Tim Burton has a major show (of his art in general) opening in Toronto. He was in town to promote it.
Kevin Parry graduated from Sheridan's Animation program last year, with his short film The Arctic Circle.
Kevin and his film were selected (along with other student films from around the Toronto area) to show his film to Burton and have a conversation around it.
Burton honestly digs his film, it's really nice to see.
Today I did a lecture on "medium hard puppet making".
"Easy puppet making" is taking a bit of epoxy and mixing it with armature wire.
"Medium hard puppet making" is still pretty easy (with practice), doesn't require any power tools, and gives you quite nice results.
"Hard"- cutting your own aluminum armatures (need a few power tools, and quite a bit of precision)
"Silly Hard"- making stainless steel ball-and-socket armatures (good ones). Why bother unless you're planning to be a pro puppet maker? Or are just really into metal work. If you need a ball and socket armature, buy it.
Anyway, here's a few pics of a semi-finished puppet:
And here's two images of the how-to: drawing him to scale, then on another piece of paper "light box" him around his edges, and then use that to draw in your armature of wire and epoxy, and make that armature (always working to scale)...
TAIS (Toronto Animated Image Society) is having an exciting event. If you're in the Toronto area, and want to see what is hot/fresh/new in indie animation, check this out. Pals (and fellow stop motion filmmakers) Mike Weiss and Marc Beurteaux have works in the showing (although I don't think either films are exclusively stop mo!), and recent Sheridan grad Kevin Parry will be showing his stop motion graduation film Arctic Circle (a superb film, student or otherwise). I'm planning to be there, you should too.
I will past the details below:
You are cordially invited to join TAIS for an evening celebrating the best new animations from Toronto and beyond! Short animated films of all styles and genres will be screened, along with entries from our animated jam session, the Aqua Jam. We’ll also screen the cameraless animations created over the year at our monthly Incubator sessions. Awards and reception will follow screening. An event not to be missed! Come out and support your local animation scene.
TAIS ANIMATION SHOWCASE THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 2010 7:30 PM; doors open at 7:00 PM At the TRANZAC CLUB (292 Brunswick Avenue – off Bloor St. near Bathurst St.) $8 general admission; $6 for TAIS members
Program includes: "The Orange" by Nick Fox-Gieg "Everybody" by Steve Reinke & Jessie Mott “Weenie Wagon Woe” by Willy Ashworth "I Need an Escape Plan" by Julie Doucet & Anne-Françoise Jacques "Beneath the Eye of Time" by Madi Piller "Recipe" by Martha Griffith "Birth" by Signe Baumane "Amoeba" by Patrick Jenkins "The Animator" by Marc Beurteaux "The Arctic Circle" by Kevin Parry "Heavenly Bodies" by Mike Weiss "Nukie Goes Bonkers" by Jonathan Amitay "William's Creatures" by Pasquale La Montagna ... And so much more!
With installations: "Thalé" by Barry Doupé "A Typical Morning for Green and Blue" by Andrew James Paterson
It was done using Dragon software, and the Canon Rebel T1. The result certainly is interesting, and implies a lot of creative uses in stop motion. Frame blurring or motion blur is typically lacking in stop motion. That's because one moves the puppet... takes an exposure. Then you move the puppet again... take an exposure. So the puppet is in a static position when each frame is taken. There is simply no movement to blur.
In live action, there are actual frames of film that are blurs of movement, when something moves quickly. And in traditional animation, the animator actually draws blurred frames. This lends the work a real sense of life, that can be realistic, or wildly stylized. But in stop motion, it tends to not exist.
But if you have a camera that can do a timed exposure (such as the Rebel can do, when working via Dragon), you can actually move the puppet while the exposure is being taken, giving blur.
In this test, the blurring is wild and extreme. If I did further tests, I'd use the technique more sparingly to see how it looks. What's curious (for camera nerds) is that for the first few frames of the test, there is very little depth of field. That's cause I was using a rather quick exposure time, to just get the held frames shot- around 1/8th of a second, at f5.6 (ISO 200). But just as the blurring frames start, you'll notice the depth of field greatly increases (most evident in the bg train). That's cause I had switched the camera setting to a 4 second exposure, and had to stop down to approx. f22 (still at ISO 200) to maintain consistent exposure.
This massive stopping down (from 5.6 to 22) greatly increased the depth of field. So it's neat to see a principle of lenses and optics (in this case: a smaller aperature increases the depth of field)so clearly at work.
Then, once the blurring frames were done, I switched BACK to 1/8th shutter and f5.6 (so as to quickly grab the frames, since they were just held frames) and you see the depth of field go back to how shallow it was in the first frames.
There's ways to reduce this visible shift in depth of field, namely I could have shot at a much higher ISO, which would have let my timed exposures be much shorter, and my f stop change be not nearly as dramatic. Or- I could have shot ALL the frames at the one timing exposure setting (in other words, set it and forget it, instead of shifting things on the fly). But hey- it's just test 01 of potentially dozens...
I'm very much enjoying the combo of Dragon and the fully manual DSLR for stop motion. I love being able to control all these attributes, something that was very difficult if not impossible in earlier "camera/software" stop mo setups.
Dragon really makes it simple, and easy. If you know your principles of lenses and optics, you can get to work making fabu stuff... fast.
NERD NOTE: As much as this is nice to do some fancy motion blurs here in 2010, check the video below. It's from The Mascot, by Ladislas Starevich. Shot in 1934.
Watch towards the end of this clip, as the animals jump around within the box. There's blurring there (and more in later clips, if you watch). And some wonderfully convincing rear-projection live action footage, as well!
Yet another reason why for my money Starevich is pretty much the tops in terms of stop motion historical figures. He did most of his stuff on his own, essentially at the same calibre as what was happening in Hollywood at the time (can say King Kong?), and did it all on a much smaller budget. And with far more charm (in my opinion).
I'm currently in production (on a co-production), with none other than Mr. Kaj Pindal, world famous animator. It's a film that features toy trains, brought to life through stop motion animation.
The concept is Kaj's, the trains are Kaj's... I'm providing some further creative insights, and my stop motion skills.
It's also a chance for us to test drive the studio's new HD set up that is running the Canon Rebel and Dragon.
The finished film will be about 3 minutes long, will be set to a lovely piece of music (a popular Danish tune from the mid 1800s), and will entertain both young and old. That's all I will say for now.
When will it be done? When it's done (I like Kaj's style towards release dates!)
I'll post updates on occasion. Here's a clip to get started:
I'll update the project occasionally, but here's a video to get it started. It was a great first day. We had recent grad (and super talented artist) Carla Veldman, Kaj himself, and our studio's technology guru Aldines Zapparoli, all grooving away.
It's a rare thing when you can get together a core group of talented and awesome people, of all ages (!) to make something exciting. And if you can listen to vintage jazz music at the same time, well... I think you've died and gone to heaven.
A very nicely done graduation film from Sheridan's Animation Program.
I worked as Nathan's Mentor throughout the process, and it was a pleasure working with someone so dedicated and talented.
This version is about 90% done, and the unfinished portions are actually a great insight into the animation process. His rough animation is very confident and energized, which really shows in the few "in progress" portions.
So if you're a serious fan/student/practitioner of animation, you know about Jerry Beck's site, Cartoon Brew. It's a real "go to" place for what is up in the medium.
So it's a very nice thing to see a recent Sheridan group film front and center on that blog.
You can read the entry, watch the film and read the very interesting (and passionate) comments by clicking here.
