Barry Purves is an Oscar-nominated stop motion animator. His work is technically a pleasure to watch, but more interesting for me is the complexity of the ideas he grapples with in his films (several of which can be found on youtube). His animated films tend to concern themselves with layers; layers of masks and costumes and sets, but also layers of narrative, stories within stories. Whereas a majority of animated shorts go for stories that are more overtly crowd-pleasing and heart-warming, Purves' work isn't afraid to deal with more mature realms. In short, his films push beyond the average, in every way possible.
So I was very happily surprised when I discovered he has moved from the role of filmmaker to author as well, with his recently published book Stop Motion: Passion, Process, and Performance.
The book is a wonderful success.
Whereas there is no shortage of instructional, "How To" books on stop motion, there has been very little written work on the less external aspects of the medium. How does it feel when you place hands on a puppet, and breath life into it, frame by frame? What sort of relationship begins to grow between a puppet and an animator, over the course of a shot? Of a scene? Of an entire project? These are more internal, private, emotional concerns, and are (in my opinion) of far more interest than the basic "How To" of the technical aspects of the medium.
If you're willing to stand in front of a puppet for (sometimes) years on end, moving it in ridiculously small increments, for many hours each day, it MUST mean more to you than a paycheque. So WHAT does it mean to you? This book takes steps towards unearthing some answers.
In short, I think the medium of stop motion has been waiting for a book like this. Thank goodness it was tackled by someone not afraid to be "emotional"!
That being said, the book is also full of very solid "tips and tricks" for those learning the medium, thoughtful insights in the production process as a whole, and no shortage of nicely assembled illustrations and photos.
I highly recommend this book on its own, and ESPECIALLY as a counterpoint to all the technical stop mo books out there that certainly are informative, but are decidedly lacking in honest heart.
So called cause in Canada a "Loonie" is slang for $1. Also called "Loonie" as in "Loony," as in"You Can Make The Puppet Act Loony If You Want To". See, we have $1 coins here, and they have a picture of a bird on them. A loon, in fact. See how it's all making "cents" now?
This is a "How To" sheet you might useful, if you happen to be a stop motion fan that's just starting to get into the medium. It came about from the stop motion intro course I teach at Sheridan. I wanted to devise a simple (yet challenging) way to allow students to cheaply make their own puppets that could really be animated, and could be animated on any flat surface, like a desk or table top. It also had to NOT require fancy materials, tools, resources.
Be sure you click on this image first, THEN download that enlarged image. Scale it to fit the paper when you print, and you should end up with a scale drawing of the puppet that's approximately 11cm (4 1/4" inches) high.
But even if you make something that's approximately that height, you should be OK. Just don't make it 3cm (1") high, which would be too small to animate. And don't make it 20cm (8") high, which would be too tall to stand up properly. You get the idea.
Read my posting below about "Sheridan Stop Mo" and follow the links to see some examples of what this little critter can do...
On a scale of 1-10 in terms of being a Star Wars fan, I'd place myself at around a 6 or 7. I don't care to see the recent three films, nor much of any of the recent Star Wars "stuff" that pours fourth, but the "holy trinity" of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of The Jedi hold a truly special place in my heart.
There's not much more to say. If these were your childhood years, and if Star Wars meant anything to you then (or now), you'll soon be lost in a sea of wookies, droids and light sabers.
The fashion, the hair styles, even the quality of the photos (ah, so nice to see film grain!)... It's just a wonderful drift back to such a great place.
What strikes me the most is all the HOME MADE costumes! So little store-bought! Today, everything's bought at Wal-Mart, but "back in the day" Mom put that costume together with her bare hands! Long live HAND MADE (costumes, animation, art in general...)
Behold, one of my faves from the Flickr page, a Tuscan Raider (aka Sand Person) from Star Wars. So nicely done! You can see more great photos by this person here.
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.
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.
