Layouts for new characters

Well, I got some stuff done on the movie, such as making the BASIC storyboards for it. They were really just made to get the ideas out of my head and onto paper, so I will be making better quality ones later.

Here are 2 pics of layouts of characters. The first one is the main character, and the second is a minor character, whos name for now is hunched man :P .

Ill update more later.

Bad news, Good news, and "Flight"

Well, a couple days ago, I decided to dump the movie for now.

DID HE JUST SAY HE WAS DUMPING THE MOVIE?

Yes. Ive been thinking for awhile now, and I just havent really been getting into it. Ive never really like the plot very much, and some of the new set would be too hard for me to build. Right now I just need to practice animating, and get better at it. Ive already thought up most of a new short, this one will be around 3 min. long, and it is MUCH more in my range. And most of all, I LIKE it. Its not just some dumb story I thought up without thinking. After reading the book, "Developing Digital Short Films", I have learned so much about making better movies. Now, I think I will be able to really make a movie that I want to make.

So this is good/bad. Of course its too bad that I had to dump the movie, but Im really looking foward to this one being better, with more subtext, ect.

If you dont know what subtext is, look it up, in my opinion, no movie can be good without subtext. Ill update more on the movie in a few days.

(Btw, for now, ill be calling the new short "flight". Once I explain the plot a bit, you'll understand.)

^^^^Its partly about this. ^^^^

"Stopmotion: Craft Skills for Model Animation" Book review!

Wuts ^ ! (terrible arrow, I know...)

Well, after waiting for a week, I have finally gotten my copy of
"Stopmotion: Craft Skills for Model Animation"
*Click link for amazon page

So, heres my short review.
Overview:

I think that this book has a huge amount of information in it, that will definately help anyone in the range of starting out, to advanced animators. (though for the advanced animators, it would probably be more of a reference book more than a learning book)

The book covers:
-a brief history of stopmotion
-getting set up with equipment, ect.
-pre-production info-storyboarding, x-sheets, ect.
-information about lighting, equipment, clays, latex, and tons of other things.
-great details on the animation itself
-sound-lip syncing, voice overs, ect.
-post production

Theres alot of other stuff in the book, but ill leave it up to you to find it!

Pictures:
Almost all the pictures in the book are fully colored, and ver clear. They help alot in getting the ideas across.

Highlights:
The part I found the most helpful to ME, is the whole process on making a good armature, and creating molds. I have researched a TON of stopmotion stuff, and been to pretty much every stopmo site out there, but for some reason, I could never really find a CLEAR and EASY to follow tutorial on how to do these two things. There is alot of information about how to make armatures out there, but not with the same quality as the ones in this book.

All in all, I would really recommend this book to everyone, because even if you knew everything in the book, it would still provide all the specifics about everything if you ever needed it, all in one book.

If the $25.00 price tag seems high for you, I would still recommend buying it, or at least finding a used one for cheaper.

Thats all for now, but if I think of anything, ill add it to this post, or posts above. :)

BIG (stopmo) updates!

I went to michaels a few days ago and bought some stuff.

One was some special 1/16" armature wire. Unfortunately they only had one, so that was all I could get, but I can tell you right now, it is some top-quality stuff. As you might know, when you bend a wire, it will spring back a bit, and the more wires you twist together, the springier it gets. Since this is definately a really bad thing in armatures, I wanted to find a way to get around it. Well, I did! This wire has almost NO springback, even with clay covering it. The other good thing, is because of its size, I only need to twist to wires together for each limb, which cuts down on how much wire I need, and of course, it makes it less springier.

I already made an armature (and part of a puppet) out of the wire, but ill post more about that (with loots of pics) tomorrow or the next day. :)

The other thing I got was a pound of skin-colored clay, which I was running out of. (BTW, the brand of clay was Van Aken, for those of you who need some high-quality stopmotion clay).

Im also planning on doing a bit more animation on this set, before taking it down, but ill get to that later also.

Check ziit out!

haha. I made this on flash-gear.com

that site has a bunch of really cool flash things, such as what I posted above. I just found the picture on the internet and added the eyes!

(hopefully the picture doesnt affend anyone, its ment to be funny...)

Switched over!

Well, Ive decided to switch over from the other blog, because once the movie, "The Insane Adventure of Robert and Dan" was over, I wouldnt be able to really post anymore! So now intead of it only being about the movie, it will be able to be about anything else that has been happening, animation wise. So it wont just be me rambling on about anything in my life, it has to be about animation. Also, I have decided to add more pics to the blog! Ive found that people(at least I) like to see pictures rather than just read words on a page.

Hopefully ill be able to post more often like I used to, like around 2-3 times a week.