Objects At Rest

explorations in audio and moving imagery

Category: Work In Progress

  • Starewicz as a Benchmark for Planning Animation Storyboards

    Some time ago I posted my analysis of “The Frogs Who Wanted a King” by Wladyslaw Starewicz on stopmotionanimation.com as a benchmark for developing shots and scenes. I am running through the exercise for my next project tonight as I draft storyboard cards so I thought I would re-post the info here at my blog.

    While preparing for a previous stop motion project I wanted to gauge the breakdown of shots and scenes for a short film. My intent was to get some benchmarks to work against while planning scenes and shooting specific shots. I decided to watch my Starewicz DVD for reference. I would pause and forward one frame at a time every now and then while watching “The Frogs Who Wanted a King”.

    The exercise helped me to get a sense of the pace and frame-rate I should be working with while filming something. It also revealed to me that I could plan on doing at least a shot per day (around 6 seconds or so) and just move along slowly but steadily until I filmed everything. I guess it helped me create a rough production schedule since I was also working with no script and just a set of visual ideas.

    Here are the specifics that I found.

    -25 scenes
    -62 specific animated shots
    -19 title cards shots
    -81 total shots
    -7 seconds: average length of shot
    -16 seconds: average length of title card
    -15 words: approximate number of words per title card
    -4 words per line for title cards
    -16 frames: number of frames for a “Starewicz-style” zoom

    The exercise is to take index cards (or the back of used old business cards) and quickly sketch or write out descriptions of discreet visual scenes of your film. Once you have at least 20 to 30 cards you have a bulk of visual material at your disposal. You then place them on a bulletin board with pins or magnets and start moving them around to find the flow, arcs, or connections of your movie. Ideally, as you review the stream of visual ideas, new ideas or directions will arise and you then sketch or write those and start sticking them on the board.

    Iterate through this exercise at least one more time to add 2 or 3 cards to each existing card when needed for clarity of visual communication. Pretty soon you have the visual concepts for around 4 to 6 minutes of footage. In some ways it’s like painting or sculpting with visual concepts on cards instead of paint and the board is your canvas. You can step back every so often and “read” the stream of cards until you feel confident that you can formalize your shooting plan.

  • Armature 2008 – Tie Downs – UPDATED

    Update. I took another pair of carved shoes to try a modified design of the wire and brass nut. This time I wrapped the wire around the groove on the outside of the brass nut (see original posting below for context). I then placed the nut in a hole at the toe (instead of in the ankle) and curved the wire up through the ankle hole in the shoe. The idea is to allow for more flexibility of the wire at the ankle so it may not break as easily under repeated bending. My wire and brass nut are now similar to what Sven and Mike have done. I posted some pics of the new shoe:

    photo

    What may be different is that I am not permanently fixing the foot/shoe to the nut. The intent is for the design to allow me to have replacement armature parts, specifically wire. If my leg segment breaks I want to be able to swap out the wire and continue to use the shoe and possibly the brass nut. Hopefully this will allow me to do so since the brass nut and wire fit securely into the bottom of the shoe and I used hot glue (which I can release if needed) to hold it in place. In short, I can take the shoe off at any time.

    End of update, the original posting follows..

    I’ve been working on some tests for the armatures to be used in the next project. My design may not be original but I’m combining information from other stop motion animator blogs regarding tie-downs. I used the Hilligoss T-Shaped tie down for Vitruvius but this time I wanted to try something else. My new tie-downs are inspired by tips found in the blog archives of Mike and Sven and possibly other places that I can’t remember right now. For example, J-B Weld is the adhesive (Mike has mentioned that at one point) and the knurled brass nuts are placed in the foot (Sven posted something about those recently). I put the pics up on Flickr with notes and descriptions so go check them out if you like.