Fight: A Stikfas Animation

FIGHT - A stikfas stop motion short

2007-04-25T00:00:00.000-04:00

Allo!

Welcome to the "Making of" blog of my 2 minute short "Fight".

If you haven't seen it, then there's no real point in you reading this blog. Here it is from YouTube.

You can find higher quality versions at Brickfilms.com

I just finished it, and I could do cool things like make a snazzy poster and improve the blog template, but, I'm tired.

To read the blog, click on the link to the right labelled 12/21/05. There are probably better indexing methods, but I set this up a year ago, as you can see. No it didn't take me a year to make a 2 minute film, my procrastination skills are just far superior to my animating skills.

28: Final Battle

2007-04-24T23:29:00.000-04:00

Final stretch! I'm importing it into Garage band as we speak.

Just finished adding the sound effects, and the sad thing is, near the last 10 seconds of footage, it starts going SLOW on me! GAH! It doesn't play as smoothly, so I can't watch the whole thing to make sure the alignment of sounds is correct. *sigh* I wonder if it's because it's on an external driver. Bummer.

Anyways, I found out I can just drag in the completed movie overtop the old video clip in garageband, but it's taking a long time to convert. I was able to answer all my messages in facebook and update the blog.

With my luck, it will crash.

So I found my old sounds that I had from the original 1xY, and I also used some of the sounds from the Brickfilms Sound Library. Took me a while to find the sound library, I couldn't seem to find the link. I think I'm just burnt or something. I had to find it from google. I even went into the thread and didn't see it. (Ok, I just went back to the site so I could add the URL link, and of course, it's on the side. I am POSITIVE it wasn't there before, because I looked there. Bah.)

Afterwards, I will need to add a link this blog and make a front page and I'm DONE! Huzzah.

If you made it this far, thanks for sticking with me! I know I can talk an awful lot, and it get's quite dull in parts... most parts... heck, I'm blogging about animating. That's probably about as much fun as watching people animate.

If all you did was skip to the end, well, if you couldn't be bothered to read the whole blog, there's definitely nothing at the end that would interest you. It's not a novel or anything. (I wrote one, which is no more interesting than this blog, but you could skip to the end of that too to complete whatever end-reading quotient you need to fulfill).

Uh, sorry, I'm wasting time waiting for the thing to import. Gosh, it's still not done. Maybe I'll spend my time in the bathroom then...

[Few minutes Later]

Hey, why doesn't it the dock icon bounce up and down when it's done? Bother, I guess a dialogue box has to pop up for that.

Ok, it imported in, and it won't play because it's too slow. Bummer, it's only a 2 minute film. My computer is too slow. Although, I'm able to do 2 hour home videos fine. I don't understand this at all.

Oh well, I'm just exporting it. I'm hoping it will be ok.

[Bathroom break later]

Oh goody! It's done! YAYAYAYAYAY!!!!

Hmm, it's low quality, I didn't change the export settings.

Booo.

But it seems to export fine. Things are somewhat ok (although one scene is a bit fast...oh well...I'll change it in the redux).

YAY!

I wanted a low quality version anyways. I'm so excited! Huzzah!

[Mored exporting later]

Bother, why is this so hard? I want an original size, .mov file. Full quality gives me an 800 meg honking file. *sigh*

Ok, the video export in garage band isn't as versatile. So I just removed the video track, exoprted it and reimported it into imovie.

Finally. Good grief.

27: Music Score

2007-04-23T23:59:00.000-04:00

Since I want to get the film out by the end of this week, I will do the music by myself. Well, I, personally won't be doing it, I will be grabbing loops off of Garage Band.

But first, I needed to fix a few scenes. The first is the shot where Maggie is surrounded by the foes she defeated. That was just done in paint shop pro. Took three different shots and combined them together.

The second was doing the anime motion charge of the final boss figure. That was done in flash, but flash doesn't export to quicktime when you use the special filters of Flash 8. So I had to just export each frame individually and put them together in iMovie.

That done, I spend the next 3 hours trying to come up with a soundtrack and eventually result in a sucky one. *sigh* Sen makes it look easy. I would get him to do it, but he's busy, and I want this off my plate this week.

And yes, I should be doing my taxes. But no, I'm playing with my animation. Don't follow my lead, kids.

I finally have music that's passable. Garageband, however, doesn't let me export mp3s. It allows me to do the score of the movie, which is REALLY helpful, but the movie was supposed to be 'done'. :(

Now I have to figure out how to get this score out and put in the sound effects. I want to put the sound effects in imovie. I should have done that first. I hope I can figure out how to get that score in there.

Sometimes the restrictions software products put on you can be so annoying. Why won't it let me export my creations into mp3? *sigh* I can't even burn the music to iTunes. And I had to copy the film to the movies directory, because I can't pull in the movie from another director. Blah.

Oh well, it's still infinitely easier than any other film editing software.

I hope to get done this thing soon. Oh ya, I forgot to put film credits in, silly me. I will have to do that. It's just me though, so no big deal.

26: "Have we started again?"

2007-04-22T23:00:00.000-04:00

I lay awake in bed at night and go through action sequences for my movie. My wife doesn't understand me.

Well, last night, I finally came to a decision: I won't get this thing done. So I may as well finish what I have and release it. I have too many hobbies and my kids like to watch me animate, which results in no animating.

So Saturday night, I decided to finish the movie with the footage I have.

My nieces are over, so that means there are now four children in the house all wondering what I'm doing in the Lego room. However, the children keep themselves entertained and I can actually get a bit of animating done. Sure, they come up, look at the computer screen, and think that it's really "cool" and then feel the need to touch the camera, and the desk and the Maggie figure, but the shots I'm shooting are really short.

I needed to get some transition shots, and do a few more shots for the beginning of the film. Then the final battle between the boss and Maggie (which is short and slightly unsatisfying).

Maggie is quite loose now. Her forearm falls off, her feet fall off, her waist barely supports her torso. Her neck is stiff though. I can't even get her to turn her head without turning the whole body. That's change a bit of my shots because I wanted her to shake her head. Well, she's not doing it anymore. Fortunately, her hair is the right amount of stiffness.

I think the next time I do one of these films (when my kids are teenagers and don't want to be near their parents), I will have to buy more of the same stikfas so they don't wear out so fast. Of course, that's assuming I have the money to keep on spending on these guys...good grief. In 10 years time they'll probably be 50 bucks each. Maybe they'll send me free ones because I'm such a nice guy with a nice cute film. *sigh* One can dream.

Enough of my bellyaching, I got most of the shots done. All that needs to be done are a bit of edits, the sound and then we're laughing. There's no sweet taste of success or popularity, but it's good to know I'm finally going to get this project done.

I probably should update the blog template to look nicer. Ugh...more work.

25: More Filler Animation

2006-07-14T00:00:00.000-04:00

Well, I added a few more frames to the animation from last session, and then I did another small 20 frame shot of the enemies closing in on Maggie.

I also had it pan again. You may notice that I pan a lot, and I think I mentioned this before, but you never know, panning really helps when animating. Why? Because if my stupid hand hits the camera, which it often does, it doesn't matter if I don't get it back perfectly, because I'm moving it anyways.

There's nothing more annoying than doing a still shot, and then my hand hits the camera, rendering the shot relatively useless because I can't get the camera to match exactly how it was.

Ok, I just checked the last post in February, and I did mention it there. Bother.

I had to get the lighting correct, because I wanted to the stikfas to come in from the darkness. Mind you, the lighting doesn't really matter because it happens so fast you don't notice it anyways, so I don't know why I bother. It's getting them to walk that I have trouble with. Getting one stikfas to walk is fine, because the other stikfas aren't in the way. But when they're grouped together like that, I can't manipulate them as easily, and they waddle from side to side.

I was hoping to get this film done before August, but it doesn't look like that's feasible now. *sigh*

Real Life

Anything fun happening in real life? Well, my Kung Fu place went bankrupt on me (after sinking a LOT of money into paying up front. I don't want to talk about that.) So the only exercise I get now is playing DDR 3 times a week with some friends. However, the only time I can really do DDR or animating is after 9pm when the kids go to bed. So it cuts into my animating time, which is why it's hard for me to get cracking on that.

I also bought a new MacMini, and I love it. I'll probably be doing this in imovie because I bought a 250 gig hard drive for my home movies. :) So excited about it. I'm wondering if I should do my own music too. Sen normally does music for me, and he's better at it, but it may be fun for me to do it on my own. Although, credits are a lot more interesting if there is more than just one guy.

24: Hiatus

2006-07-12T00:00:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been a while. If you are checking the dates on this, you will notice the last time I did anything was on February 11th. It's now July 12th! Good grief.

I've been wanting to animate for a while, but, things get busy, like work and kids and being too tired to do anything requiring "producing" and just wanting to sit and "consume".

Since last I animated, we moved the Lego room around, but things were roughly in the same place, just a bit cleaner. My dad had used the computer and installed some programs on it, so I had to clean that out just to get the network working again. But it didn't take too long and I was back in production.

I had been planning the next shot in my mind for the last 5 months. It's not a complicated shot or anything, I just had been mulling over in my head getting ready for when I was going to animate again. It was going to be a spinning kick taking down a bunch of enemies closing in on Maggie. So I needed to set that shot up.

And wouldn't you know it? I did it wrong. Maggie is surrounded by guys, and they close in on her. What I wanted to do was about 20 degree circular pan as the enemies close in.

I didn't place them correctly though, they're too close. So I get about 5 degrees in and realize that I can't go any further without Maggie doing something.

So I'll have her do a backflip kick because I'm not wasting the footage I've already done. It took me a half an hour to set up the computer and the stage, and an hour to do about 14 frames. So people wonder why I don't storyboard. It's because things change no matter how much I plan ahead. Now we've got an extra kick going in, which isn't a bad thing, really.

Yes, I've really lost the groove of animating. Five months will do that to ya. Well, it did it to me.

So hopefully I will get to the spin kick, I just have to do some other stuff before I get to it. :)

23: Long Take

2006-02-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

The next take was 335 frames!

Normally, each take is half a second or a second, sometimes it can go to 3 seconds. The take pictured to the left is roughly 14 seconds!

I did it over a period of four days. Well, the filming was done in four days, but not four consecutive days. I did a cut and paste from the SMP project timeline:


Start Time              |  End Time                 | Duration
------------------------+---------------------------+----------
2/3/2006    9:46:09 PM  |  2/4/2006    1:22:34 AM   | 3:36
2/4/2006    1:22:55 AM  |  2/4/2006    2:57:14 AM   | 1:34
2/4/2006    2:57:26 AM  |  2/4/2006    3:04:08 AM   | 0:06
2/4/2006    3:38:55 PM  |  2/4/2006    5:33:00 PM   | 1:54
2/4/2006    7:19:46 PM  |  2/4/2006    7:41:49 PM   | 0:22
2/4/2006    8:25:59 PM  |  2/4/2006    8:35:10 PM   | 0:09
2/5/2006    2:34:56 PM  |  2/5/2006    5:36:47 PM   | 3:01
2/5/2006    9:41:13 PM  |  2/5/2006    10:24:45 PM  | 0:43
2/5/2006    10:57:54 PM |  2/6/2006    12:12:10 AM  | 1:14
2/7/2006    10:19:41 PM |  2/7/2006    11:58:07 PM  | 1:38
2/11/2006   9:05:11 PM  |  2/11/2006   11:17:07 PM  | 2:11
------------------------+---------------------------+----------
                                 Total duration:    16:32

To do this shot, I set the camera up similar to that done in 13: Kids and Animation don't mix.

The plan was to have the camera swivel back and forth as Maggie is being attacked from both sides. As I've said before, I wanted to do long takes for this one, and I knew it would span a few days of filming time. Unfortunately, everytime I come back to filming the next day, not everything is exactly the way I left it. I don't blame the kids, but sometimes it seems that the camera is a millimetre further away or something. It's like heat or cold causes the camera to expand or contract, or something so it's not the same when I come back the next day. It probably isn't that noticeable, but I wasn't going to take chances.

With a camera that swivels left and right, the camera is always moving. A small desk bump won't make any difference, I can move the camera to the appropriate position. Even better is the fact that the background is black and there is no ground. There really is no point of reference so you can't even tell if there is a camera bump. All goodness for me.

Part A

February 3rd was a wack of filming, but also a wack of just setting up. I started at 9:15 and had an idea how I was going to film, but it didn't work out. I finally got the stage set up at about 10:45pm. Good grief. Anyways, I was on a roll when I got started and didn't finish until 3am in the morning.

I like the punches in this take, but the knee shots don't have Red recoiling enough.

Part B

I don't know what it is about my roundhouse kicks, I don't seem to get them correctly. They lose the "weight" behind them everytime I do them. I probably have to do them more.

The second kick is inspired again from Tom Yum Goong. I like the kick, and probably will have it again because it goes too fast and you don't really see what's happening. I have a lot of shots that are going too fast, don't I. That probably means I should sharpen up my timing.

Anyways, I had the stikfas at odd angles when filming these shots. They were all leaning a bit forward the whole time, so even though the camera looks like it's at waist level, it really isn't. That made it difficult to get high kicks, for some reason, I must have been doing something screwy because I had a hard time getting the kicks high enough without moving the stikfas so off center that fluidity would be sacrificed.

Part C

Of course, I have to do the perfunctory dodge where the main character leans backwards. I just add a quick front kick to Red, and then another dodge as Maggie leans forward. I started to lose track of the camera though. I wanted to capture Red getting kicked and falling backwards, and then I noticed that I have to get back to Green throwing in another punch, so although at first not noticeable, it looks like the untrained camera man has no idea what to focus on, because it's pretty much true.

The first part, where Maggie does a back kick to Green, I had to make it look like Maggie is grabbing and holding Green's wrist while she shoots a kick back. Of course, Maggie isn't touch Green's arm at all, so all the while I'm hoping that it looks like Green's arm is being pulled and controlled by Maggie. I do like the shot, because it worked out as planned! Well, almost as planned. I wanted green to shoot up and have his back bend and snap as it did, and then, just for fun, I threw in an elbow as he was going down. It may have looked better without it, but meh.

Part D

Mediocre spin. That's about all I can say for this part of the shot. I should have kept Maggie's legs closed this whole time, but I had it open up thinking that would give more momentum to the spin. Now it looks like...I don't even know. It looks ok though, so I wasn't going to cut it or anything, but I think it's somewhat weak.

She ends in a weak position too. I was thinking what I was going to do next, and how I was going to do it. I went through a number of shots in my head trying to figure out what attack to put in next, and which way the camera was going to go.

Part E

I finally settled on doing a flying front kick, but because the camera rotates a lot, it looks kinda funny, and a bit too choppy even. Every time I see it, it almost seems the wrong kick is going out.

I knew I wanted to do the throat grab and flip and I didn't even test it out on two stikfas to see if I could actually get them into that position. Not a good thing to do. Whenever I have the fine delicate movements (for an impact, a snap, or a recoil) then the body cannot be removed. Well, it can be removed, but it takes me a dickens of a time trying to get it back in the right position, and sometimes I can't.

Anyways, I was surprised how easy she fit into the hold. In fact, when she flips Red over her back, all I had Red do was balance on her back while her arms locked Red in place. So no blue-tac or extra lego was required. Mind you, it's not the greatest flip I've done, but it was passable.

I am finally glad to get this shot done though. 16 hours is a long time, but spacing it over a few days is making it easier. I'm also trying to animate when no one can bother me. I find that if I animate and try to do anything else at the same time (like answer questions from my daughter about lego and blue-tac) I develop a wicked headache. I just cannot multi-task very well. Intense concentration constantly being interrupted makes me all stressed and irritable.

It's the same at work, if I have a deadline and I need to get some programming done, I cannot be constantly interrupted. If I do, my productivity is cut in half and my head feels like oatmeal. I've also got my butt back in gear and I am going to Kung Fu again. I haven't exercised in over 3 months and it really effects my energy and stress levels.

Ok, that's enough complaining from me! I know what the next move is going to be, I'm just figuring out how to set it up.

22: Ikea Purchases

2006-02-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

Well, I went to Ikea today and bought some stuff for pretty cheap! The first thing I got was a Snudda, a Lazy Susan made out of wood. It seemed rather heavy and sturdy, so I was quite pleased that I could find this for only $10 bucks! I plan on blue-tacking a baseplate to it and then testing circular dollies on it. Currently, I've just been using Lego turntables, but it's only for closeups. Now I have a way to turn the whole base!

The next most amazing thing I bought was a Tertial, more commonly known as the work lamp. This is similar to the red work lamp I have, in fact I think it's identical except for the colour. It's great, especially when I put the camera on the lamp itself.

I haven't animated in the last two days. I've been exhausted when 9:00pm hits. I don't know why. I can barely keep my eyes open. So I go to bed and inevitably wake up at 12am and can't sleep for two hours. *sigh* It's becoming quite annoying.

I would like to animate tomorrow, but I'm taking care of four kids, Ekko's cousins are coming over. Hopefully I can stay awake, or just put the kids to bed early.

21: Men Never Learn

2006-01-30T00:00:00.000-05:00

It's true. Ekko was feeling sick and so I stayed with her in the Lego room as she lay there all tired and worn out.

Being in the Lego room, I thought, "Hey, I may as well do some animating since Ekko doesn't have enough energy to bother me."

Bad idea. I forgot that there is another saboteur whose name starts with "Z", and she likes to follow Ekko around and come into the Lego room and do all sorts of things detrimental to animation.

I was able to get in about 7 frames, when I bumped the camera. It took me almost an hour to get 7 frames. *sigh*

In all fairness, I probably would have eventually bumped the camera anyways, because I had the camera cable wedged underneath the camera, which I didn't notice. So any slight bump would have caused it to go off kilter. And actually, on the second take, when all the kids were in bed, I actually did bump the camera again, but only after I finished filming everything. Only when I tried to go back and insert a couple of frames, because the lift didn't accelerate, I bumped it, and it went all askew.

Problem is, I have the camera on an angle, so I just put two round 1x1 on the corner of the camera and then angle it that way.

In the end, I did get the scene done and I'll keep it the way it is. I do have to get "falling" done correctly. Falling from a height is fine, but falling from being tripped or hit is going too fast. It should take about 5 or even 6 frames to fall down. I do 3 or 4, but that's the same number of frames I use for falling from a height.

In fact, I think any movement that is 3 or less frames is too fast. Any punch, kick or whatever should be at the very least 4 frames.

Stikfas can't bend there feet very well, at least not the beta females, so having her kneel was difficult because at first, the best I could do was get her to be in a sitting position. However, I wanted her to duck and crouch. So the shot here, if you didn't notice, has her feet backwards. I was wondering if it would be too noticeable, but it actually looks somewhat natural.

20: I feel good!

2006-01-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

What did I do over the weekend. Other than some animating, I got some sleep! It was great. You may have noticed there were about 4 days of no animation. Well, probably not, who actually looks at the date? But I was exhausted. So I slept in on Saturday, and then had a 4 hour nap on sunday. Such that animating yesterday and today was great.

This particular shot has Maggie's hands completely off of the screen. This allowed me to rotate her without worrying too much about how to make it look realistic.

This shot and the previous shot was inspired from Tom-Yum-Goong, when Tony Jaa goes up against the Capoeira fighter. I actually want to put more flips and such in there, but we'll see.

Anyways, to explain this shot, I actually went and looked up the names on peeron! Mind you, I also have a picture too, but I figured I may as well call things by there real names as opposed to grey thing and black thing.

I took two "1x1 Tiles with Clip" and placed them on a "Turntable 2x2 Plate". On the 1x1 Clip Tiles, I put an "Antenna 4H" and then I had Maggie hold onto that. There. That was a lot of work, trying to find out what all those things are. I also learned what a "Tap" was, or I now know the name of that thing. All goodness.

Anyways, the first red guy getting kicked goes too fast again, but his feet when he falls is perfect. At least I got something right.

19: Clear Nail Polish is the Best!

2006-01-28T00:00:00.000-05:00

Works like a charm!

After about 3 coats of clear nail polish, Maggie is as good as new!

I was able to do this shot without worrying about Maggie flipping over.

Now that these shots are taking a lot longer to film, because of the number of Stikfas in them, I'm starting to cheat a bit. When Maggie does her handstand kick, one hand is completely off the screen. That's the hand that is holding on to the lego.

The red stikfas that is jumping is also holding on to lego, but I photoshopped that out.

This shot is also very quick. If you blink, you'll miss Maggie kicking. You probably don't even notice red jumping because it happens too fast, as well as why he's jumping. Well, the green guy that fell rolls backwards and trips the other green guy in the back. Unfortunately, I'm not pleased with that because the guy that is tripped falls too fast.

I have to slow these things down somehow, but these shots are taking me about 3 hours to do.

In fact, this shot is so quick that I forgot to erase the 1x1 Tap the first time around. In the preview clip above, you will notice that the falling green guy 's hand is holding on to a 1x1 Tap in the first 3 frames. I didn't edit it out because I didn't realize it was there until I watched the clip over and over again.

18: Waist Loose

2006-01-24T00:00:00.000-05:00

Well, I think I'm done with the shot. I'm not satisfied with it, but it took me ten hours to do 49 frames, so I'm not redoing it.

The guy who gets footsweeped doesn't leap up properly either. His leg shoots up, but his whole body should go. There is a lot of stuff that happens in that one shot, so I don't know if people will even notice anything. Well, there is a lot of stuff not happening too, so it's just one big blur.

I did motion blur maggie's arms and legs though, I thought then it would be easier to see the path they take.

Problem is, they're currently in a position which I don't really know what to do with. All my laid out plans were for naught. Well, the plans I had which weren't written down. I have some ideas, but they seem kludgey at best, so I will have to think on it some more.

Stikfas Repairs

Maggie's waist is super loose. It won't stand up on it's own. I did some research and found this article at stikcustomizers.com. So I'll be playing with some clear nail polish and hopefully I won't destroy poor Maggie...I'm not much of a fixit guy.

17: 3 Days ... 3 Freakin Days!

2006-01-23T00:00:00.000-05:00

And I'm not done yet! AUGH! It's so frustrating.

After looking at the current post date, you may be thinking that I haven't been animating. Well, you're wrong. I animated Saturday for about 3 hours. I animated Sunday for about 3 1/2 hours. I animated last night for another 3 hours.

And how many frames do I have for all my sweat and toil?

50.

AUGH!!!!

And is this particular shot done?

No.

AUGH!!!

It's going so slowly because I am posing seven of the guys at a time and I'm finding it time consuming. Read this and appreciate how much work goes into this! Or at least marvel at how much I suck.

Making Stikfas walk is hard. Well, making a bunch of them walk anyways. I start and forget what leg the one stikfas is moving, so I go back and see. Then I go to the other one and forget what leg he's doing. Then I go to another stikfas and try and figure out what to do with him because he's blocked from all sides and can't go anywhere accept backwards, so do I just make him sway or something? Then I realize that I will need a stikfas in position to be hit so I have to speed him up a bit to get there in time. Then I have to do Maggie. Blah blah blah. Then I take a break because my head hurts so much.

*sigh* Almost nine hours on this one clip, and I'm not done it yet. And is it the most splenderifidous clip in the world? No! Let me extol to you it's many vices.

Maggie is doing side kick to a front kick. The front kick is off. It's not the right way to do it (in regards to how her body is moving) and it is kinda slow
She does a crescent kick of a sort, and then goes into a sweeping kick. The sweep is so off because the leg doesn't bend enough for her to spin on. So it rotates around the center of her body. I'm worried that it's too quick too.
All the opponents look like they're zombies, shuffling in with arms outstretched

I could go on, but it's depressing. And now Maggie's waist is all shot. She doesn't hold her position at the waist anymore. I have to figure out how to tighten her up, I wonder if that's on the internet somewhere.

*sigh* This is one tiring shot. Morale is low.

16: No Animating Done

2006-01-21T15:05:00.000-05:00

Well, can't say I've been doing much animating. I tried to, but I spent most of my time visualizing how Maggie was going to take on the horde. I was trying to work out the first sequence in my head and I just sat in the rooming looking blankly at the wall. Keren thought I was upset because I had lost one of the legs of the Stikfas. Well, I hadn't lost it, Ekko was playing with it and then it was gone.

Fortunately, we later found the leg clutched in Zoe's hand. She's a bit put out these days because we're making her sleep on her own now, which results in sleepless nights for the parents. Cute kid though, I would put up pictures of her and the Stikfas if I had any. I think I will.

Anyways, I think I have the first bit of the choreography done, but I'll need a block of time to do it. I don't know how many other Stikfas will be on screen, but it will now get a bit harder, keeping track of where everyone is. I am tempted to do a storyboard or something. I didn't, but I'm tempted to.

It was getting late, and I was too tired to animated, so instead I redid the camera base. I had the small camera base (as posted in 9: Money Shot entry) and I had the original base (which can be seen in 13: Kids and Animation Don't Mix) and I thought, "Why don't I combine them so I don't have to switch between the two all the time?"

So I did, and resulted in the camera to the right. It's low enough to the ground so I should be able to get the shots I want and I can always raise the camera. I will have to play with it, however, if I want to hang it on the lamp again. I will probably just make a third leg which will replace the one with the gear box.

I haven't tried panning up and down with it, but one of these days I may give it a shot. It's not the smoothest thing, but it's not done in realtime so it shouldn't matter.

More On Film Editing

Bother, I'm still working on trying to find a program that will do Pan and Zoom properly! I downloaded Wax as well as ZS4 Video Editor but I don't think they'll work for me. Well I know that ZS4 didn't work at all, but it was slow on my machine anyways. I may look into doing Wax, but I can't find a proper pan anywhere. And Showbiz still has the easiest way to set the contrast and brightness, so I just may stick with that. I wonder if iMovie has pan and zoom, I should check that.

15: Scene 2 - Animation Done!

2006-01-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

Huzzah! I'm finally finished the animation for Scene2!

I only had to do the overhead shot where Red and Green were running towards Maggie. Now running is a bit tricky with stikfas because you have to make sure that they are posed just right. This is difficult to do if they're joints are loose and they have to stand on one foot all the time. Since it was from the top, I didn't worry too much about it though, because you can't see the stikfas anyways, but if you slow down the shot, you will notice that it really looks like a fast walk. I need to work on my running a bit more. The run cycle is about 5 frames for one leg, which would make it about 10 for one cycle. I think this is a bit too fast though, when I have a real shot of running stikfas, I'll experiment more.

I was debating doing it on the side of the wall as I did with Maggie's overhead shot, but after playing with the the angle and stuff, I realized that if I put the camera on the lamp itself, it fits perfectly! This is good, because I was dreading putting the stikfas on the wall, blue-tac doesn't keep a one legged stikfas up very well.

So, silly me, the first time I did the animation, I had Ekko, my daughter, in the room. Ekko loves playing with Lego, and Blue-tac, and the stikfas. My biggest worry was her hitting the desk, although the lamp seem pretty steady. After about 9 frames of animation, and me worrying about Ekko hitting the desk, putting lego together for her, and having her insist that she puts lego away for me in my parts container after she hid it, I scrapped it and waited until she was in bed.

Kids sure make stop-frame animation difficult. :) Not that the animation was any better afterwards.

I also worked on some minor filler close shots of green and red running off screen.

Now, I have two still shots that I need to jazz up a bit, but that's it! The animation of scene 2 is complete! Oh glory be! :)

Film Editing

In total, for the 40 or so seconds of video that I have, it takes up almost a gig of space. I need to free up space on my computer.

I was using Arcsoft's Showbiz to edit the film, I like how I can change the brightness, contrast and hue very easily for each clip. It also does pan and zoom, but it only does it for slideshows, and I can't figure out how to export those as avi's. The uncompressed avi's seem to be a bit larger than normal, although maybe that's my unfamiliarity with video formats. I tried to group all the clips together and it resulted in about 1.27 gigs, almost 300 megs more than all the individual clips together.

I'll figure something out.

14: Red Shows Off

2006-01-17T00:00:00.000-05:00

There's not much to show off for Red.

His kicks suck. *sigh*

I filmed it and everything went way too fast. So instead of redoing it, because I had already spent an hour and a half on it, I went through and inserted frames in.

This wasn't too bad, except the arms seem to be really choppy.

So I'm not going to say much about this shot other than the fact that I know it's poor. Maybe the sound will cover it up.

My other excuse for the lack of quality is because this particular red stikfas is rather...well-used. Both my kids love to play with them. This stikfas is the one I give to Zoe and she does all sorts of interesting experiments with it, most of which involves being crushed in her hand. Sometimes she'll come to me with the leg missing, looking all expectant that I should fix this minor inconvenience the stikfas had imposed upon her.

So now, the poor guys arm is all wonky. It won't pose very correctly and hangs there limp, like Steve Austin's bionic arm when it was attacked by that wierd robot thing that looked like a Dalek. Remember that? I mean, I couldn't understand why it was so threatening, it was on wheels! All Steve had to do was climb up a tree and hurl big rocks at it. Uh...anyways, where was I.

Anime Shot

I also did the anime pose shot of the three combatants. The lighting for this was extremely difficult because I only have two lights to illuminate two things at a time. Having Maggie have light from behind required me to balance this fluorescant light on the camera itself. I need better lighting or something.

The shots ok, though. I need to find a way to have it move though, like burst in or radial blurred or something.

Real Life

Was way too tired to do any animating last night, although I don't know why. Here, I was happy to have an evening to do some filming because all the kids were exhausted and went to bed early! Wouldn't you know it, I was exhausted too. So I continued to read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I had picked up to read on the way to Calgary. I had also picked up Thud as well as Guards! Guards!: A Discworld Graphic Novel, both of which I tremendously enjoyed. Although the latter would be confusing had you not read the book.

Problem with reading, I find, is that after I do a lot of reading, I feel the urge to write, but right now I'm in the middle of animating, and I barely have enough time to do that! It would be cool to do a graphic novel, if I could draw well enough. *sigh* It would be fun to do Dorin as a graphic novel.

13: Kids & Animation don't mix

2006-01-15T23:43:00.000-05:00

Well, that's not exactly true.

Although I animated today, any fault in the animation was due to myself, not because of the kids.

Introducing Red Kicker

The first shot I did was Red Kicker falling onto the plate. It's a lot choppier than I like, but his fall is more realistic than green's. Green is in the background getting up, and he looks choppy there too. *sigh*

Instead of using my normal wooden board with the plates glued on, I sticky tacked two large plates onto the desk. I couldn't convey the sense of distance with my normal board. Other than it being a bit choppy, it turned out rather well.

The only concern I have is that I hope it will look fine when I darken the whole scene. The background is currently insane with activity as kids come and go with each shot and my wife vacuums. However, since it's frame averaging, you don't see any actual faces or people, but the blurs are noticeable.

Green Shows Off

The next shot was 96 frames and it only took me 2 hours! The camera slowly rotates around green as green shows off a few punches.

Although mind numbing, I actually like the rotating camera. If I bump the desk, it's not noticeable because the camera is moving anyways. However, it moves only a couple millimeter at a time which is quite tedious.

And could I think of things for green to do for his punches? No. I had been thinking about it for the past couple of days, and I think I should have wrote them down, because when it came time to actually filming it, my mind went blank. Blah. I also didn't want to move the feet nor did I want to pan the camera up and down, so some of the cool moves I was thinking of couldn't work.

It gets the point across, so I'm not too disappointed though.

12: Introducing Green

2006-01-14T00:00:00.000-05:00

Did a couple of filler shots and then green puncher's drop into existence.

I first took all my plates downstairs, arranged them on the black table, and then took a picture of Maggie on them. Then I edited them so that it's only black all around.

This was to get a wide angle view of the platform Maggie is on. It's kinda jarring when in the film, but I don't currently know how to fix that easily. So it's staying.

The next two shots I have Maggie surveying her surroundings, and then she looks up. I do a quick birds eye view, and then what do I notice afterwards? A piece of the black plate that I was using to hold up the base plate is showing. AUGH!!!!

The easiest way I could do a bird's eye view was to put the base plate on the wall and then secure it on desk with some lego angle brackets. I then secured Maggie with some lego and did some quick shots.

But only afterwards did I see that I left one of the black plates showing. *sigh* And it sticks out too! I'm tempted to leave the stupid thing in.

Green Falls Down

Yuck, I did this all wrong. I did it backwards so that I could get the pose right, and then I screw everything up. His snap into position is way too quick. The pose looks ok, but the fall is so jarring.

I was also wanted to pan the camera downwards following his fall, but there's no point in a black background, so the end result you see him land on a sliver of a baseplate.

Bleah. I can't think backwards, which is probably a surprise to a lot of my friends who think of me nothing but backwards. :)

Here's a pic of me animating the green falling. Exciting stuff, hunh?

11: Dumb Plates

2006-01-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

Back home! I can animate! I had the itch to animate so much that I went and did a brickfilm fight tutorial for the brickfilms wiki.

Anyways, I started tackling the problem of getting the plates to revolve into place.

Stupid Plates, what possessed me to do it this way?

The first plate wasn't too bad. I put the whole scene on it's side and then just leaned the rotating plate on the desk and moved it in. It was hard to get it lined up because the plates are really flexible, so it's off in places. But it worked.

Then I did a quick shot of Maggie being surprised by the plate.

However, the next shot required two plates coming up. Stupid plates, I should get a computer to do this or something. The shot goes by pretty fast and it has too else you would see all the mistakes. I had to do it one at a time and then photoshop all the frames together.

Looks pretty crappy.

I couldn't do it as I did the previous plate, because there was no way I could hold up two plates or put two plates on the side as I did. So I laid out all four plates on the table and took a shot. This was to get them properly lit.

Then I removed two and took a shot. This not lit at all; I needed the darkness for background.

Then I did one plate coming in, and then I did another.

Then, at about 1:00am, I edited each frame so that it looks like they're all one.

You can probably look at each frame and laugh how poor it looks. I'm hoping the sound will cover it up.

I have no idea what I'm going to do in scene three. *sigh*

10: Back in the Lego Room

2006-01-05T00:00:00.000-05:00

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.

9: Money Shot

2006-01-02T00:00:00.000-05:00

After Maggie does her bicycle kick, it cuts to a shot where Red Kicker flies off the plate and Maggie lands in a really low front stance.

I love this shot.

It took me about 3 hours to do, and it's only 42 frames. *sigh*

Why it took me so long

I couldn't figure out the best way to have Red fly off the plate. I considered just holding Red and doing it manually, but there was no way I could do that smoothly. So I moved the piano bench over, and propped him up with some lego.

I wanted to avoid any frame photoshopping, so I attached him to the lego at the underside of his foot. Couldn't get it working too well, and Red would fall constantly.

After about 10 minutes of that, I tried to position the camera lower so that you couldn't see the lego prop. I took apart my webcam frame and first tried to stick it on some blue tac. That did not work at all, I don't know what it was, but it slowly moved between each frame. Eventually, I resorted back to my webcam frame, but a much more smaller one.

Knowing that I can't escape the photo editing, I attached Red to the frame at the thigh, and filmed it that way. After a few rough starts, I was able to get what I wanted, but this only after about and hour or more of trial and error.

Why I like the shot

I think I'm getting a better sense of 24fps. I knew that I needed Red to fly back a considerable amount before Maggie drops in. Red flies back for about 8 frames before Maggie begins her descent. By the time Maggie gets into position, I think it's around 12 frames.

I was also able to get the "impact" correct. Maggie lands, her body goes down a bit from the impact of landing, and then she comes back up. It's like a "snap" of a punch.

The hair wasn't too bad either. It took a bit, trying to make sure I didn't move the whole body while letting the hair fall, and I only screwed up a couple of times. :) I only had Maggie anchored at one foot with Blue-Tac, so it was hard to get the small nuances of the hair and impact, but it came out ok.

Another reason I like it: Maggie just looks cool in that pose. I had a better one, unfortunately, but it was hard enough getting Maggie to fall into the pose. I debated filming it backwards, but it was fine as it is.

In the end, it turned out quite smooth, and I'm very pleased with it.

Thoughts on Previous Shots

Ok, that shot where Green falls off the plate? It sucks. I'm really considering redoing it. The other shots are ok, but that one is really crappy. It's just too choppy in comparison to all the other shots. It's choppy because I was scared to do frame photoshopping.

I should remember that. Just do it and have no worries about editing. I mean, I have a black background, it's relatively easy editing things out. It's just time consuming.

Other Things

I think I'll stick with Blogger. I was debating moving it because I couldn't get it to do what I want. Eventually, I want to set this journal up so that the movie will be on the first page, and everyone can read the journal as a "Making of". But that means they would need to go to each entry with ease.

By changing the archives to daily, and then adding a Prev and Next in the template (that I found frome ecmanaut's blog), I think that it may suffice. Once I figure out how to have titles in the archive, I'll be set.

Just need to fix up the template so that it's more themed to the movie. However, I'm really enjoying this journalling part. Rather extreme, but someone out there may be interested in reading it!

8: Animation Addict

2006-01-01T23:14:00.000-05:00

Oooh, look at me, I'm actually posting about the animation I did on the day I did the animation. (I usually post the day after, which is why all the posts say 12am.)

Anyways, I caved in to my animation addiction. I moved my stuff downstairs so that I could animate on my main computer. I don't really remember all the settings, so hopefully it will look ok.

Today, I worked on the bicycle kick. I'm not all that pleased with it. It's hard to do bicycle kicks in real time, I realize the majority of the time I see it, it's in slow motion. Well, except for the one I remember from Jackie Chan's "Gorgeous", which I should have watched and emulated, but I didn't, so I have a sucky bicycle kick.

Oh well.

It required me doing some frame editing.

The computer upstairs has a dark monitor, so what looks quite dark looks not so dark on other computers (although I think brightness is different between macs and pcs). So when it comes to post production, I usually darken all the frames. So I hade to make sure this computer is light enough!

As you can see from above, I used this long lego pole, which I think is a mast from a lego windsurf sail, and slotted it into the back of Maggie. I changed her torso so that it had the square indents in it, and I found the pole fits quite nicely in there. Normally, a regular pole which fits in the hands of a minifig and a stikfas would not fit in the square slots of a stikfas. However, because a slit is in this pole to allow for the sail (or whatever it's used for), it fits and wedges in quite nicely! Bonus!

I'm not all that pleased with this kick. The arms are not expressive enough, the kick is way too fast, and in order for me to slow it down a tad, I doubled some frames in there. Thus, it looks a bit more choppy than usual. I also don't like how the hair is done either.

Remember when I said I was getting the hang of how the hair should move? I was wrong.

And the downstairs table is not very stable. My knee bumped it on frame 19. Since I was editing each frame anyways, and most of the ground isn't visible, I just easily edited in the ground from frame 16. But it's pretty annoying if you've spent an hour and 45 minutes, and then your knee bumps the table. Actually, the whole animating took an hour and 45 minutes, for barely a second.

I'm proceeding at an alarming rate.

Anyways, I'm excited because I'm getting closed to finishing Scene 2. Well, I'm more than halfway finished, so I can't wait till I get the chance to blog that it's done! Scene 3 and 4 will be the most difficult of course, but I'll worry about that later. I can just imagine my productivity then. This is going to take me till summer.

Oh, it's January 1st! Happy New Year!

7: Got to do some animating!

2005-12-30T12:00:00.000-05:00

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.

6: Still Too Fast

2005-12-29T11:45:00.000-05:00

Well, I was able to do the back thrust kick last night, and I think I only spent about 2 hours on it. Maggie's spin is kinda fast though. It works, but she spins like a cyclone. It at least registers that she's spinning. So I may use that timing more for spinning when hit (often used in other martial arts films).

I have frame averaging turned on to about 10 (I think). While I was doing the initial jump for Maggie, she started to slowly fall over (because she was blue-tacced on) and the result was a neat motion blur. :) So for when Red Kicker gets kicked, I motion blurred him as well. Of course, the feet aren't motion blurred, but I usually have to watch the clip about 6 times to catch every nuance I put in to see if it looks correct:

Does maggie's hair look ok?
Does Red kicker move too fast?
Does the kick look ok?
Can you see any residual blue tac?
Is the spin too fast?

There are so many things that I look for! I just put the clip on repeat and watch it over and over again. Then of course I have to look for the cool factor: how cool does it look?

Sound will eventually add a lot more to it, but I have to watch everything in silence for now.

I still refrained from doing any frame by frame photoshop editing, so when Maggie jumps, I have her hold on to a long lego stick off of the screen. Because the spin is so fast, you don't notice that her arm is off screen. Heck, you barely notice that she jumps. But at least I don't have to resort to chroma keying or mind-numbing frame editing.

Real Life

Well, I hunkered down and finally put this journal on Blogger. I've been keeping it in gmail drafts this whole time, but I want to eventually publish it. Although, I can't seem to find a way to have the entries sort in ascending order. It's not meant to be a journal read every day.

The last thing I want is brickfilmers to know about this. Mainly because I'll get asked every time how my movie is going. The asking is not bad in itself, it's when I STOP doing stuff on my film because I'm lazy, and I have to look all sheepish because I haven't worked on it for a year. *sigh* I hope I can keep my motivation up this time.

Although we're having family down, so I won't be able to animate for the next week (they're staying in the Lego room) and then the week after I'm off to Calgary! Maybe in the meantime, I can improve this blog and add some photos and pics to the entries!

Happy new year!

5: Balancing Problems

2005-12-28T00:00:00.000-05:00

Ugh, I spent almost five hours animating, and not much to show for it. *sigh*

I worked on a couple of fillers first. Red Kicker standing up, Maggie tapping her toe, and then Red Kicker rushing towards Maggie. The angle and sequence is almost exactly like that used in my fight test with minifigs, but it just ended up that way.

Maggie tapping her toe was extremely hard, because the foot joint is so incredibly stiff. I can't move it without moving the whole body of Maggie. The final product is the best I could do.

Then came the double kicks for Maggie on Red. Good grief, this sequence is only about 40-50 frames, and it took me 4 hours! It was horrible, I had a hard time getting them to stand. I had made those lego things, but in certain angles, they don't work, and of course those were the angles my stifkas were in. Eventually, I resorted to using blue-tac, but even then, Maggie just wouldn't stay in the position I wanted.

And then if I think I have the scene as I wanted, I notice that there is a sliver of blue sticking out. Arrgh.

Oh well, I may stick to the whole blue-tac stuff, because it keeps them planted as long as I don't have them in off-balancing poses.

I was so frustrated though, I was worried that the kick scene would look all off, but it's nominal, and I'll just use it, because it took me four hours to do. It was supposed to be longer though, I was going to add in the back thrust, but I can't do that now, so I'll just cut to a different angle, or interrupt the sequence, and then do the backthrust.

Maggie's hair is all screwy too. *sigh*

Since these were fast kicks, I made each body contact about 3 frames. When Red kicker holds his stomach, I thought that was moving too slowly, but when played in 24fps, it looks fine. The first initial kick of Maggies is way too fast though. I think it too was only 3 frames, but I'm not fixing it. I have to remember to spread those things to at least 4 or 5 frames. Actually, I could probably fix it fine if I added in the motion blur. That might register better...

Oh well, I think I figured out how it's going to end, and how to introduce the weapons scene.

4: Nine Seconds Complete!

2005-12-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

Yay! Got about 9 seconds of footage!

I decided to do a bunch of filler shots. So, I have Red Kicker falling down after being kicked, then I have Green puncher running up to Maggie before the fist scene, then I have Green flying off of plate, then I have Red Kicker getting up.

Not too pleased with Green flying off of the plate. Looks a bit too choppy for me. But I do like Red Kicker getting up and shaking his head, it's surprisingly smooth, and it should be, at 24fps!

Had to try a variety of different ways to pin them down though. I am trying to avoid any editing of the frames, so I'm trying to hide the devices holding up the Stikfas by not so careful positioning of the arms.

The handle of a those simple ray guns fit into the square slots of the Stikfas (well, after you snip it a bit with a nail clipper), and I used that to hold up Green kicker. But it was a bit fragile, and so I may try and use other methods to holding them up, or just do it the old fashioned way of editing frames.

Preparation

I bought more Stikfas! Bought two more reds, two more green, and then I bought the black Ninja. I don't even know if I am going to use the Black Ninja, but it sure looks cool. :)

I need to do a couple of more filler shots, and then I'll get to the Red Kicker vs Maggie scene. I'm kinda dreading it because I haven't really figured out the order of the kicks, and I don't want to do any frame editing, especially at 24fps, but I guess I will have to now. I could just use some chroma keying software, but I've never been pleased with the effects...

3: 130 Frames Filmed!

2005-12-23T00:00:00.000-05:00

Production was much more...productive this time around! In total, I was able to get around 130 frames filmed!

Took a bit over 3 hours, but I finished a small scene where Maggie does a round house kick to Red Kicker and then the first fist battle between Green Puncher and Maggie.

Thoughts on last Shots

My sense of timing with Maggie's hair is becoming more proficient. The swing is off in the first scene (points the wrong way) and it's moves too fast. Now I'm slowing down the hair a bit more, so it's more like hair as opposed to some metal door knocker.

One thing I did forget to do in the first scene is Maggie beginning the kick before getting to the round house kick. So it looks disjointed. Maggie dodges Red's kick, elbows Green, and then it cuts immediately to Maggie kicking Red. It would have looked a lot smoother if I had Magge start the round house kick and then cut to Maggie kicking Red, especially since everything moves rather fast.

Current Shots

I'm happy with the roundhouse kick. It went a lot smoother than I expected. Trying to find out how to place the arms when they're doing high kicks is difficult when slowing it down to 1 frame at a time. But surprisingly, it only took me one take to get it looking ok, so I decided to go to the next scene.

The first fist fight between Green Puncher and Maggie was supposed to be a fight between an experienced martial artist and Maggie. However, it looks like Green is some clutzy street thug and flails like a drunk.

I had a clip from Jackie Chan's Young Master, and I tried to do a similar fight scene there. It didn't turn out looking like it at all. Maggie, being the better fighter, is able to hold off the attacks with one arm, like in CTHD or the end of the first Matrix. Although, it doesn't look that impressive.

Most of my time was taken up doing this last scene. I spent about a half an hour on the roundhouse kick (or maybe 15 minutes) but it took me the remaining to do this fist fight.

I was tired, I was wanting to go to bed, but I didn't want to cut the shot.

One thing I need to get a sense of is the "snap". When a punch, kick, or any attack is executed, it will extend an inch or so past the initial point of contact and then snap back a bit. I normally do it in all my fight moves, unless the attack follows through. However, I couldn't get the timing, nor the distance correct. I tried to do it with the final double punch that Maggie does, but I didn't do it enough frames, so you don't notice it. I still have to get out of the 15fps mentality.

I think I'm settling on how long the contact time is though. To have the hit register with the viewer, the attack must hold its position for a bit so that the audience can see what the attack is doing. The movie Gladiator did this a lot, made noticeable pauses between each attack so that we could see everything.

So far, I'm settling with about 6 frames for the pause, that's a 1/4 of a second.

The swing and attack itself is anywhere between 4 and 5 frames.

Preparation

Next scene I'm going to have Maggie go up against Red Kicker. They'll be kicking, obviously, so that means their feet are going to be shown.

So far, I've removed the Stikfas feet to make them stand better on the lego baseplate. But now that the feet will probably be shown planted on the ground, I had to find a way for the feet to stay on the baseplate, without the use of blue tack.

I took some 1x1 with that hooky thing on it, and I mangled it. I snipped off the bottom part, and bent the top part so that it can wedge into the square on the bottom of the foot.

Will it work? I'll find out when I try my shot.

2: 30fps is hard

2005-12-22T03:00:00.000-05:00

Two hours. I think I spent two hours, and what do I have to show for it? 1 second of film footage. *sigh*

What I want to do is combine 15fps and 30fps, so that I can just do the majority of the film in 15fps, but for the fast fighting shots, do it at 30fps. But I can't think in 30fps, I don't know what's wrong with me.

I tried the shot with Maggie, Red Kicker and Green Puncher again. However, after working on it for about an hour, and finally running it, I had 20 frames and it was way too fast for 30fps, but it was also too slow for 15 fps. It was also too fast for 24fps.

So I redid it, took another hour, made it a bit smoother, and had 22 frames, (but removed an extra kick). It was still too fast for 30fps! However, it seems to be ok for 24fps. Still rather quick, but that's ok, it's supposed to be fast.

So maybe I'll just do the whole thing in 24fps, because the majority of it is fighting anyways, not plot.

I really like how well the lego snaps onto the Stikfas though. Makes it difficult, because I'll never use feet that much, but they can easily pose and hold their position quite well. I put round 1x1's on the bottom, so now I can rotate them better.

I also downloaded some Jackie Chan clips from a website. Although I can't use them for rotoscoping (which I was hoping to do), it does give me some more great ideas for moves! I need to get more of these clips. Sure, it's not original, but I'm having a hard enough time trying to get the sense of how to move these characters realistically, let alone coming up with original moves. Sheesh! Hopefully, by the time it gets to the end fight, I will have enough familiarity that I can experiment more.

1: The Beginning

2005-12-21T03:00:00.000-05:00

Stikfas are hard to animate.

Well, not that hard, but we'll get to that. The first thing I had to do was fix my computer. It was having all sorts of problems, couldn't get the network working, couldn't get the webcam working, couldn't keep it from freezing or crashing on me. Good grief.

Gave me a chance to clean up all those little plastic sticky outy doohicky thingys left from the plastic frame. A nail cutter was quite useful, but there are these big white blotches still. Ah well.

I don't have a storyboard for this movie. It's mostly fluid fight scenes, and the angles I always play around in my head. I do have the main fight scenes figured out. So I have it in chunks. I don't know how it's going to end though, haven't figure that out yet. :)

Anyways, once my computer woes were fixed, I decided to start on the first scene, the girl, we'll call her Maggie, wakes up on the platform. Immediately, I realize it's hard to keep her from moving around because her joints are too stiff. I also don't know how to animate the hair well. I tried a shot of her getting up, then a closeup.

I was interrupted then and stopped there.

When I came back, I gave up on that and decided on having the fight between the red kicker and the green puncher. Knowing that I needed something more secure than blue tac to stick these guys to the base, I used Lego pieces which snapped quite nicely onto the legs, replacing the feet. With these, they could stand up properly and were quite sturdy.

Now it's the first attack for those two, and red kicker is supposed to do a high roundhouse to the head, while Maggie dodges and then elbows the green puncher. I got so far as having red kicker's leg go up, and then I stopped. Not only was it close to 1am, but it already looked off.

I stopped, and decided to do a test shot of just red kicker alone, hoping I would get the timing right. Doing it in 30fps for the faster shots, I know my regular 15fps sense of timing and spacing is skewing things. I was able to do a roundhouse kick with red kicker (about 15 frames) in about five minutes though (for a 1 second kick) and it looked ok. I don't want the initial crane stance to be too slow, but slower than the actual kick. The follow through would gradually slow down. It does look relatively natural, although because it's so fast, it doesn't look like red kicker is actually turning. It just looks like the kick comes through and the body almost stays still.

Good enough though, hopefully I will be able to combine the movements of Maggie to dodge. I don't know about trying to get green puncher to move in, but we'll see.