So I am now elbow deep into the Aardman masterclass. I am enjoying myself a ton. It is rough, but I am learning a lot. The whole point is to stretch myself and learn how to be a better animator. That is not comfortable. Growth is rarely comfortable. :) I am still figuring out how to fit in full time work, taking care of a sick doggo, personal stuff and the class. Because I live in a townhouse with no yard and only a small portable washing machine, this has been hard. Cleaning takes forever. Trying to get doggo to where he can go outside when he is having a digestive emergency is hard. It frequently has resulted in the need for deep cleaning. Unfortunately. I am guilty of tossing an area rug instead of trying to clean it. Just cause I was already taking hours to wash bedding (mine) multiple times, clothes, towels, etc. At least I have the portable washer, and don't have to haul it all to a laundromat. I love my doggo. Really I do. This just emphasizes how much I need to find a house with a yard. If there was a yard I could just open the back door for him to run through, instead of trying to attach a leash to an already distressed doggo in time to open the front door and get to the pet area. Add to that servers going down at work necessitating long working hours, and there is not a ton of time, energy or brainpower left to apply to class. I am hoping I can regroup and get on top of everything this week. Doggo seems to have calmed a bit. Servers are running. I still haven't caught up on sleep, but things are loosening up a bit so I can figure out a schedule that will allow me to do everything I need and want to do.

Anyway...

As I don't really have much right now, and I do want to try to be better at keeping up this blog, I thought I would do a deeper dive into my experiments with Cosclay.



Cosclay is a rubberized polymer clay, similar to Sculpy. The biggest difference being that after it has been baked, it is pliable though no longer sculptable.



I first heard about it when the YouTuber Ace of Clay used it on one of his sculptures. He uses it when he has a lot of thin bits that stick out and are in danger of breaking if he uses the regular Sculpy. He demonstrated how much the pieces can bend after baking. He also was successful painting it after baking it.

So it got me thinking...I wonder how hard it would be to use in animation puppets. I did some googling, and really no one has any opinions on it. No one really had a searchable post on them testing it for this purpose. Someone asked in a stop motion forum about it, and was shot down by a lot of people who haven't tried it. that just seemed...inaccurate at best.

But Cosclay, though worth the expense if it works, is kind of spendy to just buy as an experiment. I was waffling about whether or not I should try it...whether it was worth it to me to have clay I may not be able to use.

Then another YouTuber tried it for sculpting. And he loved it. And when he decided to do a set of art boxes, he decided to include a small batch of it in the sculpture box. There were other things included in the sculpture box I wanted, so I decided to get that and if the Cosclay worked I would buy more to use for animation puppets.

This was just a rought hand, to see how well it animated. It is not in proportion to anything. I used 18 gague aluminum wire to rough out fingers and palm, then sculpted the clay over it. Not too difficult. Then I played with animating it. It was really not bad for animating. Here is my test sequence...

So then THAT got me thinking. Can I make a character puppet completely out of Cosclay? I was and am pretty sure a full 12 inch puppet would not work very well. Not a whole Wallace from Wallace and Grommet...though maybe, if the clay is layered on thin. So I decided to start with something simple...an earthworm.

The first iteration turned out being way too thick. While it is bendable, it does not easily stay where I put it. I just bent an 18 gage wire in half, twisted it with my hand crank drill and covered it with cosclay. This one also baked just fine in the toaster oven. Also took paint really well.

So back to the drawingboard. I redesigned the worm to be thinner and longer. And a little bit more realistic, though still cartoonish. The thinner worm worked great! Fully articulated. Stays in the pose I place it in. I even textured it a bit by putting a thread on my handy helper and rolling the worm over it down the length of the worm. That worked way better than I expected as well.

So...conclusion? I LOVE LOVE LOVE this stuff! In my opinion it works great for stop motion animation puppets, with the caveate that you need to be choosy about where you use it and how thick you build up the clay.

Also...I am currently making replacement hands out of Cosclay for my Wade puppet. My plan is to play around with him and see how well it goes. Have several more twisted wire humanoid puppets in process, and if I can figure out how to make it work well with Wade I will use the same technique with them.

Well.

This has been a dark and crazy year. I have lost people. I have gained people. Things went from bad to worse, while also wierdly getting better at the same time. My job is going well. I now have an income that sustains me. Covid in my state has increased sharply, enough our governer has closed down the state again for at least 2 weeks. As a person in the at risk catergory, this is kind of scary.

Amidst this scary time, I sat back an evaluated my life and where I am. Who am I? Where have I come from? Do I like who I am? When I am on my deathbed (whether it be next month, next year, 10 years from now or 30 years from now), will I be able to feel satisfied. Or will I feel regret.

I came to the conclusion I want to be able to look back and see 3 things. I did more good than harm. I loved more than I hated. And I broke away from my fear and did what made me joyful.

I realized I really do love stop motion animation. A lot. It makes me happy while I am struggling to mold it to what I want. It makes me laugh when I watch a clip back and see my little jokes in action. Even if I am the only one who thinks they are funny, it tickles me to death. I wrote and animated the damn thing, and I still laugh when I watch the Dalek one and see him put the sign on the Daleks back. :D Honestly, it also warms my heart to remember showing that at the 50 year Doctor Who do here in Portland, and listening to the ENTIRE AUDIENCE laugh spontaneously where I do. And later in the day, hearing a kid walking past with a presumed parent retelling the story of the Dalek knocking over Stonehenge in my video, having issues because they were laughing so hard they couldn't finish a sentance. I want others to enjoy what I do too. Not think it is good, or give me accolades....just...enjoy it for what it is.

Of course, I want to be better. I want to learn more. I am now in a financial place where I can up my game technically. So as an addition to that, I applied for the Stop Motion 1 program put on by Aardman, the people who do Wallace and Grommet, etc. I have always wanted to do a program with them, but they were all on prem in Bristol UK, which along with the tuition fees and time required to be in the country, has always put it out of reach for me. I don't even have a passport. But one good thing this horrid pandemic has done is brought that program online, and the class fees lower to a point I can afford it.

I got an email yesterday that they have accepted me. Now, I don't know if this means they are taking everyone, or if they looked at my YouTubes and video pages and decided I desperately need the help. Or if they see potential. And I felt something I did not expect. After the elation, I immediately started in to trepidation. My brain first said they aren't really serious about teaching people, they are just trying to get money and will take everyone who will pay money. As a consequence you will get no instruction, or if you have issues instead of getting help you will be chastised for not being able to figure it out yourself. Yup...I went to college for IT training with a bunch of guys, some teachers, who didn't feel I belonged there. I talked myself out of that, then immediately my brain fell back on the good old "you aren't really good enough. Why are you going to put yourself out there, and putting yourself in debt to do it?"

I am still calming my brain down from that one. But seriously.....All the reasons I outlined earlier in this post.....

Life is too short to hide from what brings you joy.

Not everything you expend money on needs to bring a financial return.

Once more for the people in the back

Not everything you expend money on needs to bring a financial return.


If I do actually get better, get some good pointers, etc GREAT. It will help me do better, express my weirdness better, help entertain people better. And bring me even more joy.

But even if I don't....I can go to my grave (whenever that is) knowing I pursued what made me happy. I am helping people I know with bills. I am buying from small businesses to help them keep afloat during this hard time. I am paying for online comedy shows and concerts, even if I can't make them, to help those who need it. I am contributing to go fund me's. I am throwing bits at Twitch streamers. I am complimenting people genuinely every chance I get.

And I am pursuing my happiness.

End of story.

So in a fit of complete insanity, last weekend I decided to enter a 72 hour horror film challenge put on by the Eugene Film Society. In stop mo. In 72 hours. I really should have my head examined. It was hard, easy, fun, frustrating, impossible, and one of the best things I have done. The resulting film is ok, considering what it is. I see all the flaws that could have been fixed if I had more time and fewer hiccups. But anyway, I decided to write about my experience here, to get it out there, to maybe perform some post mortems, and to help me decide where to go next.

The competition was announced several weeks beforehand, but I did not make the decision to do it until a week before. Considering we were not supposed to do anything for it beforehand, I guess that was best. I tend to overthink things. I opted to sign up for the screenwriting workshop that happened the Saturday before. It really didn't help much as far as writing tips, but it did get me into thinking about what makes a good horror film, and what elements would be feasable in stop mo in such a short amount of time. I knew I was not going to have any time for fixing or adding in post, so I needed to decide what would work easiest on camera as shooting happens. I wrote out 3 loose premises that I could base my movie on, and thought about which elements would be needed for each. I did do some set building beforehand, cause that was not specified in the rules. And well technically I built my puppet beforehand too, as I used Wade.

I also figured out I needed to do some surgery on Wade. He had several joints that were broken that needed to be reglued. Here is Wade waiting for surgery. I had to reglue his arm into the shoulder joint. He is made with square tubing in the torso, with matching but slightly smaller square tubing glued to the arm at the shoulder so that it is removeable. The glue in his shoulder totally broke so his arm wouldn't stay in place. turns out I should have also fixed his leg joints, but that happened later.

That is pretty much all I did beforehand. Thursday night October 22 was the kick off party. I am not good at parties, and had no one to go with me, so I was kind of dreading this part. But they made it manditory in order to get the required line of dialog and the required prop and the rest of the guidelines. I had no need for actors, most people there were there for thier own moves, and no one waanted to do voiceovers. Every actor who attended was looknig for on screen time. And when I requested help with Foley, no one knew what I was talking about. Now actors I can kind of understand, even though some of them claimed to be film students, because that is not an actor's job. But the filmmakers....most of them didn't know what I was talking about either. Foley....one of the most important pieces of any film, especially horror, and no one knew what I was talking about. In case you don't know, Foley is the souunds that are added in post to make it sound realistic. Foot steps, snow crunching, fabric swooshing....all that is Foley. In live action it is generally added because the mics usually only pick up the actor's voices, and in order for it to sound real it needs to be added afterwards. It is also used to add emphasis. If all of a sudden you hear water dripping really loudly, generally that is your Foley artist's work. It is good in live action, but essential in stop motion where there is no ambient sound recorded as you film. I did not find anyone to help me with Foley. I did however find someone to record a voiceover for me. He also did on camera work. Cause not being an idiot he knew he could do both. :)


I really wish they hadn't made that party mandatory. It was very pointless for me to be there. It was at Level Up Arcade, which is a traditional quarter sink arcade with a bar. It was too small for the volume of people...we could hardly move or hear each other over the din of other people talking and video games being played and music playing. I found a couch in the corner, and chatted with anyone else who wandered over there. I read my Facebook. I sang along loudly with Creep when it came on. When it finally came time for the "reveal", people who were customers of the arcade and not with the party continued to play video games, and the crowd was so large I ended up at the back. I heard NOTHING that went on. We stood there for a good 20 minutes listening to the incoherant wah-wah of the peeople talking at the front before they finally just gave us the thumbs drives that had everything they were saying in a documment and was the required recepticle for submission. Needless to say I was glad to get out of there and start working. I was more than slightly annoyed though that they wasted so much of my time.

After that I went back to my tree problem. I still couldn't get the foam to stick to the tree armatures. I decided to stop wasting time, and run down to Eugene Toy and Hobby. They have a huge model train section, with experts. Surely someone there could help me. I ran to the bus stop, where I learned I had missed the bus by 5 minutes, so I ran-walked the 1.5 miles there. By the time I got there I waas red faced, sweaty, and not all that coherant. I am sure they all thought I was crazy. Fortunately this is not the first time I have had a wierd request for them, so they took it with grace. The guy behind the train counter handed me some ultra strong super glue, explained how to use it, all the time looking at me like I was a moron for not being able to do this on my own. I am sure that as soon as I was out the door they were laughing at me. Ah well...that is what this is all about right? Entertainment?

I got to the bus station to find the next one was not for another 30 minutes. Don't let anyone tell you differently...Eugene bus system sucks. On Saturday the ones to my house generally run once an hour. So I ended up grabbing a juice and doughnut from the Kiva and run-walking back home. At least it wasn't a wasted trip.

Once I finally got everything set up, I started shooting. I have a bluetooth keyboard for my iPad which allows me to remote trigger. What you can't see in this picture is that the screenof my iPad is cracked, which s why I haven't done much shooting lately. One of the cracks is right down the side, right where the frame puts presure on it. I worried I would totally kill my iPad using it. However at thhe moment I don't have an alternative camera, so it would have to do. I managed to not break it completely, so I am hoping by not having the iPad resting directly on the frame it helped.

In the middle of shooting I ran into more Wade issues. This guy would not stay together. His legs kept falling off. The glue had brokenn from his pelvis, so the legs kept falling out of the square tubes. I tried moving the ruler up a bit, but that didn't help. I finally took the legs off, which actually made it easier for him to stay attached to the cliff edge.

But I got them all pulled over, and spent hours pulling them into Pinnacle, setting the frame length for each pic, trying to watch it and adjust accordingly. However, Pinnacle and my PC did not want to cooperate. My computer overheated several times. I ended up having to compile each segment sepaerately then add them together. The frame rate I set was 24 FPS, but it would only let me export it in 29.9, which made it loook way different. I spent many frustrated hours trying to fix it. Then at one point it would not let me add pictures into my timeline. Turned out Microsoftt had decided to run updates, even though I completely turned off updating while I was working. I could not get that setting to stay off. I finally had to do some rebooting.

But after all that, I finally got it done. I finished at 6pm, which didn't leave me much time to get it in. The bus wouldn't get me there on time, so I tried getting a cab. I called 4 cab companies....all of them were at least 45 minutes out. I finally texted my frined who drove me over there. I got it in by 6:30, well within the time alloted. Whew. That was long, hard, and completely insane. 

If you want to watch it, you can see it here: GARGOUILLE.

For ages I have been threatening to try to sculpt my own puppets for my stop mo. Last weekend when I was out with a friend I found some Van Aken clay on sale, so I scooped it up. Then I promptly forgot all about it. well, not forgot as much as was too nervous to try to do anything with it.

So today I was restless and listless and had a really hard time concentrating on anything, so I decided to take a walk. That walk took me past Oregon Art Supply, a very very dangerous place for my bank account. It suffers casualties every time I go in. Today I was good, but I did see they had a cheap extruder and flat roller, which inspired me to bite the bullet (and all sorts of clams) and dig in.

When I got home I dug out my sorry attempt at an armature. Now I am close to being ready to give it a go. Just gotta get up the courage to fail now.
Wish me luck...I'm goin in.

EDIT: OK, after about 2 hours, I barely have a head. I realized I can't use white clay for eyes. They will mush if I try to move them, or the eyelids, or the eyebrows. So I now need to either go to Michaels and look for doll eyes or Sculpy to make n bake them.

Here are the humiliating results so far:

Yeah, I am giving up for the night. I could make hair and build up the body, but I feel like I am saturated at the moment. Tomorrow I gotta go in to work for a little bit, but I may continue this afterwards, given I find enough chocolate and Pepsi and maybe a movie or two to keep me sitting there. When your sculpting skills suck it is easy to lose patience with it. I may not have the temperament for this kind of puppet making. Or the fine motor skills.

It has been 5 days. Yes, that is a long time to take on this project. A lot more than I expected. I thought the majority of my problems with this software were because I was unfamiliar with it. After working and working to try get get what I wanted out of the software I finally gave up.

My first move was to get the manual. I figured any questions I might have would be answered by it. I was wrong. Things it didn't explain that would have been helpful:

-How to join clips
-How to put sound to more than one clip, when you are using multiple clips in your movie (which they suggest you do) and you have one long sound clip
-How to remove audio that you have uploaded. Not from the clips, but from the import queue.
-How to resize your stills

I had several issues while working with this. Again, I am probably trying to do more than it was meant for, but still it was frustrating. As I do not currently have the ability to capture pictures directly into the computer, importing stills was all I could do. As I used my iPad to take the stills, I had no options as to the size or dimensions of the stills. Because they were so large it took a long time to import. I expected this. It would be a lot to ask of any program to make that large of a data import go quickly.

I chose to set the movie frame rate at 24 fps. It is easier to calculate movement with an even number of frames per second. That is something I am still struggling with. When you see the video you will see stilted movement and fluttriness. That is due more to my learning curve for calculating movement than it is the software. Still, 24 fps seemed to work out ok.

Because I plan to break my videos up into scenes, I made more than one clip to test the software's continuity abilities. The first clip is from the TMBG Istanbul video I have been playing with, the second is just a little thing I shot to play around with. I recorded myself playing a simple chord progression on the ukelele for my sound. I am glad, because if I had chosen dialog getting the sound to match would have been way more difficult than it already was.

The first issue I encountered was getting the clips to join up. It isn't clear how to do that. My idea was to take my two clips, put them back to back then add the sound. That didn't work. There is no way to do that. So then I tried to add the sound to the first clip, but then it made the first clip twice as long with a long pause of background, then it ran the second clip. That is where I ran into the next problem. There is no time ticker anywhere. I had no idea how long each clip was exactly. My next idea was to cut the sound into the right length for the clips. Makes sense. Didn't work. I tried exporting each clip separately to figure out how long I needed to make each audio clip. It was off by 4 seconds. When I cut the audio and imported it into AI, each clip was too short. At that point I ran out of patience and just moved the audio so there was a few seconds of silence at the beginning and a few at the end. Having instructions on how to do this would have helped a lot. Having a counter so I knew exactly how long my clips were and how much audio I needed to fill the space would have helped a lot.

I have a bunch more I can say about it, but I think I am going to end it here. I was disappointed. I expected more from Aardman. At the very least I expected to be able to find answers to my questions and not spend 5 days with frustrating trial and error.  I also already stated some things in my last post, and as I did not find answers I will just leave it alone. I am glad it was a free trial and I didn't waste money on it.

So here is my final video:

Obsession. I think that is the word that best describes my relationship with stop motion animation. I think I have also mentioned in the past that I have a secret crush on Aardman Studios. They are the creators of Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, the kid's show Timmy Time, and last but not least, the new movie The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists! (which was changed to Pirates! Band of Misfits for US audiences. WHY??? the original title was SO much better!!) BTW, thier stuff is no longer claymation. It is now all latex. It is a better choice. Easier to keep from getting fingerprints or lint sticking to the models, harder to destroy, imminently more reusable. Imminently more practical.

Anyway, I digress.....

My point is that Aardman has teamed up with some software developers to create an easy to use interface for stop motion called Animate It! It is aimed at kids, to get them started with playing around with stop motion. They have a kit you can purchase that has some plasticine type clay, a mold, plastic eyes, and a green piece of felt that can be used for a green screen. I think you can only get it in the UK. But the software is available online for a 14 day free trial. As it is a free trial, I thought I would play around with it to see how well it works. I haven't played with it very much yet. I must admit, if you are capturing your movie with a webcam or computer connected camera it is easy to use. It does allow for stills import, but you have to really search to find the options for it. It also takes forever to import your stills. It took me 40 minutes to get all 917 pictures imported into the software interface. I also had to import them in batches.  Here's a screen shot:

See the odd looking frame in the middle of the strip at the bottom? That was my attempt to expand the beginning of my animation by replicating frames already in the timeline. I have no idea why that happened yet. I am guessing it has something to do with the size of the picture. I still need to research why, but my theory is it autosizes it when I import but doesn't when I replicate. I am thinking it is something I can overcome if I learn a bit more about the software.

The other problem I am encountering thus far is lag time and responsiveness. Sometimes when I try to do something in this interface, it either takes an unreasonably long amount of time or doesn't happen at all. Again, I need to do more research, so I am not sure if it is because this is a new interface or maybe I don't have the processing power this software requires. I did not see any requirements listed anywhere, so I assumed they had made it usable for the lowest common denominator. My computer doesn't have the greatest processor, but it also isn't that bad.  I can play most video games no problem.

In the next couple of days, while I still have the free trial, I will play around with it and look for forums and answers. I hope to have a good video to show you by the end. The list price on the website is in pounds, so I suspect that it is not available for purchase in the US. that is something else I will have to research. The price for the full version is 19.95. Direct conversion places it at around $30.

I also have yet to play around with the audio options.

Though I doubt that Aardman studios will move from the full featured Stop Motion Pro to this software, it looks like it may be a cheap, useable alternative.

More laters!