you in and pull you into their world. What the hell is happening in there? The story possibilities are endless. I am so inspired to create my own set! Lastly, they had several enclosed, wooden boxes with a circular magnifying glass in the middle of the front panel (see picture 9). They are called Cinema Decor. You can look inside the box, via magnifying glass and see inside of it. They are so mysterious, with rooms and people inside the box, waiting to be explored or exploited.
Mary and Max was super funny, clever and cute when it started, but by the end, I had tears in my eyes, and was really sad. The beginning was great: good animation, star voices (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette, and Eric Bana), and interesting characters, but then it became really dark and hard to watch.
I saw this a while ago, but re-watched it last night. I still feel the same emotions from last time, really good but depressing. Mary, an 8 year old girl living in Australia writes to Max, a 44 year old over weight, Jewish man living in New York. She finds his address randomly in an American phone book. The two become pen pals and friends. The relationship spans about two decades, with its ups and downs and then of course for the worse. Adam Elliot the director and writer from Harvie Krumpet (which he won an Oscar for in 2003) quotes: "The rule was that there would be no straight lines, no perfect circles, everything had to be a bit flawed because the script is about flawed characters." Here are 2 pictures of my stop motion set up. An overhead light, 2 side lights (the other one is not shown), toy (panda cake from Pecan Pals), laptop, table, black backdrop, and camera are pictured on the left. On the right, the camera is on a dolly. I cleaned up my room and made space for this in the 90F weather! It's against the window, and I was thinking about putting black paper on it to block out the light. I was also thinking about making 2 side arms and 1 overhead beam to connect them, but I think that is going overboard. That arm/beam rig would be great to position the camera anywhere I want, but my camera is pretty big and bulky and I dont know how to support that monster!
Last night I watched A Town Called Panic. It was so funny I laughed out loud! The main characters are Horse, Indian, and Cowboy. They are plastic toys, the kind of cheap plastic toys children played with of a horse, Indian, and a cowboy. The puppetoon stop motion is very fast and chaotic. Puppetoon animation is used for puppets that are rigid and static, and are used in one frame, and switched with another almost duplicate puppet in the next frame (from wikipedia). But I don't think they were ever switched, I think they just used the same toy and animated the shit out of them. Anyway, A Town Called Panic was distributed by Aardman Animations, the same company that did Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit. It started off as 15 or 30 minuted episode, 20 episodes total, but now is a full length film! A Town Called Panic is in French, but the above video has English subtitles. The every day crazy, wacky adventures the main characters share are hilarious. The cowboy and horse voices are great too. Watch the trailer!
I am addicted to Pinterest. I almost have 1000 pins. If you don't know what it is, it's a digital Pin Board, where you create different kinds of boards and you "pin" pictures from different websites of the internet onto them. I have 17 boards. Upon searching stop motion on Pinterest, I ran into MADAME TUTLI-PUTLI. It's a 2007 stop motion film from Canada which took 5 years to make! Holy Shi+! This image also graces the cover of my book, from Barry Purves: Stop Motion. I haven't had time to look it up until now. Way to go, me! I am always late to the party. Anyway, the eyes in the puppet are human, and are animated in post production in a way that is so real, that it won a lot of awards, including an Oscar nomination in 2008. Click on the photo to watch it on YouTube! Very well done and recommended! |
My short blog topics include: photography, music, science, crafts, vacation photos, movies, events in NYC, and of course stop motion animation.
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