SheridanStopMo

I maintain a YouTube channel, called "SheridanStopMo". I put up various exercises, and add some educational text to go along, to help people practice stop motion skills.

It's a bit like what I cover in the stop motion animation course I teach at Sheridan. There is a LOT of stop motion on YouTube. I think in part because it lets average (ie, non professional animators or film makers) imagine fantastical worlds and stories, and then make them in their own homes, in miniature. In other words- it's DAMN fun.

But what often makes typical YouTube stop motion film less than easy on the eyes is that few people know much about the principles of animation. So it's a nice thing (I think) that if someone watches and studies the clips I'm putting on YouTube through this channel, they will have better quality animation in their next "home made epic" stop motion film.

It always strikes me as such a shame that someone would spend so much time (and love) making sets and puppets, but such little time achieving effective animation. I think a lot of people just get that initial satisfaction from just seeing the puppet move on screen, and are satisfied with that (or worse, think that's all they are capable of, because they aren't "real" animators).

The makers of "home made epics" CAN learn to do better animation, but it means putting all the nice sets and fancy puppets aside, and focusing on the basics. But it's worth it to achieve more effective animation!


A final note on puppet making. Some of the puppets in the clips are "fancier" aluminum armature puppets. They are pricier, and harder to make. But the puppet in the clip below (and in another clip that has the puppet stomping on a clay ball before being attacked by another) is SIMPLE, CHEAP, AND EASY TO ANIMATE EFFECTIVELY.

It's made from "plumber's epoxy," available at Home Depot in the plumbing section, and armature wire (1/16", from any art store). That's it. It's so light and small (it stands about 5" high) that it stands up with just some sticky tack on the feet. So you can animate it on any desk, with a desk lamp for consistent light, a webcam, and whatever free/cheap software you want to use to grab frames. I really don't think it gets much easier than this.

This little puppet costs about $1, takes about 30 minutes to make (max), and can REALLY be animated. It's a perfect way to practice your stop motion, without getting into more complex and pricey puppet making techniques.

Now go make a puppet!

More Beginnings

I haven't been updating this blog lately, and I have a semi-valid reason. With only so much free time on my hands (working full-time, and managing a six month old), I can only do so much. And rather than blogging, I've been working on a new stop motion film idea.

I have been extremely cautious about posting much about it, for a few reasons. The first is that, as with anything that is fledgling, one treats it with TLC. So to start blabbing about it through this blog would be, well, poor parenting (if one thinks of a film project as being a child, of sorts).

Another reason I've hesitated to write much about the film and its progress is that I didn't originally want this blog to become "merely" a production blog. It seems to me that a production blog (and I write this with great respect for the many, many students at school who use their blogs to show off their developing films) can do more harm than good to a project. One can get so busy updating the blog with new "behind the scenes" images, tests, etc for a project, that the production blog actually BECOMES the project. And the time spent on updating and polishing a blog to show off the work in progress could be better spent just working away on the project itself!

I am also torn by the idea of an artist revealing everything up his or her sleeve, before the "trick" (in this case, the film) is even done. Filmmakers (and I think storytellers in general) have an undeniable streak of showmanship in them even if, as animators, we are far from the actual spotlight, as we toil away at our desks or computers or stages. And what kind of showmanship is it to reveal your grand piece, bit by bit, to the world, before it's even done?

Hitting the audience with the unexpected is a very powerful tool for a filmmaker to employ. So much of the pleasure of watching a film can (should?) be in the active process of putting the pieces together, bit by bit, as those bits are revealed to the audience, shot by shot. If the audience has already seen every scrap of a film BEFORE it's on the screen as a whole, what a loss of possible impact this is. If the audience knows the whole film already, what fun is watching the film itself? And of course, animation is ripe for this, as the film is "done" in the form of an animatic long before the actual film is finished.

Talk about a "spoiler".

On the other hand (and it's a big other hand, size XXXL), allowing a blog to become a project development space is:

a) very educational for showing how a project is put together, stage by stage. And I am an educator, by profession and by nature.

b) potentially useful for gaining feedback from readers on posted items. I say potentially because I don't get many comments, and not all advice is good advice.

c) potentially useful as it allows the filmmaker to take a step back a bit from the project, and get some critical distance. By putting the pieces of the film "out there," it can offer new angles and facets that the filmmaker might never had seen had it not been made public.

d) gratifying to the inherently insecure lump inside my heart, in that it allows me to say "See? I'm really making something! I really am an artist, no foolin'!"

With all this in mind, here's a lip sync test I recently did. The character is me (see an earlier post that has a test puppet head, that is basically the same design). Here though, the drawing is to scale (in that the drawing size is 1:1 with the size the puppet will be), whereas the posted puppet head is smaller than it should be. As I said, that was a test head for materials, paints, and so on.




This scale drawing of the character, that includes not just the head, but the whole character, in costume, (which maybe I'll post another time) allows me to decide if it's big enough to get my hands on to easily animate, but also not TOO big so as to cause other production problems.

The mouth shapes are also to scale, and this test is to see how the shapes I've created will work once I sculpted them (along with the head). It's obviously much easier to refine the shapes while they are still on paper than after I've sculpted them.

The test turned out fine. As with any replacement mouth animation, there's no blending of the shapes, so it invariably feels rather "blunt," but that's stop motion. The "applied" feel is part of what I love about the tactile, hands-on quality of puppet animation.

A stop mo tip: always, always, always get your characters designed to scale with what the puppet will be, as soon as you possibly can.

From that stage you will already start to feel what it will be like to "lay hands" once it's three dimensional, AND from that drawing you can start envisioning your camera angles (just use a cut-out of the scale drawing in front of your lens to see how it will look) sets, props... that scale drawing means you now have an instant "stand in" for your actual puppet, and you can really start moving on other aspects of production.

Famous Puppet Death Scenes

I was recently lucky enough to catch this stage production, put on by The Old Trout Puppet Workshop troupe. If you go to this link, be sure to view their gallery of puppets, and read the reviews page to see how much praise is being heaped on this show, and why.

The premise of the show is very simple, and very clever. There is a narrator character (a puppet, of course) who explains that the evening will consist of the best puppet death scenes, taken from the history of puppet theatre.

What follows is exactly that. But what's so exciting about this premise is that it leaves so much to the audience's imagination. What is depicted is truly ONLY the death scenes, from some 22 imagined plays. What led to these deaths? How did the characters in each of these plays arrive at this critical turning point in the narrative?

Since there are 22 death scenes depicted, and none lasting more than a few moments, the audience can't actually take the time to dream up what the surrounding narratives might be. But this only adds to the complexity of the show. It's a premise that truly draws up the audience's active imagination, and as a result is incredibly engaging, just from a narrative perspective.

Then, of course, there is the puppet work. As an animator (and one who moves puppets frame by frame), I would say the puppet work at its worst was well done, and at its best was truly moving and inspiring. The climax of the show, in which the narrator "attempts" the ultimate puppet death scene, is fantastic. It is a fantastic bit of puppet theatre, but I would argue fantastic theatre, period.

Without giving too much away (as this scene is so special and touching, I don't want to reveal too much in case you see it), the show's climax does exactly what top-notch puppet work can do. The climax moves the audience from thinking of the puppet as a piece of wood and wire, into thinking the puppet is truly, TRULY real. And by "real" I certainly don't mean "CGI-realism-I-can't-believe-it's-not-human-better-than-
Gollum " real. The puppet is clearly NOT a living, breathing creature- we're talking about a roughly sculpted puppet, with no moving mouth, about 2 feet high, yellow, that has the puppeteers right on stage WITH him, controlling his moves. The image above is the puppet in question. CGI reality, he is not.

I mean there is real emotion involved. We care for that piece of wood and metal as if it were a living, breathing human. The effectiveness of the climax is a testament to the skills and HEART of the puppeteers, writers, and director.

This show moved me enormously. As it ended, I felt a mixture of joy and sadness. Joy because I had been lucky enough to catch this live performance (can't rent THIS baby at Blockbuster). But sad because something this touching doesn't appear everyday. Nor once a week, month, year... It's such a rare thing, to be truly moved by anything in life, other than one's own "real world" joys and sorrows.

I consider myself extremely fortunate to have seen this show. And I hope you can see it too (if you haven't already).

Masking Tape Zombie

Just in case you thought that all I care about is cute little stop motion kitties (from my posting of a few weeks ago), I thought I'd post this bit of loveliness. Halloween IS just around the corner, so I'll use that as a further excuse. I'll also blame a life-long and apparently never-ending love for monsters and monster design.

Anyway, this whole fella is made of green masking tape (aka "painter's tape"), on top of a wire armature, that you can see posed in the above picture. He's climbing out of the grave, hence the pose, and the half body aspect. And yes, that's a Wind In The Willows dvd case he's perched on. What can I say, my tastes are varied.

Anyway, I've used masking tape before, basically to "bulk out" trees and such for set pieces. It paints up nicely, and is easy/cheap to work with, so I thought I'd give it a go on something a little more specific, and detailed. Get to know the medium a bit, if you will. It's always interesting to play with materials that aren't typically used for art, as neat things can happen when you colour outside the lines...

I'm not sure if I'll actually finish this particular piece, as it's really just a test for a "life size" effort that I'll throw in our garden on Halloween night, with some spooky lighting. I just wanted to test the tape approach to see how detailed I could get things.

Of course, this little guy wouldn't animate (the tape is a bit fragile, and would cave in as soon as you'd grab it in order to animate it), but I'm sure there's some crazy way to make a stop mo puppet with masking tape.

Below are a few more pics. The in-focus one reveals the green tape, as it peeks through in places, which gives the thing a sort of "rotting, glow-in-the-dark-from-the-inside, Mario Bava" sort of vibe as a base. In this picture you can also how the bits of applied tape lends the face a patched, barely-held-together quality, that suits the "zombie" look pretty well. I saved this technique, which is just basically tearing very tiny pieces of tape into rough squares and sticking them on, till the very end, since the look it gave only matters on the surface level. On lower levels, I just bulked up into the main shapes as I went.

The out of focus image is my fave. It's basically the same framing and lighting as the one above it, but it goes to show what selective focus can do to an image. The out of focus pic does not look like the subject is about 3 inches high, and made of tape and paint. For my money, it looks pretty damn alive (or undead, as the case may be). No Photoshop involved, just in-camera manipulation.

Happy pre-Halloween...

The Beginning Of...Something

In case you ever need to contact the authorities regarding any of my online conduct, you can use this image for the police bulletin. It's essentially a caricature of myself, right down to the forehead wrinkles (sigh).

This puppet head is simply the result of playing around with various materials, as I work towards something of a design sense for what someday will hopefully be another short film.

I'm going for something that is fairly realistic in style, but at the same time more cartoony (exaggerated) than my last film, The Magic Projector. I want more freedom, in terms of design style and animation style, to play. I'd like things to be a bit looser, more energetic. In short, I want the process of development and the final piece to be fun. Not frivolous, mind you (who would want to describe something they might work several years on as "frivolous"), but fun. As a full-time teacher and very full-time dad, there's no way I'll stick with an indie project if it isn't fun.

Regarding the puppet head pictured: it's Super Sculpey, with an base coat of automotive primer, followed by various coats of acrylic paints, then finished with a matte clear coat. The trickiest thing about using these particular materials for a puppet head is trying to get a final product that not only looks good but can stand up to the rigors of animation.

By that, I mean: the mouth is also Super Sculpey, and is held on by a touch of sticky tac. The eyeballs are clay, that I can "roll" around as need be. The eyelids are clay. The eyebrows are clay. All of these applied (and over time, sticky) items take a toll on the paint job. And if the paint isn't solidly adhered to the puppet head, the animated clay will eventually wear off the paint, or become smeared in to the point of having to seriously re-clean and then repaint.

This combo of a solid head with animatable features is a tried and true design process for puppet heads. You'll see it followed in a lot of features, TV, and indie films. It allows the head to maintain volume and mass and proportion frame by frame, while the clay features allow varied expressions. Of course, there is a limit to expression since the head is solid and can't be stretched/squashed, but hey- welcome to puppet animation.

Stop motion is very much about tests (at least it is for me). Tests give you the confidence to proceed with confidence. And after working commercially when tests weren't always possible because of production schedules, working independently now means I can test all I want (cause it's my dime, and it's my time).

So this puppet head is a test for materials, and for visual style. Until I had a sculpted, essentially finished head, I didn't really have a character design. For me, it was the process of actually sculpting the head (with a few sketches as rough guides) that "revealed" the character (and the design principles that will probably lead the project onward).

The glasses are floral wire, by the way.