Old News and Updates: or ...Welcome to my Blog archive July 02 2005 Sin City Well, I'm hardly the first to comment on this movie, and I won't even try to do a full review... for that there are countless movie review sites. Just my own personal take on it... LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT!!!!! I think this is the first movie to really find a perfect use for all the digital image manipulation that's come into being in recent years. Rodriguez has pioneered the use of high-def digital camcorders, color filtering, and comped-in CG backgrounds... and with the help of the incomparable Frank Miller (who was creating an awesome screenplay without anyone realizing that's what it was) and Quentin Tarantino, has created a dark, brooding masterpiece of unappologetic cinematic brilliance delving deep into the collective psyche of a P.C. world desperately in need of a film like this. I wasn't a fan of Miller, though I do like his artwork, and had never read the graphic novel, though a friend gave me a tattered old copy a while back. So I came into this without any expectations. And it took a while to hook me. In fact, it can be a very puzzling film (like Pulp Fiction, on which I suspect it's strongly based) and doesn't offer much in the way of happy feelings or familiar dramatic storytelling. Rather like the classic Film Noir from which the graphics and voiceover device were lifted, it's convoluted and offers a very personal vision of a story rather than a nicely defined objective view. In fact, I think that's where it's total brilliance lies... in the fact that the story is told through the viewpoints of some of the main characters, in their own words, and filtered through their own subjective experience, so fantasy and dream elements combine with the real in startling ways, allowing for some intense visionary moments like corpses continuing to talk, and heroes and villains alike running around riddled full of bullets and spurting blood from dozens of wounds. It draws together some of the more powerful elements arising from the cinema of the last 15 years or so, like kick-ass chicks, heroes who are more like super-heros (for no discernable reason here... but it works)... and the ever-popular anti-hero. This is Sin City... there are no real good guys... no moralizing do-gooders who help old ladies across the street and agonize over whether to lie or not. Everybody is tough and has their own code of honor. The politically correct veneer is stripped away, revealing base instincts belonging perhaps to our more primitive ancestors; or to desperados in a lawless society. It's a world in which you take care of your own problems... the law is just as corrupt as the underworld, as are the clergy and juducial system. But what really knocks me out about this movie is that, unlike 99% of films produced in the last 10 years or so, it strikes directly into the rich emotional depths of the human soul, in a way that great art and literature do (and that generally speaking blockbuster movies do not). These characters and situations are torn from the fabric of the human tapestry.... they are archetypes... their personalities so powerful that they dominate and overwhelm the rather flimsy story and spawn dark doubles... dopplegangers representing aspects of the characters too sinister or morbid to be acceptable in a "good" character. Thus Hartigan gives birth to Marv, his completely amoral and barbaric counterpart, and Nancy to Goldie and her twin... plus perhaps several other twins echoing throughout the twisted tale. Likewise many of the villains seem to be split off aspects of one villain... the cannibalistic Kevin and sadistic police officer who'se name I can't remember all seem to be variants of the child rapist/murderer who returns as the Yellow Bastard... his official doppleganger. I see the tale between Hartigan and Nancy as the central story, and the other stories, while offered as "intersecting stories" in the sense of Pulp Fiction, are at the same time twisted reflections revealing amoral intents that would be unacceptable in a "good" hero or fair maiden. Comments June 30 2005 The Art of the Puppet Yes gentle readers, it's another installment of my latest obssession with the humble handpuppet. In my researching, I kept running across references to the book The Art of the Puppet by Bil Baird. Supposed to be the source for info and fantastic images, so I tracked one down, and let me tell you, it doesn't disappoint! For your eye-candy delectation, a few more scrumpdillyicious images: Click to see larger version Not currently available as a new book as far as I could determine, it was published in like 1965, and you'd need to track one down through ebay or a used book dealer like abebooks.com. Friends, I know you're here because you love stopmotion, but if you're into the Eastern Euro puppetfilm thing like I am (and I think you are) here is its origin. I'd have to rank it among the top 5 coffeetable art books in my collection, and I've got a pretty fair to middlin' collection! The author was one of America's top puppeteers for many years, and has insider info going way back to the earliest days... no really, the first written reference to puppetry was apparently in ancient egypt back in, um... well, a long time ago. It's got drawings, etchings, paintings, photos, and anecdotes, plus the script for an authentic original Puch and Judy show (which I posted a while back... you faithful have already seen it). Let me put it this way... I've had it for like 4 days, and it still dazzles me as much as the Kong trailer. Ok, I'll get back to stopmo soon; promise! Thanks for hangin' with me on this. Comments Scrumpdillyicious! Thanks, S June 26 2005 I want you to vote for Illume!! Jason's film has made it into another online festival... I'll let him explain it in his own words: Hello everyone. My film Illume is in the June-July round at animationblock.com. You can watch the film there if you have not seen it yet, and then hopefully you will vote for me. All you have to do is send an email to info@animationblock.com and put illume as your subject. You don't even have to write anything besides that. It will only take 30 seconds, so PLEASE give me a vote. I appreciate it! Thank you, Jason You might have already voted for it at Slamdance Anarchy, but whether you did or not, let's help a brother out and push this thing all the way to the top! Cast a vote for stopmo. Comments Great photo Strider, glad to finally know what you look like!! I'm off to vote for Stop Mo! ~Shelley June 22 2005 Added new ball drilling tutorial I've been meaning to post this info for a long time, but just now got around to it, thanks to a little email correspondence with Lance Griffing. He first contacted me about a bad link in the miniature rigging tutorial, which I corrected and at the same time added a little additional info to that page. Well, we got to talking, and he said he had built his own custom armatures back in the 80's, working from what little sparse information was actually available at that time (in other words, pretty much making it up as he went along). Like many others, he used ball joints scavenged from a few Helping Hands devices, and said he hasn't had much luck in drilling ball bearings out. I introduced him to Lionel's excellent workshop page tutorials, and then mentioned the great idea Ted Sydor had suggested for a vise rig. I've actually had the information scattered here and there on my hard drive, and some of it on an old thread at SMA, but decided it was time to put it all together in one place. So friends, for your viewing pleasure, here it is: Darkstrider's handy-dandy ball drilling jig. Comments Read the tuts, got the picture. BUT what do you use the rods with balls brazed on them for? I assume based on looking at them that they are to be used as armature joints but I don't get why all the metallic fuss is neccessary. I'm for a lot less complication, even if the resulting movements on screen is rough. My ani will be rough then, as a style. Feh on precision to that degree for me. But thanks for sharing so well. ~Shelley First, I apologize if you didn't intend for this to be posted Shel, but it is a good point and I want to address it. I used to feel the same way about B&S armatures... when I thought they were beyond my reach both monetarily and ability-to-make-wise. But then I ran across Lio's tuts, and what really made it suddenly seem possible is that a couple of newbies on the message board followed his directions and cobbled some good serviceable armatures together. I don't think they could have done it (or me either) without a lot of help from Lionel and some other kindly souls on the board, who answered all our annoying questions patiently. But in all reality, once you've been talked over the rough spots, it's actually quite simple to do. Just a matter of having the right materials and tools (it can be done with just a drill press and hacksaw and a file- in addition to the propane torch of course. Though I swear by my Dremel with the fiberglass cutoff wheels and a nice bench grinder). Wire armatures are of course a fine option... but there is the spring-back factor to deal with, and the breakage! Oh the breakage!!! It will happen in the middle of a long and complex shot, right when you can least afford it. That's why I'm planning to figure out a way to make wire 'tures with a plug-in system similar to Jurgen Kling's kits. That way when something inevitably breaks mid-shot, you can just unplug the whole arm or leg and pull out the wire, stick a new one in and put it back together, as opposed to having to cut the sucker open and do major surgery, which leaves hideous scars. And once the first part goes, more are sure to follow. Wire is fine for secondary or background characters (or main characters for a very short short, or if you're just crazy bold)... but for my main puppets I'm considering going with the open hole ball joint method. Either that or maybe buy a couple of Tetsu's Armabenders kits. These run around $300, but that's the cheapest you'll find a really decent armature for, and the beauty is that I can just get a couple... maybe one every few months if I save the lawn mowing money - and re-use them in all my films. These kits are fully adjustable, and can make puppets from 5 inches to like 2 feet tall or more. I think I'll buy one and make another home job, and see how they compare. But all this said, Nick Hilligoss uses strictly aluminum wire armatures, and makes them work beautifully, so it can definitely be done. It's funny that you use the word precision in reference to my home-made armatures! They're actually pretty far from precise compared to the silky smooth armatures used in a professional production, but they're good enough for rock-n-roll. To see exactly how they're used, take a look at Lionel's gallery. This is simplicity carried to it's extreme in design and functionality... far beyond the crude and basic human armatures I'll be making! But to try to state it definitively.... I intend to spend the rest of my life on this dirtball pushing puppets around, and I want to explore every option. One day I hope to have a bizarre mix of homemade wire armatures, crude self-fabricated balljoint ones, and some buttery smooth professional jobs alongside them, all cavorting in animated bliss on my table. ~M Here's the only remaining picture I have of the Ahab-ature, before it got covered with foam: Click on the thumbnail to open image in another window. I just checked over at Tennessee Norton's Private Dick Plog, and he and his partner Sarah Brown are making plug-in style wire armatures. He gives some info, but no real details. I'm going to mosey on over there and ask for a little nitty-gritty. *** Tennessee has posted a reply written by Sarah Brown detailing the process better. You can see it by clicking on the link above... it's in the comments section under the main entry. Man, I love blogging! OUCH! That poor drill vice. Hey Mike, that looks like a good trick for drilling balls without many tools. My only suggestion would be to make removable jaws. Most drill vises like that have removable jaws. It would not be much more work to add some 1/4" thick aluminum bars as soft jaws to drill into. That way your original vise will remain intact. You could make one set for each different size ball you want to drill. But overall good tutorial, drilling balls seems to be one of the hard parts for folks starting out with armatures - You just made it a lot easier. ~Mark Fullerton Hmmm... yeah, that would work. A lot less stressfull on the ol' vise too I guess. I'll post this on the other page too. ~M June 18 2005 Art of Pantomime now online! A while back I ran across a very old book called The Art of Pantomime, written by Charles Aubert, a practitioner back in the 1920's when silent films were being made and pantomime was still a valid artform. It's still possible to track down a copy, but the book is no longer being published, and has fallen into the public domain. Now Derry Bryson has turned it into a PDF file (yes, all 210 pages!) weighing in at a mere 10 megs, which you can download at the Mondo Beyondo website. I'll repeat here what I wrote about it on the Stopmotionanimation website: "This book is very useful, but bear in mind, pantomime was often considered ridiculous even in its heyday in silent films, so you need to be subtle and discerning in its use. And of course, most stopmotion puppets won't allow such a complete range of movements of the fingers and face. But it does offer a lot of great ideas for how to express certain things through movement alone." Comments June 16 2005 Almost finished Buster is almost done... just gotta make his hands. Here's a teaser pic: My studies in traditional hand puppetry continue... I've now read Making Puppets Come Alive, and while it suffers from the ubiquitous idea that puppets are just for kids and should serve to teach good morals and personal hygeine, it's still a great book. A lot of overlap between hand puppets and stopmotion (puppetfilm-style, anyway), but what I'm really getting from my recent immersion in puppetry is that simplicity and good design are the key. This latest puppet is my best yet, except for possibly Ahab, though at present I really like the more distorted proportioning like Buster has... but I'm starting to imagine puppets that are much much simpler.... looking more like the hand puppets. Not for all my films mind you, but there's one in particular, which I haven't talked about online, that would really benfit from that kind of approach. And now for something completely- excellent!!! I was Googling with the search term puppets and turned up this incredible site, which immediately made me gasp in sheer awe. Click on the image to see the site of Andrej Stular- puppet-maker, painter, sculptor, etc: Comments Buster is great- you are a master- Andrej is marvelous- I see what yur' after ~Shelley Hi Mike - congrats - Buster looks way cool!! Did you make the fabric clothes yourself? The Tie rocks! what is he for? -Jurgen Hi Jurgen... great to hear from you! Yes, I made the clothes from stretch fabric... very forgiving stuff to work with. I stitched everything on the puppet inside-out, then peeled it off and turned it right-side-out before putting it back on him. For cuffs and hems I used Fabri-Tac fabric glue... excellent stuff. Mostly I just wanted to get some puppet making experience, and I'll just shoot a little comic/silent movie type piece with him. ~M Ψ