Hi folks, bin mad busy this week. I started my two weeks at animation last monday, and while I knew there would be a lot of work involved, I wasn't expecting it to be as time consuming as it is. This was my own fault though as I got a bit carried away with my script. I mean I kept it short, as advised, but there is so much to do it's a bit overwhelming. I decided on the stop-motion technique so I'd avoid the hundreds of drawings involved if drawing the images. But now I have to make sets, which has turned out to be the most time consuming part. Though it is enjoyable. Coming from a construction background certainly helps. Plus there's the pride in seeing the end result, and knowing that you've created it, that there's something to show for the time and effort that went into the work. Of course it may all be pointless if I don't get finished in time, which I have to confess is becoming a worry at this stage.

Anyway my script involves two characters and the main character isn't seen. What I mean is the story is shown from their perspective, so you see what they see. This meant that the camera would have to be their eyes. It looked a lot easier on paper. The opening scene involved the main character walking along a pavement while looking at her feet. I assumed this would be easy. I was wrong. To cut a long story short I had to make a jig - think that's what it's called - to hold the character. I'm using a toy doll by the way. So the doll had to be secured to this, along with the camera, and a system of moving the feet. It also had to move along the pavement (slabs drawn on paper). To be honest this mechanism took days to refine and it's only for the first scene - about six seconds long, so it's not looking good timewise but sure it's a start. Have to say I love it though. The scope for creating is limitless, and for someone imaginative -as we all are, (artists) it's a fabouless medium. I'm going to upload some images of what I've been doing so far.

The image above is a jig the technicians made for me. It's to hold the doll steady while it moves. I've since added a bracket to hold the camera and a system for moving the feet at each frame, as the jig progresses along the pavement.

This image shows how the shoes are moved to indicate walking. A set of rails had to be secured underneath the jig to keep the wooden pushrods straight. They also had to be marked with measurements to keep movements consistent. This was all learned through trial and error - mostly error.

One of my sets is a telephone box which took a whole day to make. Maybe I should have gone with drawing.

A telephone - for the above phone box. Carved from a wax crayon with a scalpel - I kid you not. It's about 3/4" long and it now has a cable attatched. 

Just showing the scale of the telephone box set. The scalpel is roughly the size of a biro so you can see why this is so time consuming. But definately worth it. I think I'm becoming addicted to it.

P.S. My camera was set to black & white for some images as I'm filming this way (old fashioned thriller)