Scaling back to puppets of the simpler variety, the idea of replacement ani- mation can also be achieved with materials much less costly than a 3D printer. I recently created a series of replacement figures for an animated logo sequence done in stop-motion. My friend and colleague Steve Stanchfield created a hand- drawn animation logo for his company, Thunderbean Animation (Figure 3.115), which provides animation services and produces DVDs of rare lost films from animation history. The logo starts with a lightning flash and the word “Thunder,” and then a happy animated bean comes in and places the word “Bean” into the title. Steve and I had been collaborating on a DVD full of rare stop-motion films called Stop-Motion Marvels, so I thought it would be cool if the logo was also done in stop-motion. Steve’s animation style is very rubbery,
Figure 3.115
Logo for Thunderbean Animation by Steve Stanchfield. (© Thunderbean Animation.)
with lots of squash and stretch to the drawings, so I knew that replicating the same look in stop-motion would involve replacement puppets, much like the George Pal Puppetoons of the 1940s.
To create an understructure for the beans, I simply used tiny Styrofoam ball pieces for the top and bottom, glued them together with aluminum wire (Figure 3.116), and covered them in clay. Using the Styrofoam balls helped me keep the shapes relatively consistent from one puppet to the next and cut down on the weight. Studying Steve’s original animation told me I needed a pose where the bean’s eyes and mouth were closed, a slightly squashed version of the same expression (Figure 3.117), and at least one in-between position. I also needed a severely squashed pose for the anticipation (Figure 3.118) before he stretches up to place the words into the title (Figure 3.119), which also required separate puppets. Coming from the stretch was another in- between pose and a final pose to end him on as he stops to look upward and smile. I was able to streamline the original animation and simply re-use these basic shapes to get the effect I needed, without necessarily adhering to the need for that many replacement figures (Figure 3.120). For the arms and legs, I used small pieces of aluminum wire wrapped in black masking tape, and his hands and feet were made of sticky tack and white plasticine clay. I knew I would need a rig in the shot holding him up the whole time because the spindly legs would not be strong enough to hold him up on his own, and there would be several frames where he was in mid-air. A helping hand rig worked just fine for this, with the pincher on the end either holding a wire to stick into the puppet or sticking into the puppet itself. The rig was visible in every frame and later erased digitally in post-production.
Figure 3.116
Styrofoam armature structures for the clay replacement beans.
Figure 3.117
For the animation of these puppets, I set up a white poster board curved into a cove to create a plain white limbo space for the action to take place. This was lit with some ambient lighting to help soften the overall effect but still create a shadow under the puppets, emphasizing the fact this would be a 3D stop-motion version of the logo. I imported an image of the logo into my frame-grabbing software and used it as an onion-skinned image to line up the framing of the shot and size of the puppet in the frame (Figure 3.121).
Figure 3.118
Squashed anticipation pose.
Figure 3.119
Big stretched pose.
Figure 3.120
The final resting puppet, along with some of the other replacement puppets.
Figure 3.121
Author Ken Priebe framing his Thunderbean Animation shot.(Photo by Shawn Tilling.)
The logo would be composited into the shot later, and I wanted to match the exact framing as closely as I could. Once I got the framing right, I traced the edges of the logo with a dry-erase marker on the monitor to give me a refer- ence point for when the puppet would actually make contact with the logo and where he should step and land. Using all of this as a framework, I started animating (Figure 3.122).
Because of the different positions caused by the extreme squash-stretch move- ment and the fragility of the various puppets, in most cases I took the entire puppet apart between each frame. If the arms or legs needed to dramatically change position, I would take the wires out, bend them into shape, and stick them back in their new pose. The onion-skin feature was very useful for reg- istering the extreme movements after removing the puppet from the set, and toggling the frames gave me an idea of how the arcs and movement were work- ing. The whole sequence took me about four hours to shoot once it was all set up, and the end results were a happy stop-motion jumping bean!
Check out the accompanying CD for the final animation, as well as the Stop- Motion MarvelsDVD, available from http://www.thunderbeananimation.com.
The Thunderbean
animation in progress, with reference markers on the monitor and onion skin for positioning.
As some final notes for this chapter, let me point out just a few other excel- lent resources for a few specific things related to advanced puppet-building: Online tutorials for making your own ball-and-socket armatures:
n Lionel I. Orozco:
www.stopmotionworks.com/ohspics.htm www.stopmotionworks.com/drlballs.htm www.stopmotionworks.com/ballbrz.htm
(Above tutorials also available with more written details in Marc Spess’s book, Secrets of Clay Animation Revealed.) n Sven Bonnichsen:
www.scarletstarstudios.com/blog/archives/2006/06/ how_to_make_a_b.html
n John Hankins (Castlegardener):
http://castlegardener.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/ beginners-guide-to-ball-and-socket-armatures
n For additional tutorials and tips on creating silicone molds and casts, check out some of the issues and videos provided at
http://www.stopmotionmagazine.com and http://www.marklagana.com/ siliconemould.html, and consult the message board at
http://www.stopmotionanimation.com. n Armature kits and other services/supplies:
Stop-Mo-Tec: http://www.stop-mo-tec.de
Animation Supplies: http://www.animationsupplies.net The Clay & Stop Motion Animated Store:
S
top-motion photography is not just one image, but rather a series of images that create motion when strung together. Shooting stop-motion relies on having the following things: a story to tell, puppets to tell that story with, and a camera to be the eyepiece for that story. If you have the first two nailed down, reading this chapter will help you focus (no pun intended) on what you should know about your camera, some details on how to shoot with it, and some practical effects you can try.When stop-motion was shot on film, each frame would exist as its own separate image, strung together on a strip of 8mm, 16mm, or 35mm film (Figure 4.1). The film would be registered with a series of sprockets that pushed the strip of film through a gate in front of a square window blocked by a shutter. Exposing one frame of film with the touch of a button would open the shutter and expose light through the lens onto the film. Then, the sprockets inside would advance the film- strip to the next unexposed space for the next image to be captured. Each image was essentially a separate photograph with its own established focus, exposure, color, and lighting. These elements would essentially be a continuous tone, and the features on a film camera could be set manually, although fluctuations could happen because of uneven shutter speed, changes in temperature, or the film mov- ing around in the gate. There was no way to make sure each frame was consistent with the next one. The result of the whole process was basically a series of still images on the strip of film that would exist only in negative form until it was sent to a lab to create the positive print. Looking at the strip of film itself, all of the separate images are visible, so an editor can see exactly where scenes begin and end, and the images can be rearranged and spliced together.