Objects At Rest

explorations in audio and moving imagery

Category: How-To

  • Sword of Damocles Production Notes

    The Sword of Damocles is a short stop motion animation that was made in response to the StopMoShorts December 2006 contest. The contest provided three words (sword, cave, and fear) to inspire animators. I focused on the sword with the idea of doing something related to the legend of the Sword of Damocles. I would also embed the other two words in some fashion within the film.

    When I first learned of the legend I envisioned it in a medieval setting. However, the legend appears to be Greek in origin and much older. The premise I chose would keep a medieval setting while also referencing the legend. By using a referential approach I took the opportunity with this film to explore how it could become a veiled criticism of conventional film formulas (including film techniques, story formulas, three-act structures, etc.).

    The list that follows contains the conceptual ideas that I was working with when creating the storyboards, the script, and during filming. The whole process was very much stream of consciousness and experimental to see what I would come up with quickly. I may have succeeded in some places and failed in others. In either case, I did have fun making it quickly and learned several things that I can apply in the Vitruvius production process.

    1. What quote by a literary figure is being referenced in the opening tale by the Jester? What is the context and meaning of said quote?
    2. At what points do the harp strings sound?
    3. Is the Jester ever seen in the same frame as any other character?
    4. At what point does the Jester directly address you the viewer?
    5. Why was the Jester dismissed by the King?
    6. The King and Damocles toast each other? Who is the other party that the Jester is toasting at the end of the film?
    7. There are multiple films presented, which one is the real film?
    8. There are five characters and each are symbolic of participants in the film making process.
    9. The sword is hanging behind the window at the end of the film but the Jester’s words are future tense and speculative.
    10. The voice of the sword in the last act says: “I am the Sword of Damocles. Pay no heed to the tale being told by the fool jester. I was recorded by Cicero as being invoked by the King Dionysus to inform Damocles of the perils of being King. I am the one true Sword of Damocles.”

    Character and Set Design Photos

    The characters are aluminum armature wire with epoxy putty at the hips and chests. The wire is wrapped in jute string and painted. I used thin craft foam for the clothes and hot glue to hold it all together. I painted raw umber acrylic paint on the clothes to dirty them up a bit. The hands and heads are carved from basswood. The arms of the puppets are single strands of wire and the hands have a small hole in them so they are easy to put on and spin around. The feet are epoxy putty with a slot cut through to use tie downs. I also used some epoxy putty for hair. The eyes are wooden beads and the eyelids are Sculpey clay. Eye blinks are made by pressing the clay over the eyes for for one, two, or three frames as needed.

    The sets are made out of pink insulation foam and covered with plaster wrap and then painted for texture. The chairs and table props are basswood and epoxy putty.

    The film was shot on a Nikon D50 and edited in Sony Vegas. The vocals were recorded and edited in Audacity and the music was made with Sony Acid Loop samples.

    photo

    photo photo photo photo

    photo photo photo

    photo photo photo

    photo photo photo

  • Video Assist Setup: Zigview S2 (updated with video)

    I just got the new Zigview S2 (model B) with video out which is intended to help with video assist. I tried it out tonight with my Serlio puppet and here are some photos, info, and some thoughts about the product so far. There is also a thread at the StopMotionAnimation.com forums with another Zigview user’s results so far. The climaxdigital website has more info and pics.

    Here is a video clip comparing the frames captured with the Zigview and the final output from the Nikon. It is an MP4 file using the H.264 codec at a resolution of 640×480 and is just under 2MB in size. If you can play it, you can get a sense of the quality I am seeing with the Zigview.

    Here is the packaging. It comes with the video out cable, and several eye-piece adaptors for Canon, Nikon, and some other cameras. Since I got this from the UK I had to get a $20 Kensington Travel Plug Adapter for Worldwide AC Power to plug it into the wall. (The plug adaptor is the larger cylindrical object with the yellow sticker on it and does not come with the unit but I put it in the pic.) The unit is battery operated but it looks like the battery may run down after a few hours. Fortunately it can operate and charge the battery when plugged in.

    Here is the unit attached to my Nikon D50. The unit is really lightweight and the buttons are plastic. It feels a bit delicate but hopefully it can withstand a lot of handling over time. The unit just slides/snaps down onto the viewfinder of the Nikon. Really easy to attach and remove and it swivels around which makes it a lot easier to see what’s going on in the frame at various camera angles. The viewfinder on the unit allows me to focus pretty and so far it appears to capture the whole field of view so I can compose and focus without removing the unit. The video out cable from the Zigview is plugged into a USB Video Grabber that I got at Compusa. The video grabber installed fairly easily into my USB hub so I didn’t have to buy and install any cards in the computer.

    photophoto

    I am currently using Stop MotionMaker Advance and here is a screen shot of the desktop with the Zigview as video assist. This should be the actual size of the application panels since I cropped but did not re-size anything in Photoshop for this image. You should be able to get a sense of what the Zigview looks like at 640×480 this way. The image has some noise but I can see everything in the viewfinder and there is enough detail for me to check movements from frame to frame. Plus I’m usually standing about 3 to 6 feet away when moving things so at that rage the 640×480 window looks pretty good for video assist.

    photo

    Here are a couple of shots to demonstrate the coverage of the viewfinder with the actual hi-res photo taken with the Nikon. I re-sized the hi-res photo which is twice the resolution for this comparison. Again, the zigview appears to provide almost total coverage of what the camera is seeing which really helps with composition.

    photophoto

    So far I think this may work out well. It is definitely a step up from the web cam that I was using which had really poor resolution. I couldn’t see details in the face or hands of the puppets with the web cam which I am now able to see thanks to the Zigview.

  • Vitruvius Prologue Stage Photos

    photo photo

    A couple of quick behind-the-scenes photos of the Serlio prologue stage sets. I’m in the process of shooting footage with the Serlio books and will finish the set design for the Serlio puppet when I begin shooting those scenes next.

    You can see my set framework in these photos which is constructed with pine wood, screws, and bolts and then stained a dark brown with a water-based product. The whole thing is then bolted to the wire rack. So far that design has worked well since I can wheel the sets around and the set frame is still flexible. The same design is used in the main set which is partially visible in the second photo.

  • Updated: Applied Flash-based Choreography

    I used the Flash pre-visualization test (see previous post) to assist with a very short test using my actual set and objects. I printed out the Flash movie as a series of small thumbnails on 8.5″ x 11″ paper. I then used the printed sheets of individual frames for visual reference when animating the objects, very similar to a storyboard.

    photo

    This is a small sample of the actual prints which take about 3 sheets of paper. I also wrote notes on the paper such as the tops of the objects and rotation heading so I could keep track of which way to move things with each shot. I discovered I needed to do that in the middle of shooting when I forgot which way something should be turning!

  • Updated: Pre-Visualization and Choreography With Flash

    I spent [another] hour with Macromedia/Adobe Flash tonight to experiment with animation timing and choreography of multiple objects. The result is the clip you see above. I used motion tweens to smooth everything out and added rotation to the objects to make the movement more dynamic. View the first version which was has very rough motion.

    The idea is to work out a sequence ahead of time and to know when to move each object or character throughout that sequence when there are multiple things going on. I can see some benefit to this especially if I had a second computer running the Flash file for frame by frame reference. The Flash document settings for this clip are set at 24fps [originally it was 15fps which is what I am currently shooting at but I may move to 24p] so theoretically I could advance it one frame at a time and use it as a guide for taking each shot with the digital camera. I suppose this would be some kind of “action assist” for multiple movements to supplement the more common video assist and gauges for visual placement.