Stop Motion video shoot at AFI

This last week I worked on the crew for a stop motion music video shot at AFI by one of the Fellows named Jacob Andersen. It was such an insane and cool experience. The crew was there shooting nine days straight 12-15 hrs a day, and everyone had so much dedication to getting things right. I was really inspired by the lighting crew, because they were meticulous about making each scene beautiful. Having never been on a set before, I thought lighting was as simple as three lights and some color gels. I didn't really understand the point of screens and bounces and so on. After spending a week with them I realize how beautiful and important lighting is.

I came on the crew as an Animator's assistant, and I got to work with two really talented ladies who also taught me a lot.Because of the tight schedule, I was able to help animate the background for a cool underwater shot that used a ripple glass to enhance the feeling of being underwater. It was neat to see that in action, it really has a cool effect. You can see an example of how it looks in the underwater scene from Disney's Pinocchio:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtkZfV8mPE0&feature=related

The majority of the week I spent building puppets for the animators and helping the art director and production designer finish up set pieces and props. This was so much fun. I built these seven flower puppets inspired by the singing flowers in Disney's Alice and Wonderland. The stems are floral wire, the leaves are card stock that have been spray painted green and then browned with shoe polish. Front and back pieces were spray glued together been glued together and have thin wire inside for animating. The petals were made by spray gluing two sheets of tissue paper together with a looping wire inside for volume and with torn edges on the paper for texture. Here's an example of one of the flowers:

Next, the director had decided that he wanted the flowers to have faces and be able to sing, so I created a face in relief out of Sculpey. I boiled the Sculpey face to harden it (which is a good option that works great if you don't have a way to bake it at your disposal, just make sure you use a pot that you won't ever eat from). Then I made a Sculpey mold from the first face to duplicate it for the seven flowers:

I made pinholes in the faces where the mouths would go, then I sculpted replacement mouths out of Sculpey with pins glued to the back so that they could be easily put in place and removed:

Then I finished by painting these parts with acrylic and attaching them to the flower centers with a glue gun. Here's a photo of how the puppets looked all finished up and on the set: 

There were at least 8-9 different sets that ranged from a field of flowers, the ocean floor, underground, and through outerspace. All to tell a love story between a cherry and a ball of yarn. It was awesome!