Friday, December 30, 2005

7: Got to do some animating!

Well, I got home, and I was able to put some animation time in before the relatives came over. Did two shots, Red Kicker sliding towards the edge, and then Red swinging his arms as he balances on the edge.



Not all that impressed with the first shot of Red Kicker sliding towards the edge, but it will do. The second shot, where Red flails his arms, took me a while to set up. I wanted to do it from below, but that would mean I'd have to set up the camera in a practical way. I also needed to have the plate secured enough so that when I make changes to Red, the base doesn't move all over the place.

When you do stop frame animation, you must ensure that the camera is securely in place. In fact, everything has to be securely in place. Having inanimate objects (like the ground) gliding and moving detracts a bit from the realism.

I have a small base plate which I was able to use and with a few lego "toll-bridge" pieces, I was able to securely fasten it to my main base plate. The main base plate I have I got from work. It's four base plates glued onto a block of wood. It's quite heavy and rarely moves so it's great for animating.

Anyways, the small base plate was quite sturdy after putting all the lego on it, which was good, since I was wrenching the stikfas, trying to get it's arms to swing around. The shoulders are usually the stiffest. Actually, the waist is the stiffest, then the shoulders. I tried to blue-tac Red on the base plate, but he was too heavy, so I resorted to lego on its feet.

Now it looks like I won't be able to animate for the next two weeks. I'll miss it. I may start playing around with Pinnacle Studio and getting used to it. Heck, maybe I just may resort to digital effects if it's easy enough to do.

Currently, I have 470 megs of footage. It's roughly 500 frames, but I haven't been keeping track, so it's calculated by how much hard drive space it takes up. So I have approximately 20 seconds of footage.

On average, I think that's an hour for every second. Why do I get myself into these types of hobbies anyways?


Blogging

Took a few pictures for the blog and posted them in the journal. I will probably fool around with the template, and see if I could put links at the bottom of each post so that you can easily go to the next journal entry.