Thursday, January 05, 2006

10: Back in the Lego Room

Worked on some filler shots before the bicycle Kick: Red Kicker steps back from the edge, closeup of Red as he takes some deep breaths, and Maggie running towards the camera then jumping.


Spent some time on this, because I wanted to get a complete sequence done before I went off on Vacation. All in all, I'm pleased with the shots.

I'm back up in the Lego room now that our guests have gone. The shots are clearer, but the machine is slower.

Shot: Red steps back from the edge

For this shot, I had the camera on a pair of Lego stilts. It was stable, but the slightest touch of the table caused it to vibrate back and forth. So I had to wait for it to settle as I took each shot so the whole scene took me a long time to do.

It took me a couple of tries to get the shot going though. The first time, I used blue-tac, but when Red is standing on one foot, it would slowly fall over. After a couple of shots trying to get it right, I just used lego to make it stand. When Red goes to both feet, I switched back to Blue-tac.

Shot: Red Breathes


This closeup wasn't too bad. The only thing that was hard to do was moving Red by a millimeter each time. Onion-skinning really helps, in fact, I use onion skinning in all my shots. I also removed Red's feet and put Lego on them so that he stayed put.

The only problem I'm having with Red now is that his feet are getting quite loose. I think that's why I had problems with having Red stand on one foot.


Shot: Maggie Runs to the Camera


I was afraid this shot would be too short. It's only about 1/2 a second, 12 frames, but after I exported and ran it, it looked fine. I was really worried about it looking too choppy, but after running it, it looked fine. I had to use a mixture of lego and blue-tac to get Maggie to stand still.

Running is hard. Because there are 14 movable points on a Stikfas, I have to make sure that when these guys run or move, that their whole body doesn't go off kilter. I'm debating how I should make them run. I could make them run in the good old anime way, where nothing but the forelimbs move, or I could make them run like normal, but that's harder.

When Maggie jumps, I just do it the old fashioned way: I hold her off screen while snapping the picture. It was getting late and I didn't want to build a whole frame just to hold her up.


Current Film Status

Storage: 620 Megs
Length: 29 seconds

I haven't checked through all my Stop Motion Pro projects to check the exact time I've spent, but I will. I think it's about and hour and a half per second. I'm not winning any awards for speed, that's for sure.

Scene 2 is almost complete! The bicycle kick is the last shot. Now I need to introduce Red and Green puncher to Maggie and then all the footage for Scene 2 will be done! And it will only be about 45 seconds. I still have no idea how long this film is going to be.


Real Life

I'm now on vacation in Calgary. Even if I wanted to, I can't film any footage now. I did bring all of the footage I've shot, and some "making of" pics, so I'll spend time updating the blog.