Stop Motion and How it is Slowely Driving me Mad

A bit hectic and frustrating this week; the stop-motion stuff doesn’t seem to be going anywhere fast - it was supposed to be done by today and we only started doing the tests yesterday. Ideally, I should have done the tests last week, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

So onwards we go! As of yesterday, I am assistant/temporary stand-in animation producer or whatever you want to call it, which basically boils down to me running around like a headless chicken and complaining to anyone who will listen. We have got most of the animation tests done and approved – the best way to move the chickenducks we found has been to glue them too the set and stuff all the joints with plaster-scene to stop them moving. Its been decided that we are going to animate it on ones, as is the floor, as it looks a lot smoother. Ralph has also produced a nice chart, which breaks the head nods down into increments so that we can ease in and out of the movement, we have also decided to hold for a couple of frames at the end of the nod to break it all up a bit.

This morning Charlotte and I did some tests on the big eggcup, which I propped up with plaster-scene. Again it looks better on ones and where I was constantly pulling it about we have ended up with a cool little turning action – a happy accident. Since doing all of that, however, Ben, Ralph and myself have put a bolt through it – balancing the cup on a nut, hopefully allowing us smother and more controlled action, I certainly hope so as it is now rather permanently glued to the set. After me failing to produce a winch for the egg – I tried but it ended in disaster – we have glued a bit of dowel to it and plan to lower it in increments by clamping it to the set. I’m hoping to try and put the tests on here soon put I just ran out of time to do that today.

And to my role of Director of Photography…I have hopefully done all of the lighting tests – I have left them with Ben, so I hope there is something he likes otherwise its back to the drawing board, its all set up pretty much as it described last week but when things quieten down a bit I will write a special lighting blogg…ooooo, to walk you through it. I would put all of the pictures up but trust me, they are not very interesting, unless you are really scarily into lighting. The camera angle has also been approved but that didn’t take much work, as it stays stationary the whole time.