Last Video for a while, and all of the stop motion is done!!!

Woooo! here it is.

All of my posts seem to be videos...

... but here's the latest one. 52 seconds of stop motion. The montage sequence is done, and now all that needs to be done is the bit where he hears the artist coming back upstairs and runs back to his original position. And the live action, the music, the compositing and the effects of course...

Rough edit of montage

I've shot the majority of the montage now and below is a rough edit of everything so far, definitely going to change some things around and reshoot some bits, and I've managed to miss out a shot which is impressive, but this is just to give an idea of how it's going. I quite like the overall effect, it seems to flow well.
Have also started creating the painting, just done the right arm and the background so far, but below is how it's looking.

Up to the montage

Completed all of the stop motion up to the montage, that's my task for this week. Here it is;

my setup and useful books

Thought I'd update with new pics of my setup;

I have 3 lamps, some with homemade diffusers made from baking paper. There is also a reflector made from tinfoil, but the camera is obscuring it from view.

I've been using some books to help me perfect my animation. One called The Animators Survival Guide by Richard Williams was very useful to help me get my walking motion better. Below is a page from the book which demonstrates ways of animating a walking motion.

My new problem is to do with the green screen. My paint brush is blue and thin, and therefore doesn't look any good once I've got rid of the green. I also have a shot where I use a focus pull, which is throwing up issues as well. I have another book which gives a fairly detailed account of how to use the Keylight plugin in after effects, which is being a massive help.

Once I've sorted these issues I'll have close to 30 seconds of footage though, so on track for now.

20 seconds now...

So after a fun weekend of animating, which included breaking a bulb and a desperate dash to morrisons to try and get a new one, I have 20 seconds of stop motion. Keyed all the green out, and positioned my little dude (who I've called Woody) roughly where I want him to be in the shot so all is left is to add in the background on these shots.

Of course, might still reshoot some scenes...

10 secs

here's what i've managed so far;

Progress Report

I have officially started animating. After two days of work I have come accross the following issues;

1. Camera battery running out (thankfully it only takes 2 hours to recharge, and I've ordered a mains adapter which should arrive tomorrow)
2. Lighting not being great (borrowed an extra lamp from holly, better now)
3. Stop Motion Pro crashing (restarting is the only thing I've found that helps)
4. Not being able to animate a walk properly. Looks too much like he's loping. I feel this is overcompensation from the previous stiffness, will have another go tomorrow.
5. Keying out his pole, then realising it took some of his leg with it (had to reshoot)
6. Keying out the greenscreen, then realising some of the pole was still visable and my hands appeared in some shots. (Thankfully matte chokes and masks are designed to help with these problems)

However, I have 10 seconds of animation. Worth it? sure :)

More StoryBoards

I have re-storyboarded my animation with much more detail, including how long my stop motion shots will be.
In total, I should be shooting 1365 frames of stop motion. In total this amounts to 1 min 33 secs of footage (at 15 fps) however as a lot of that is a montage sequence, it will more likely amount to 1 min 16 secs as many of the shots will be cross faded into each other.

The stop motion will be preceded and ended with some live action sequences, the first being around 34 seconds and the second being about 42 seconds including credits.

Lens

On many stop motion websites it suggests that you use an old style lens rather than a new one, as the new ones can result in light flickering.

"The lenses that are supplied with modern DSLRs use automatic iris. This means the lens is normally 'wide open' to let the maximum amount of light through to the viewfinder making it easier for you to see your composition. When you click the shutter release, the lens iris 'stops down', the shutter opens, after the set exposure time, the shutter closes and the lens iris opens up again.

Unfortunately the lens does not 'stop down' to exactly the same place each time you press the shutter. For normal picture taking this is not a problem, but for animation it causes an annoying flicker.

To solve this problem, the best solution is to use older style manual iris lenses, not to use the lenses that usually come bundled with the new DSLR cameras.  The lens on this page is a manual iris/aperture lens. You can tell by the aperture "f-stop" markings on the movable ring on the lens barrel.  Look for this stepping ring with similarly marked increments when considering a lens." 

(http://www.stopmotionpro.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=84:dslr-lenses&catid=12)

To avoid this problem, I found some old lenses for a film SLR that I had at home, and bought a cheap adapter. Now I have a  manual 28mm prime lens mounted onto my SLR, so I should have no light flicker.