[ explorations in audio and moving imagery ]
A 12 frames per second animation test. I animated various objects to a music track set to 100 beats per minute. This test was used to determine how many frames were needed to move objects at various speeds and also keep those objects in time to with the music.
PLAYING AT LIMITED TIMES ONLY! Lincoln, my unrealized experimental animation. Synopsis: The supernatural trial and judgement of John Wilkes Booth for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Running Time: 3:42 Format: NTSC, 1.77:1, Black & White Audio: Mono Genres: Animation, Computer Animation, Experimental Location: Atlanta, GA, U.S.A. Producer, Writer, Director: Grant Goans Music: Grant Goans (Variations…
I am happy to announce that Mirror has been selected for the Stop Motion Montreal festival.
My experiment with clay continues. VICTUAL 2 is now on Vimeo.
Watch on Vimeo My short experiment titled VICTUAL 1 is now online. I did the animation one evening during the week and completed the audio tracks this weekend. Sven Bonnichsen’s recent “mutate” project inspired me to try something quick and improvisational. I haven’t worked with clay before, but wanted to try something simple and organic…
I stopped by the xtranormal site, set up an account, and played around with the system.
Watch on Vimeo Watch on YouTube
More test footage with the forest and house.
In addition to making tiny steps toward the completion of Vitruvius I’ve also started pre-production on some other projects. Part of the process is getting familiar with the HV20 and further development of the sets. Doing these tests help determine composition and lighting but instead of just taking a single photograph I animate several seconds…
Vitruvius is still being edited in between other activities (including prep work for the next project). I actually find taking time away from a project to be good because when you view it again after weeks or months of absence you can view it fresh and sometimes differently. As I recall, it was almost a…
I did an animation tonight using the pop thru ideas mentioned in the previous post. Here is the result. Plant a Tree – An Arbor Day PSA and Pop-thru Animation Test
I tried out the dolly and confirmed that the current tripod mount is unstable…although I kind of like the uneven quality of the movement. I’ll probably try to mount the whole track on something more stable. Click to view
Slowly I am getting back into the Vitruvius project. Most of the puppet filming is done and now begins the task of creating the assets for post-production compositing. The Flash animation below is a test for the various line drawings that are planned for the film. The idea is to export animations such as this…
Breaking news! Nellybob has posted a complete solution on Stopmotionanimation.com for using the Philips with a DSLR camera. He has addressed the specific issues I had with the webcam and attaching it to the camera and it looks really good. The only issues that remain for me at this are specific PC config problems for…
Takuro Masuda, a filmmaker and stopmotion animator in Atlanta, has posted his animation “Death of a Matriarch” on YouTube. The film was made for the Center for Puppetry Arts XPT series.
Update. I did another test tonight and got the motion smoothed out. This is more of the effect I was aiming to achieve. WATCH MOVIE Here is my original post and first test: Another test clip. I am finishing the assembly of the stage curtain and wanted to see how it would animate. The answer…not…
I did another test tonight. I am thinking that this armature is a bit unstable and has some spring to it compared to a wire armature secured with epoxy putty. I may have to make an epoxy version of the same proportions and try similar tests to confirm which is more stable for movement. WATCH…
I filmed a quick test tonight using my recent armature design. Here is the result: WATCH MOVIE
In both Man Drawing a Reclining Woman and the Sword of Damocles I have what looks like ghosting in the animation. My process is to shoot 12 photos for each second of animation then stretch that sequence in Sony Vegas to 24fps. Vegas then blurs every other frame. When analyzing the footage within Vegas frame…
The following links play very short clips of footage from the Vitruvius project. The files are Quicktime movies at 320×240 resolution. Unfurled Writing Book IV The Orders of Antiquity The Books of Architecture More to come as filming continues.
My short film “The Sword of Damocles” is now showing along with several other stop motion films at the StopMoShorts.com web site. Here is a sketch of the character designs that I used when building my puppets. I plan to post more info about the making of my film later.
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…
I usually listen to music when animating. For the Vitruvius project I’ve been enjoying a mix of recent releases from bands such as Dungen, His Name is Alive, Simple Minds, Daniel Lanois and Wolf Parade. Speaking of Wolf Parade, I found the following music video of their song “Modern World” on YouTube. It looks to…
View Quicktime Movie 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…
View Quicktime MOV (approx 4MB) Prior to 2003 I had been working with Lightwave and 3D computer graphics as my medium for independent film projects. As it turns out those projects never left the pre-production phase because in 2003 I made a wooden ball-and-socket joint to see if it would simulate the function of a…