I don't know if we should call it summer break, but we've done nearly nothing the last month concerning the project. One the one hand we got fabulous 30 degree outside and on the other we had to fix some private stuff. Next to earning money...As everyone doing a long-time project, you got to arrange your live with doing a film.

This leeds me to terrific news:

We got a new home AND a new workingpace/studio! One room just for building and one seperate room just for animating! We move in on August 1st. This also means a little production stop. But afterwards we speed up with new motivation;)

So wish us luck and I'll post some pictures soon.

I'll show you what I've done. And what I did wrong :(

I'm always thinking I'm so smart to do it different than I've read from the pros...

And normally I fail with it. like today.

What I've done:

Instead of putting the half of my body into soft plastilin I arranged it pending.

So I don't have to put the plastilin to my (very) soft body. Because I was afraid of breaking the body piece.

(click to enlarge)

I poured the plaster (ultracal 30) into the form. Up to the half of the body. Until this point no bad idea...;)

(click to enlarge)

After a day of drying I casted the other half. (always using vaseline as a release agent). I splitted the parts. Everything worked so far....

BUT:

(click to enlarge)

the left part is the one poured at first (with the body pending)

the right one is the part poured on top of the first.

What happend:

The surface of the plaster is prone to air bubbles. The plaster powder sinks to the bottom and the surface is very flowing, because the water separates to the top.

So if the top of the poured plaster is the one touching you're body piece...you'll get an airbubbled ugly surface in your mold.

The other way round the plaster sinks to the bottom next to your body piece. As you can see on the right.

Now I know

The idea of having an external studio or workspace failed so far. So I convinced my flat mate to turn our shared livingroom into my workspace. Thanks for that!

You won't believe what happend. Only because we haven't found the right character designer Samina said "okay i'll try it." And kabooom, she made this freaking nice concept pictures. As you can imagine, I was stunned...

still.

We wanted to have a curly head boy (I hope we can sculp it with the clay) As you see below, we got different head shapes to chosse from. It's interessting how a shape is able to age a character. After that we had to get our scalings right. This was a bit tricky, because the ball joints and the metal blocks of the armature were in a fix size. So the feet couldn't be smaller than this. Luckily we decided not to have a human realistic charakter.

(click pictures to enlarge)

how rich you have to be to make a stopmotion movie...

or

how long we are able to pay this thing.

Right now, we spend appr. 773€!

Just for software, materials, armature, supplies....no movie...just testing!

And there are so many things to come. 4-5 characters, 8 miniature Sets, a working/animating room to hire...

you buy a car....

...we make a movie;)

Yeah. I got some new stuff...

Maybe somebody already recognized, this is Dragon Skin Fx-Pro silicone.

A two component silicone (right) and a bunch of fleshtone pigments (left) to colorize the whole mixture. I can't wait to test it.

This is made for fx-masks or prosthetics. It's very bendable and durable. I bought it at formfx.eu (Amsterdam)

tests will follow....

I got new a plastiline to form the bodyparts (head, hands, feet) of my puppets. NSP sells the clay in three styles.

soft / medium / hard

The soft one is nearly as soft as the "cheap" plastilin from your arts supply store. Which is (in my eyes) a bit too soft. Anyway, I made my first hand with this one and it worked...

Right now I'm looking for the best material to cast my puppet pieces (arms, feet, head). I know everybody is using (4 component) foam latex, but I wanted to test an easier way. Okay. To be honest: I failed this time.

(I'll explain it short. For more information, please mail me.)

The handling of the material is fine. Very Soft and light. But when you look not even close, you see every pore of the foam. I tried various mixtures and times. I almost mixed it in slowmotion to get no bubbles in the components...Didn't work out. This material is not what I expected.

I'm really bored of testing materials, reading blogs and spending too much money for all of this stuff. All we wanted to do is a movie...;)

Today I just switched the topic and made a small animation test. I'm testing a new framegrabing software called Dragon StopMotion. And it's aw... "What's this Mr. Bay?" - "It's AWESOME!" okay, i'll buy it...

This test was made with the limitation of 50 frames. for fun.

man, he got small hands. just now i'm realizing the kid will be f*ing tiny. We decided to made this movie in a 1:6 scale...so a kid is about 20cm tall.

I drew my own hands and made the sketch smaller on my pc. Now I'm figuring out how to do the hand-armatures. I got these nice ones from "animation-supplies". But I have to cast several hands...so I need a cheaper but fitting solution.

the finished armature. I made a woodhead again to make him more human just for now. I think this won't be the last version. The changes and upgrades will come with the first foamlatex and clothing tests...

visiting and measuring rooms, cellars and empty offices...and in the end a hirer saying: "...uhm...okay for you guys 600 euro per month..." - me: "damn"

looking for a room is harder as we thought. we "just" need a large room (like 100qm). we split it in half and get one constructionroom and one animationstudio. what so ever, we're lucky if we even find anything we can afford...

so if you got a hall, a room a cellar in dortmund and don't want more money than we earn per month...call me;)

(by the way: the guy on the pictures is our lovely d.o.p) 

I've finished the script!

4 month for 4 Pages / 12 scenes and 1690 words.

Sounds ridiculous, but if you got the ambition to get it better and better, you change elements, characters and dramaturgy until you're satisfied.

And now we are!

so hopefully the next posts will be a bit more visual, 'cause we're starting the storyboards and the production design right now!

__

we're still looking for a character-designer, a puppet-builder, a costume-designer and a digital-fx composer...if you know one, let us know!

so what happend the last 2 month beside christmas, new year and a hangover?

we roughly got a team. Katrin W. will join us as the head of production. Martn will join us as the Director of Photography. And hopefully we got a talented Sound-Designer to work with, too. Good news for our pacification. But we're still looking for a charakter-designer, modelmakers and a costume designer... And someone making me sandwiches, while I'm writing;) would you..?

But not only this took 2 month. I'm an inch away from finishing the script. yes. that's making me free for focusing on other jobs now.

On top of the list is the completion of a production-portfolio presenting our project and to complete this page. So we're ready to tell everybody what we're doing.

so if you're one of the first reading this...thanks a lot.

and look again, we're starting to bring life to this page right NOW.

hooray

yes we switched.

From now on we'll translate our good ol' deutsch into bad spelled english. So if you're not speaking german, you might be lucky now. or not. if you're disgusted of wrong grammar.

We like to share our project with the world. In fact we're european filmmakers, so why don't work and spread the word over the globe.

*sniff* that's so esperato ;)

Wenn man etwas gießen will, braucht man eine Form. Und um diese Herzustellen braucht man etwas Geduld und Mühe. So in etwa kann man sich die Arbeit vorstellen:

1. Kopf formen aus Plastilin aka. Knete.

(Der abgebildete Kopf ist fiktiv ohne zusammenhang mit dem Projekt gebaut um die Arbeit mit den Materialen zu testen.)

6. Jetzt nochmal alles mit Vaseline einschmieren und die zweite Hälfte gießen.

Wenn man nach der Trockenzeit das ganze aufbricht hat man zwei passgenaue Hälften mit denen man jetzt lecker Formen gießen kann...

Da in die Köpfe aber noch verstellbare Skelette kommen und Latex und Silicon verschiedene Eigenschaften haben, wird an dem Punkt jetzt weiter getestet....

Um von den ersten Ideen und Stimmungen zu einer runden Geschichte zu kommen, sitzen wir gerade am Drehbuch. Und aus wagen Sätzen wie:"ja, dann überwindet er auch dieses Hindernis..." wird dann die Frage: "WIE in aller Welt macht er es denn exakt in jedem einzelnen Bild..." welche wir nachher auch noch animieren müssen.

Seit einem Monat wird mittlerweile Fassung für Fassung korrigiert und neu überarbeitet. Da ändern sich dann auch mal größere und grundlegende Sachen um die ganze Geschichte dramaturgisch noch stärker zu machen. Und man kommt immer wieder an den Punkt wo man denkt jetzt hat mans...und dann lässt man es von Fachmännern korrigieren und muss feststellen, dass man noch viel mehr rausholen kann. Aber nur so kriegt man die Teile seiner Geschichte zu einem Feuerwerk.

Dritter Versuch. Ich denke der Weg ist der Richtige....

Die Lizenz ist im Kasten. Nach einigen DemoVersion tests hat sich AnimatorHD am praktischsten erwiesen. bzw. sei zu betonen, dass es mit 117€ das bezahlbarste im Rahmen seines Umfangs ist. Canon LiveView unsterstützung und FullHD capturing waren da so die überzeugenden Argumente.

Jetzt geht die eigentliche Testphase für mich los. Erstmal den Umfang des Programms mit Rotoscoping und eingebauten ChromaKey genau benutzen können. Ja und dann gehts ans bewegen der Figuren. Das wird ne Ecke an Arbeit.

Für die erste Phase hält der aus AluminiumDraht, Balsaholz und Epoxi verklebte Drahtmann "Darth" seinen Körper zum verbiegen hin. Da lernt man jetzt so was wie single oder double frames capturing treffend einzusetzen / Bewegungen langsam starten und enden zu lassen / Bewegungen vorzubereiten / ...ja alles was die großen in ihren Büchern so betonen. Ich werd mich da jetzt von der Picke an durcharbeiten. Und mal sehn wie es in nem Monat aussieht.

Der erste schnelle Schreibtischtest mit Darth ist dieser hier:

Eine Empfehlung von einem Stoptrick Anfänger.

Ich hab zahlreiche Seiten im Netz gefunden die viel erklären und helfen. Trotzallem möcht ich 2 Bücher empfehlen, falls noch jemand mit StopTrick anfangen möchte oder wissen will wie Bewegungen aufgebaut sind.

The Animator's Survival Kit

ist schlicht der Wahnsinn was die Bewegungsstudien von Figuren angeht. Erstmal von grundauf erklärt und dann so weit geführt, dass alle Basics bis Comicquatsch abgedeckt sind. Und mehr wie ein Comic als ein Buch zu lesen. Sehr entspannend...

Und

Stop Motion - Craft Skills for Model-Animation

Vieles davon findet man zwar bereits im Netz. Vieles aber auch nicht. Dieses Buch deckt ziemlich alle Bereiche ab. Fängt wirklich von Null mit allen Themen an. Ich konnte mir da sehr viel Wichtiges rausziehen.

Deskmotion hat sich gefunden, verliebt und eine Homepage gebaut. Hier und sonst nirgens erfährt man ab jetzt alles zum laufende Projekt. Da gibts einiges zu sehen, zu erleben und zu lernen. Ab mit der Seite unter die Favoriten und sehen was entsteht.

Herzlich Willkommen

es gibt noch viel zu tun