So my lighting setup finally got here. It didn't contain everything I thought it did, but enough that I don't care. The umbrellas are very fragile. I accidentally sat on one of the black/reflective ones and the post broke clean through. I don't know how I will fix it yet.

Of course I had to play with it a bit. I set up the background frame, clamped a bedsheet to  it, tacked a black foamboard to the table, set up the lights and played. Here are pics of the rig/ setup.

Here is the resulting video. It isn't great, but not too bad. I don't like the color of the bulbs that came with this setup. Too blue. I want something warmer.

I shot this video on my Android phone using the Animate It! app from Aardman. I love this app. I like Osnap for my ipad, but for my phone this is the best one out there for free. You can pay for $5 add-ons. But it allows you to lock focus, white balance, and exposure. It also includes onion skinning in the standard app. And if you pay for the add-on package you can shoot in 4k. My phone acts weird when I check 4k option, though. It will take one picture normal, next way too overexposed. Even if I have exposure lock on. May be I need to do something I am not aware of yet. I will play with it more later.

Another month has gone by. I suppose it is time to update this.

I have been working on audio, but I have a limited amount of time I can work on it, and I don't yet have anything I am willing to post. I will probably work some more on it tonight.

One of my favorite geek bands, Debs & Errol, were in the running for the CBC Searchlight. Errol wanted to do something with the #Votegeek hashtag, and called for fans to send him pictures of themselves with it. So I dusted off Wade and ran around town taking pictures. I also decided to take this as an excuse to actually build him a set. He needed furniture, big time. Everything I have is simply Liliputian compared to him. Here is one of the pics I took at Dutch Brothers. They are so awesome there.

Anyway...

So, anyway, I took a few days a built Wade a sofa and an end table and a coffee table. I sewed a cushion and crocheted a blanket to go on the back of the sofa. I painted a background. So now that I had all these things, of course I had to play around with them. The resulting videos are not great, but the set looks awesome. Needs more detail, like pictures, a window, a book shelf, etc.  Otherwise I am happy with it. Here is the mess I call a video...

So, there ya go. This month hasn't been completely uneventful. As I play with Wade and what he can do I hope to have more test videos to post.

Wow. I didn't realize I waited so long to post. Sometimes time just slips away from you.

I did play with keyboard triggering with the iPad. It worked great....sort of. I will have to admit I am happy with how much easier it was to keep the damn picture from jumping around. The quality is, once again, a bit shite. I used a ton of light. I made it focus as much as I could. but it again was too grainy, and after uploading it to You Tube it just got mushier. This frustrates the hell outta me. I really need to figure out why this is happening.

Well, for what it is worth, here are the results. The first part was done in Osnap, the second in iSttopMotion.

I also didn't pay attention to movement that much. Because the legs don't move independently of each other it is hard to get a smooth looking walk from this guy. Or any of the small guys I use. The iPad is a little tilted too. I need to shore up the sides inside the holder. I find it interesting that in the first video the sofa looks a lot closer than it does in the second one. I did not move the camera, nor did I change any of the settings. which would be moot anyway, as each application does it's own thing anyway and gives me little to no control. But the main thing with this video was to get the triggering to work, and it worked. One day I will get all elements to work all at the same time.

I know I have been promising this for a while, but external factors have motivated me to push forward with recording, and I hope to get a few things up by the end of the day today. We shall see. The person in the room next to me works nights, so I need to be quiet until at least 3pm. But as soundcloud worked so well, I might as well get that done and some sound samples up.

lá sona ú Pádraig! (Happy St Patrick's Day)

Oh, sigh. Ok...

Well, FAWM is over. Did I make my goal? Nope. I have lyrics written for a bunch, but no music. I am so used to placing my own lyrics in existing songs I have issues thinking of my own melody. If you go through several of your favorite songs, you may notice that the lyrics scan to more than one of the melodies. My issue is I hear an already existing melody that the words can scan to. And there usually are a few choices. But it was a good experiment. I enjoyed it, and learned a bunch. Still working on getting a few demos recorded to post here. Once I get them done I will put them here.

So yesterday I was dealing with migrainy goodness. That meant doing anything was out. When I got to the point where the pain was alleviated but the rest of the symptoms were still lingering (except light sensitivity), I sat and read a new book I got. this book is all about using the iPad for stop motion animation. I learned something I should have picked up on by now. I can trigger the iPad camera from my blue tooth keyboard. Duh! Of course! If I do it in Osnap, I use the volume button. If I do it in iStop Motion I use the play button at the top of the keyboard. It works. So today my plan is to play around with it, and see if it helps the smoothness any. I also am having issues with the stabilization of the iPad. I made the frame to place in on that screws on top of my tripod. It wobbles. Noy a ton, but enough to be an issue. Part of the tripod broke, so I decided I would just glue down the parts I want to be less wobbly. The point was to make something that I could remove from the tripod, but as it is broken in ways that will not support a camera, I would have to purchase a new one eventually anyway.

So I glued all the parts down that needed to be, and as soon as it all dries I will see what I can produce. The goal is to have a short video done by the end of the day. We shall see what I can accomplish.

So time has marched forward, and so has my progress....a little anyway. I now have my storyline for the steampunk video all lined out. I have my characters developed. I have designed the world in which they will live. I am kind of excited about it. This is going to be fun, once I get past the hard parts.

I decided I want the exterior of the houses to all be stone, with stone garden walls, etc. I envision this place to be like one the planned garden cities in England of the late 19th and early 20th century. If I am going to do this I need to find a good way to replicate a lot of walls. I do not sculpt well. I am not going to rely on someone with sculpting skills to have time available for this. So I took a trip to the Eugene Toy & Hobby to see waht they had. I found these retaining wall sections for model train sets. They will work wonderfully. I just can't afford to buy all I need. They were $11 for a set of 3.  I have liquid latex. I have lots and lots of cheap plaster. I thought hey, why not make my own molds of these wall sections and then I can make all I need cheaply.

Latex mold making is not as easy as they make it look. they didn't turn out very well. I got sick from all the latex fumes. And the ones that did work didn't actually produce a working model. Even though the molds really did not shrink (I can fit the original in without stretching it), the casting is a good inch smaller than the original. I need to figure out why. I also had a hard time getting that first layer to dry properly. The side touching the original wall piece never dried properly no matter how long I left it before I did the second layer. The thing is, when you do a second layer, you can't wait too long or the layers don't adhere to each other properly. Then there were the issues with making the mother molds. Latex is thin and does not hold it's shape. This is ideal for peeling it off the original...not so for holding the casting material in the right shape. So you make a mother mold out of plaster. After the last layer has dried you cover it in plaster. Let it sit until set and voila you have a good solid base for the latex mold that will still allow for you to peel the latex off the casting without breaking it. my issue...the plaster kept crumbling. I followed the directions on how to mix it. I let it sit for hours. the ambient room temp was 70. The stupid things just kept crumbling. I finally got a few that will work, though I really need to figure out how to solve the mysterious shrinking casting issue.

Here be the picture evidence. The yellow one on the left is the first one that worked. the one at the top is the second one, though you can tell it stuck to the original and destroyed some of the detail. The one in the middle is the original, and to the right is the casting. Sad, sad, sad.

I guess I am failing in whole new ways. That is ok. I am learning, and each one gets better. I just don't have a lot of time. I wanted to get the video done in time to submit it to the Pacific Northwest Animation festival as well, but that is not going to happen. The deadline for that is Dec 31. It is already the 11th. I will be lucky if I can get the sets built by then.
    I also had a brilliant idea to use those poseable wooden artists manquins as the armatures for the puppets. I figured out how to get the hands to work, I just got to figure out how to build up the head and face. The advantage is there are more natural articulation points, and they are already built up to natural human proportions. I will still work on learning how to make my own, but to try to facilitate this video that is what I am trying.

Because I don't have a lot of good clamping tools for delicate cutting, I used a Dremmel with the sanding wheel to grind the hands down to where they are more normal shape. The dots are the places I will be gluing twisted florist wire. I will then wrap them all in paper sports tape and paint them. Then I need to decide how I am going to anchor them. Do I want to continue the magnet method, or do I want to drill holes and destroy my set table to try screw anchors? I am leaning toward the magnets. Less permanent damage. And I don't have to go buy sturdier foam for the base. I don't think I could get that locally. Disadvantage of living in a small town.

    And that is as far as I have gotten. The molds alone took 3 days. This is a long slow process. I am impatient. I want to be animating. However, this time I want better puppets and sets. I want this one to be really cool.

    I am also looking into renting office space. As long as I keep it under $300 and utilities included I may be able to do it. I would be sacrificing saving any money for deposits for my own place to live, but it would be easier for everyone else to help out if I had a place other than just a bedroom for us to work. It feels weird, and frankly no one really wants to do that, as much as they want to work on this. Sigh. It always comes down to money, doesn't it. Well, if I can get to a place where my animations look more professional maybe I can get a few commissions, maybe start at least having it pay for itself. that would make it tons easier.

Anyway, if you are reading this and have an inkling of why my molds are giving me grief, feel free to either comment or email me. I was planning on having people over to help make castings, but I have to have enough molds for more than just one person to use.

For a while now I have been promising an update on my animation puppet building, so here it is. It is photo heavy. I apologize, but that is the best way to show you what is going on.

I have been experimenting with how to build puppets so I can improve my animations. As fun and cute they are as is, I am limited on what I can do by the materials I am using. Previously I talked about my first puppet. I wasn't happy with the hands, so I also rebuilt the hands with a different technique.

I was not really happy with the eyes, nor was I happy with the way the hair turned out. I used the same body, and rebuilt the head to do some experimenting. I found some googly eye tacks at the local Hiron's drug store. Here is how the new head looked with the googly eyes:

Looks kind of silly, but a bit cute. Didn't turn out too badly. Next problem to solve was hair. I had a heck of a time figuring that out. Here is the hilarious first try:

That did not work for me. Also had issues getting more than just the top of the head covered. So I headed to the local Joann Fabrics to find fuzzy fabric. I found a couple of types. My first attempt was aweful. I couldn't get it to sit right, so I decided to cut a piece for the crown, then strips to fill the rest out. Here is just the corwn and the rest of it:

That worked much, much better. Interesting swirling going on because of the way the fur was attached to the base.

Next project was to build up the chest and cloth him. I built the chest up with cushion foam. Then I cut and sewed felt for a shirt. It was harder than I thought, though I shouldn't have been surprised, given how much I suck at sewing. I then cut the bottom off the legs of a pair of jeans and sewed them into tubes for pants. Pics:

Just getting the clothes on made the whole thing fall apart, so next I gotta figure out how to keep that from happening. I love this guy. I think it is going to work fine.

Next project I need to work on is the video for the steampunk film festival. I think that if I can get a good enough animation I may be able to also submit it to the Northwest Film Festival.

So...been a while, time for the ol update.

I have been busy. I watched a video by Doctor Puppet on You tube about how she made her Doctor Who stop motion show Doctor Puppet. I have been very jealous of her, cause 1. she got a Doctor Who stop mo in before I did and 2. She is REALLY really good at it. Much better than me. Of course, she is a professional, has has formal training, and knows what she is doing, but hey, that is where I want to be SO badly.

Anyway, she posted a video on how she constructed the Doctor puppet. I have watched many, many armature construction videos, but hers made the most sense to me. So I decided to give it a whirl. I really want some more videos done before I attend and do panels at Orycon. As my iPad camera does not do macro well, I need bigger puppets if I am going to use it as my camera until I can afford a new one. So I guess the worse that can happen is I fail miserably. And I didn't. Kind of.

Her construction technique involved epoxy putty, wire, square brass tubing of 2 sizes that nest into each other, extra firm Sculpy, and foam.

So she made her head out of an aluminum foil ball covered in Sculpy, with a piece of the larger square brass tubing in the bottom to allow for the neck to be placed in it. This is my version here. She did not put any "bones" on her armature, but I know my limitations. I think I need them to help keep the joints bending at a natural place. I made them out of Sculpy too.
While those were baking I made the chest and torso. She made those out of epoxy putty with pieces of the larger square brass tubing for the neck, arms, waist and legs. I ran out of epoxy putty after the torso, so I used the extra firm Sculpy. Probably not a good idea, but I plan on getting more for the next one, so I will do it all out of epoxy putty then. I just couldn't find more within walking distance, and didn't feel up to traipsing around town on the bus for it.

Next I painted the head. I did not realize I got enamel paint. It is a bit shiny. But it looked good after I was done. I got some matte acrylic paint to use for the next one. If I really want to try animating with this one I can use face powder to cut down on the shine.

Next step was to glue hair on the head. I went down to the local Hirons and bought a $5 fake mullet wig. Very cheesy, not easy to work with. I couldn't find rubber cement like she suggested, so I decided to use contact cement. For the record, these are not the same thing. For one thing, contact cement melts enamel paint. It melts it fast and almost back to a liquid state. This was a problem when gluing on the hair. A big one.

The hair came with some pieces serged on the ends. I decided to work with it and use the serged parts as the glue points. I also thought about how doll's hair is attached. It is usually attached in circles. I thought I would just glue a larger outer circle, then another inner smaller circle, then a smaller one until it filled the space. Along with fighting the melting enamel paint to get the hair to stay, I also had to fight the direction of the hair. It is fakey fake nylon threads. It does not want to move in a direction other than straight. I planned on gluing the stitching on inwards, then flip the hair back over it to cover it. Might have worked better if it were real hair.

Here it is completed. As you can see, there are lumps in the hair cause it didn't want to bend. In my haste to fix the melting glue I also missed some coverage. But I found if I put it back in a pony tail and fiddled with it I could cover the bare spots believably. I did end up cutting about an inch off the length of the hair. I figured it would make it less heavy....pull less on those possibly weak glue points.

So next was to make hands and feet. I decided I wanted to stick with magnets for my anchor method. She uses bolts, which are fine but leave holes in the set that I haven't figured out how to get rid of. Also, I only have a flat table. It isn't practical to try to drill through the whole table. I have a couple pieces of sheet metal I intend to use for the base of my set. So when I was making the feet, I molded them out of the extra firm Scuply and made a notch in the bottom to fit the magnets. I also added a bit of brass tubing to attach it to the leg.

The hands were more difficult. I think I will try another method for the hands. It was clumsy and hard to do, and looks pretty bad. There is a tutorial on the intertubes for making stop motion puppet hands out of florist wire and liquid latex. I am going to try that next. Cause look here....this is just bad....

Also...something creepy happened while I was baking the chest part. See that red thing? It looks like a heart. I did not put that there. That side was up when I baked it. It kind of showed up there. I suppose it is fine, but weird. When you burn Sculpy it turns red. But that part wasn't any higher then the rest of it. I don't know why it did it.
So next step is to find some foam and make a chest and tummy, then sew some clothes for her. I plan on cutting felt mouths that will stick on with handitak. I learned a lot from making this puppet. I will make a few more then experiment with animating them.

I plan on going to get more epoxy putty and seeing if that makes a difference. I also plan on getting real hair hair extensions to use for the hair on the next one, see if it helps.

And last but not least, this is my new toy. It is a cabasa. For our Orycon concert we are doing a filk to In the Summertime, a Mungo Jerry song. I was having issues getting a good rhythm with the skull shakers for that one, so when I found this online for cheap I snatched it up. We have a rehearsal tomorrow. I will see how well it works then.
:)

Okey dokey, that was my little experiment. Still working on it. Feel free to throw suggestions my way for how to make this puppet work better. I think I am well on my way finally to doing real stop mo.

Now I just need a camera....

I really need to get creative with my titles. :P It has only been a week and half, but I thought I would post anyway. Just kidding. I am trying to be better at keeping up with this thing. It feels like it has been months, though the calendar says it hasn't been. I really had fun playing with the Dremmel. I haven't taken it out for anything else yet. I am itching to, but I am worried about using it when I don't need to and killing a project that would have otherwise been fine.



I have been writing, but haven't really finished anything. This week we have had issues at work with the servers, issues at home with an injured ankle, and emotional issues dealing with this time of year. Also, someone in France has decided to usem y debit card number to try to purchase Formula One tickets (of all the fucking things), so they had to close down my debit card. My plan for this weekend was to price out alginate and get it ordered. Nope. I cannot do anything online now. Grrr argh. At least my new bank had the courtesy to call me first. They gave me a chance to get cash before they closed for the weekend. And they also replaced the money and flagged my card number. That is much better than what my previous bank did. My previous bank let the bastards clear out my account completely, from clear across the country, minutes after I used it here, so clearly it WASN'T ME. I had to jump through a ton of hoops to get it cncelled, a ton of hoops to get my money back, I had to threaten to sue in order to get my legally mandated 45 day credit until it was cleared up. I had to send a police report 4 times before they acknowledged they recieved it. At least this time the transaction was flagged, they saw it was from another country, and called me right away.



But I digress....I am good at that. :) Now that my ankle is doing a bit better and I am a bit more mobile, i will et going on it all again. I shot some footage a few weeks ago with my iPad. I am not happy with it, but I am trying to work with it. Main issue....the damn autofocus. Even after I have put it in focus lock it still kept refocusing. This is why I need a good camera damn it. I am getting tired of this crap. Makes it hard to get anything done. I have been playing around with the pictures in Pinnacle on my iPad. Not much help, but I think if I futz with it a bit more I may make something workable out of it. I tried transferring the pictures to my computer and working with them there. Every one of them were blurry. How the hell did it lose quality? All I did was copy them over. There are 400 some odd pictures. I guess I could try to email each one to myself. Or I could just say screw it and see what I can do in the ipad. Unless one of you wants to spring for a brand new camera? Yeah, didn't think so. I am also feeling jealous. Last fall a girl did an awesome Doctor Who stop mo, in the style of the old Rankin Bass Rudolph stop mos. it was very well done. And I am green with envy, cause I want to do THAT. And if I had money for the equipment I need, I could. I don't begrudge her the props. Cause she totally deserves them. I just want to be there too, and I am not yet.



Ok...enough of the whining. Time to get back to work.