stop motion from AS

[Víctor Paredes]

Hi there, I wanted to show a test of stop motion we made at office.
It is a character walking animated in AS. Each frame was printed, cut and pasted on cardboards. Then each printed imaged was filled using different fabrics. Once all frames were ready (which was a lot of hard work...) were photographed on a park.
I worked on the first stage, vectorizing and animating the character. The day they went to the park I couldn't go . Anyway, here you have the original design

and the anme file, if someone wants to see it.
http://www.mediafire.com/?y53ymgmnrih

and, of course, the final video, new link, it's the second video of this mov (in HD )
http://www.fluorfilms.com/videos/prisma-fluor-hd.mov

I hope you like it.

[muffysb]

Ahhh, that's beautiful!

[lwaxana]

What a cool technique to get the best of both worlds. Very loose and natural movement. And the character lighting colors match the background by default, which is convenient.

[knunk]

I think thats fantastic Selgin! Love the design too.

[slowtiger]

Hm ... I don't see the advantage in the workflow over just filming the park and put the monster in via compositing?

[Víctor Paredes]

thanks, guys. It was a tedious but very fun to do test.

Hm ... I don't see the advantage in the workflow over just filming the park and put the monster in via compositing?

Maybe for this test you are right, Slow, but our test was for capture a better movement on stop motion and get effects you can simulate on composing, but never be 100% equal.
What I find fantastic is the fact you could have a 2d or 3d animation of a character (with all the advantages of working in real time on the computer) and copy that movement to a puppet. This way you get that stop motion look, but with the fluidity of real time.
Anyway, in this test we preferred to let the things in 2d, but I very sure there will be more.

[slowtiger]

Fair enough.

Recently I saw several videos which were first animated in 2D or 3D on computer, then somehow transferred to real world, via printing or projecting, to recreate the movement with any odd object. This might be suitable for a music video where the novelty factor is important (you just have to look different from your competirors), but otherwise I saw it as a waste of time.

[jwlane]

Well, this method certainly eliminates any compositing issues. Having the character firmly rooted with a camera that shaky, it makes the shot very ominous.

I saw what I think is a German animation, that used giant cardboard cutout inch worms across 2nd story ledges of buildings. It was well done, but had a much softer effect.

[Jumproper36]

i really like it this is cool

[funksmaname]

TOTALLY AWESOME! thanks for pointing me here from the other thread Selgin

[heyvern]

VERY COOL ANIMATION! I love that stuff. I love the style of the character, that weird, strange look, like from a dream. Reminds me of some of the characters from the movie "Spirited Away".

----------------------

What did you use to assemble the stop motion?

With that new image layer script I created that swaps the image source of a single image layer on the fly, I was thinking doing stop motion animation in AS will be a piece of cake now. Just load a folder of images and BOOM! Stop motion. Makes it freaking simple. The script automatically adjusts to the number of images in the folder... basically it stops trying to load new images if they don't exist.

I was thinking I would need to script a "link" to AS with a camera... but it's not even needed. The script auto updates the images if you add new ones to a folder. All you need is to save images to folder from a camera and the AS file would be updated.


-vern

[funksmaname]

Vern, please refrane from using onomatopoeic exclemations such as 'BOOM' on the Anime Studio forum. i think 'SHAZAAM!' or 'WHAPPAO!' would be more suitable, maybe even 'AAASSPRO'.

[heyvern]

i think 'SHAZAAM!' ... would be more suitable....

I loved that show when I was a kid!



p.s. In tribute to the "Frisbee", a product as fun and easy to use as Anime Studio, from now on I will use the term "Wham O" for my onomatopoeic exclamations.

-vern

[funksmaname]

you got me interested now - what is 'frisbee'?

[jahnocli]

Errmm, just guessing, but I think it's a plastic discus-shaped thing that you throw? Unless it has some other meaning...