Old News and Updates: or ...Welcome to my Blog archive Sept 05 2005 Tippett After posting that little walking raptor clip last night I decided to check the Jurassic Park DVD and make sure it's not on there somewhere. I didn't think it was, but if it was I could have gotten much better video quality that way. It wasn't, so the clip stays up snow and all. But since I had the DVD loaded up, I decided to go ahead and grab the rest of the animatic sequences of Phil Tippett's stopmo dinos. I italicized animatic because what Speilberg and crew call an animatic most of us would consider finished product, or darn near anyway. Generally an animatic is just a rough film made up of storyboard drawings cut together with sound and temp music to try to get a feel for the pacing... but most of Phil's animatics are fully animated, wth just the occasional storyboard drawing cut in. Once again, I'll debut these clips here on the blog, and soon I'll get them posted properly in the growing Tippett section of the Video Clips page. In fact, I've got one more rather breathtaking bit of video by meister Tippett that I'm thinking of digitizing, but that'll remain a mystery for now. Those of you who have the Jurassic Park special edition DVD already have these particular scenes, but for the rest, here they are: "ANIMATIC" clip 1 (1.9 MB) Speilberg talking about Phil's involvement. I just HAD to start this one where I did to capture Speilberg innocently referring to the puppets as CLAY FIGURES!! This part is the T-Rex attacking the overturned jeep. "ANIMATIC" clip 2 (2.1 MB) Speilberg talks about Go-Motion and his reverence for Harryhausen, particularly the skeleton combat scene from Jason and the Argonauts, with a short clip of that included. Features great running tests of the T-Rex and Raptor a jumping test of a Raptor. Some incredibly sweet stopmo bliss! T-Rex GoMo test (2.2 MB) THIS is the sweetest of all! It's hard to believe how much concentrated goodness is packed into this little 3 second test folks! The T-Rex in a GoMo walk test. It doesn't get any better. Man... just LOOK at the movement of the ribcage, and the subtle wrinkling of the skin... the little bony arms. (Hint... download this to your hard drive and set it to loop... it becomes one continuous walk cycle) Kitchen Sequence (10 MB) And finally, the entire sequence of the Raptors chasing the kids in the kitchen. This one is 3 minutes long, and I didn't want to kill the quality, so it ended up being 10 megs. Comments Sept 04 2005 CHANGES A few things changing around here lately... I figure most of my readers are also regulars at Anthony Scott's message board, so those who are will already be familiar with this, but Anthony has been hard at work improving and rennovating. If you're not a regular (um... make that addict) like I am, or haven't seen the site lately, check it out: StopMotionAnimation.com. Also, I've posted another Newbie Guide chapter - my biggest and best yet: Basic Overview of Puppetmaking Techniques. Thanks to the Newbie Guide and Anthony's incredible massive links section the vast trackless wilderness of information is beginning to take on some semblance of organization. I just uploaded a segment from Cinema Secrets featuring Phil Tippett animating the original stopmo puppet versions of the T-Rex and Raptor from Jurassic park. There are 2 files... one is the entire segment with Tippett discussing his involvement, with both clips in it (but that file is very small and heavily compressed) and then there's the larger version of just the incredible Raptor walk. Sorry these are a little grainy... I recorded it off TV. Hey, I'm just glad I was able to get it at all! In a few days I'll get these things properly installed on the Video Clips page, but for now they can be accessed here on the blog. Comments August 27 2005 *blink* ....Persistence of vision part 2 (A new focus) After last night's blog I realized I might have left the impression that nothing has changed in the last 2 years. While my vision of the Ahab movie has remained essentially the same, everything else has changed. At the time I started that Roll out the Barrels thread, my studio consisted of a webcam on a cheap plastic tripod and a desklamp. That's it! Since then I've got ahold of my Hitachi and some good lenses, built my camerajack and tabletop rigging, installed my lighting system and set up my foley/recording equipment, plus advanced significantly along the learning curve for puppetmaking/setbuilding/propmaking and actually doing animation and putting together a movie. A big part of my time has been devoted to film studies in general (not necessarily animated)... much of it documented on a thread called Silent Film Recommendations. So you can see why I refer to this last four years as my university - or the U of me. Plus more recently there are the studies in puppetry. Not sure why, but every so often I just have the irresistable urge to look at where I've been, where I am and where I'm going... get my perspective. This feels like a very pivotal point for me, what with the epiphanies and a new understanding of my ideas for the Ahab movie, and I feel like I'm starting to get a handle on how to concieve and write this thing. It's very important to me that I do this right.... I'm not just making a movie, I'm forging myself into an artist and a filmmaker. I suppose at any time I could have halted the studies and just started cranking out little movies, but they would have sucked, and I have no interest in making sucky movies. Ok, now that we're up to date, I'd like to take a moment to thank some readers who have shared their thoughts and knowledge with me. Larry DeHaan emailed me last night about a sweet-looking book at Amazon called Pinocchio's Progeny: Puppets, Marionettes, Automatons, and Robots in Modernist and Avant-Garde Drama . Long title, but by all accounts sounds like a great book. Mine's on its way out. And Steve Hansen wrote in to tell me he got his first taste of Svankmajer and was not disappointed. Steve, if you liked Faust, just wait till Alice gets there! He also informed me of a very interesting practice among astronomers to modify webcams to fit on their telescopes. I was intrigued enough to do a bit of Googling and ran across this website: Webcaddy.com.au. This guy in Australia makes custom adapters to fit various lenses on a webcam, or onto apparently just about any kind of camera. I haven't really investigated much, but thought I'd pass it on in case anybody wants to. And I can't discuss my readers without mentioning Shelley Noble, the greatest force for good that anyone could hope to have on their side! In addition to her constant support, she provides a valuable sounding board I can bounce ideas off of. I've said it before and I'll say it again... I'm constantly amazed at her intelligence and depth of understanding. And... well... let's just say she also has a great capacity for forgiving. Thank you Shelley! Comments Aw shucks Mike Kee, let's just say we are Charter Members of each other's fan club. - S August 26 2005 Persistence of vision No, no...stop groaning out there! I'm not going to give you the elementary primer on how the eye sees motion in a rapid sequence of pictures.... I'm sure you're all familiar with that. This is about something much more important that that! The other day in response to a question at the message board, I dug up and blew the dust off an old thread called Roll out the Barrels, from june of '03... two years ago. Seems like ancient history to me now... and yet, reading through it once again, I was surprized at how many of my ideas for the Ahab movie were already in place, or falling into place. Not only that, but even way back then I was already yammering about "I gotta make my own movies my own way" and other familiar catchphrases. It just really tickled me to see the persistence of my vision from then to now. Only a few minor changes really, aside from a major rethinking of how to design/build the sets, which resulted in the look I unveiled in stopmo sketches #6 and 7. That was one of my complaints back then, the rather drab flat set I had cobbled together. I didn't know quite how to achieve it, but I knew I wanted something that allowed a lot more expressive possibilities. And I stumbled upon it because when I decided to start doing the sketches I was too lazy to set anything up more elaborate than piling a bunch of coiled ropes over all the clutter on my table. It's sheer visual poetry the way it works.... build a composition against darkness by pushing layers of elements around til it looks right. Forget about the overall layout or architecture.... this is expressionism baby! No need to sentence yourself to structure. I like the suggestion of a space much more than a fully detailed and carefully measured out depiction of it in boring detail. And I have a nice surprize in store for the sets in the actual film... but that'll have to wait! As I said recently, I now have a clear idea of the theme for the movie. But geez.... I wish I could figure out the actual story! I know it'll happen, and I know how it'll happen... a result of lots of sketches and learning to express through my beloved puppet pantomime.... the puppets have a different range of expression from actual human actors and also from live action puppets. It'll be very interesting indeed to see what my vision looks like in another two years..... Comments Brilliant! This is so good to hear, Mike. I love the idea of stop mo impressionism and plan the very same approach in my film(s). Husband Paul and I have been grooving on the old Kung Fu tv series (out on dvd) and have revelled in the talented crew's use of rack shots and small set detail that so effectively created an entire sense of place. The results they achieved by focusing on small action in a foreground, either outdoors or in town a building through a window, and then racked back to an action in the landscape with just foley and music for sound, were sensational, over and over, each time it is thrilling storytelling poetry. My point is that I made a mental note to copy their way of getting so much fully realized location based on minimal sets. I will attempt to create this exactly in my stop mos too. - S Wow... yeah, I remember the show, and now that you mention it, you're right... those shots were fantastic! I had forgotten about it, aside from the occasional grasshopper joke. But it really was a great show. Love the flashbacks to put everything into philosophical perspective. August 24 2005 Unknown but perfect poem One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice-- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do-- determined to save the only life you could save ~ mary oliver Comments Sent to me tonight by Shelley, who is somehow able to peer into my very soul from her remote outpost and read the meanings within. I don't know the name of this poem but maybe she'll grace us with it here? Naturally, it's entitled: The Journey Isn't Mary Oliver magnificent?! I had never heard this one either until the simply marvelous (person) blogger Jen Gray posted it yesterday. - S August 23 2005 Strange day indeed ...So strange, in fact, that I decided to change my font color to commemorate it. It all began last night with a series of epiphanies. Gotta love the multiple epiphanies! And maybe I'm wrong to write about any of this in my blog, cause there's no possible way I could even begin to describe all of it, so I'm not even going to try. Suffice to say that I have a new and clearer grasp of art and life, and my life in particular, and a new sense of focus on my projects. Sorry, that's all hopelessly obscure and drivel-ish, but it's about as good as I can do without writing a book, and that my friends would cost you! Well, ok, I'll try to put some of it in perspective. Some of you may have been wondering what happened to derail my so-called Ahab project a while back, when I suddenly dropped it like a hot tamale and created Buster instead. I was kind of wondering myself. Was I simply working my way through the alphabet? I mean yeah, there was the broken neck incident, and the discovery that lead wire basically bites ass, but why not just rebuild the poor blacksmith with aluminum wire and get on with it? Things were going particularly well with the stopmo sketches as a matter of fact, and it all just suddenly ended. There's a huge difference in style between the Ahab puppets and Buster, to say the least! Of course, the change had a lot to do with my recent studies in puppetry and my dissatisfaction with the rather limited range of those creaky old men puppets.... it would never do for example to see one of them cavorting or leaping about. Well, one of my epiphanies last night was the sudden crystal clear understanding of exactly why Buster suddenly popped out of my psyche unbidden like the quintessential watermelon seed or sliver of soap from between fumbling fingers. It's because he represents an essential part of me that couldn't find expression in the solemn Ahab movie... specifically because of the (heretofore hidden, even from me) theme of that film. To say more would reveal the central tenet of the film, and that I shan't do yet, so I suppose I've just wasted 2 minutes of your life and 10 minutes of mine for nothing! But I finally do understand the theme of the movie, and why it's necessary for me to study the possibilities of Puppet Pantomime through Buster and friends, allowing humor in. You see, humor is a life-embracing magic that brings all possibilities within our grasp and erases boundaries. A wonderful way to explore new territory that would be intimidating otherwise. Another thing I understand now is that I needed some distance from the Ahab project, because it had grown beyond what I originally envisioned. I took another look last night at the two stopmo sketches I posted a few pages back, and I was amazed at how good they look.Not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but compared to the earliest tests of the old captain, the last ones look like Rembrandt paintings brought to life! I never in my wildest dreams imagined it could look like that! And from the simple but effective composition with the coiled ropes I can feel the stirrings of powerful ideas beginning to develop, which push the whole project into completely unexpected territory. It requires some time to regroup and absorb the changes, try to figure out how to take advantage of the power that's coming into my grasp. Basically, I need to learn how to write my film, and Buster will be helping me do that. About the rest of the strangeness of this day... you probably wouldn't even believe me! Too many bizarre coincidences. And it's the kind of stuff that has deep personal meaning, but just wouldn't come across very well. I think it's best to leave it at that. which makes me wonder... did I actually say anything? Comments The snake sheds it's skin . . or are you a moth? Very revealing. Change, transformation, the artist finds a means of expression : ) - Eric Heh... maybe I'm a snoth! August 10 2005 It Pulsates and Breathes Click for larger version I worked Buster over a bit with my trusty Stupendous Software iMovie plugins to make the clip resemble a silent movie. At first I was loathe to reduce it to sepia tone, because the vivid colors in the original clip look great, but I'm glad I did it now. I find the flickering and the pulsating quality imparted by the uneven exposure and camera shake bring a strange surreal life to the scene. I can see that even a static shot with no characters in it would live when presented like this. And the monochromatic nature of it reduces everything to cyphers of light and shadow, silouette forms laden with expressionistic symbolism. Comments It really is quite wonderful! - S This looks good, Mike. I like the sepia tone and added flicker. Detail is a bit washed out in the brighter areas but somehow I like that too. It certainly makes me want to see more. I don't think you could achieve quite the same results with a hi-res digital still camera, it wouldn't have the grain your video camera provides. very interesting . . . - Eric Scott Thanks to you both! And Shelley for your additional comments, that I'm taking under advisement. As for the washed out look, that's a result of an effect called Glow that I put in. It does wash out detail quite a bit, but it duplicates a certain look from those old flicks. It comes down to a tradeoff... I like the look, but I hate losing the detail and the midtones. I think the answer is to use it in places... like maybe the beginning and end of the film could be seriously degraded with the whole arsenal of effects, but the main bulk of it only slightly degraded, with stronger contrasts. At any rate, consider this just a quickie experiment... I intend to try out a lot of different combinations of effects. Oh, and the film grain is another added effect, which adds a great overall subliminal shimmering quality. My Hitachi is a 3-chip broadcast camera... no grain there! - M Loving all of it...animation, flicker, and post processing! Keep it up young Jedi... -T Hey T-Dog.... glad to hear from you, and so glad you're back and bloggin'! Keep the faith m-brotha! August 04 2005 Buster Breaks Free and we change our StopMoShorts Click for larger version Yes friends, Buster has broken contact with the set floor! It's an exciting moment, akin to the first rocket into space and my first check that didn't bounce. To see how really cool the clip above is, pause it and use your left and right arrows to see it frame by frame. Then click to go to the newly refurbished StopMoShorts and read my brand new shiny tutorial on Flying Rigs and Digital Erasing. A new age is upon us! The old 'Shorts were getting a bit crusty, so we decided the time was ripe for a change. Nick has also posted a tutorial, on the Frontlight/Backlight method of compositing. It can be found under the Visual Effects section. We've decided to make a few more tuts in the future as well... mostly covering those questions we get asked relentlessly by noobs... and yes, at some point (I make no promises as to when) we will get around to those perennial favories... "How do U animate water/fire?" As for Buster.... it was a joy animating him for the most part. The neck and spine have a wonderful flexibility and responsiveness (and I love the way the neck stretches and twists... you can see it a little in the jumping clip), and the arms are great... but the fingers are too stiff and his knees quite simply won't even bend. If you look at the clip, I tried to hide the fact by bending him at the waist/hips until the head almost touched the ground. Next time I'll address these problems, and I should have a fully animatable puppet at long last. Comments Oh. My. God. - S Heh... that's pretty much the way I feel about it. I'm delighted every time I see this little clip! - M great tutorial. I like animation too. I especially like how you left the hands up there when he comes back down. You had a good impact too...I could see being a tad more violent with it and holding a bit longer, that's just critique bs though...very cool. I want to see Buster do MORE!!! - Misha Thanks Mish! That means a lot coming from you. In some ways my first take was better... I did hold a little longer, and his jacket and tie really flopped open. Had a few tech problems... for one his knees won't bend at all, and his fingers are way too stiff. Next time... next time. More to come. Oh, and Buster wants to know if Fred can come out and play? (he dreams of having flexible feet....) Ψ