Clay Animation- say Goodbye to being a perfectionist!

This week I worked with clay stop motion and it was very challenging. My character design was all wrong for clay. I went with a cute, small, multi-colored character, and in retrospect let me just say I can see why Gumby looked like he did. Art Clokey knew what he was doing.

Although clay was a challenge, I really did enjoy using it as a medium for character design because it is so versatile and fast. With practice I think it will be really fun to use this medium, I just need to get used to it so I can focus more on timing.

Check out my short experiment in clay.

Animating with Legos!

I tried out animating with lego figures, which was is actually quite challenging. They are great because they are already fabricated and they hold poses perfectly, but the downside is that they have limited motion (and they are tiny!), so I found it difficult to to get some of the broader arcs of motion out of their little cubic bodies. You can see what I came up with.

I think I would really like to try more with legos, like mimicking 8-bit or maybe with the figures again but with more use of sticky wax and flying rigs to get broader, smoother action.

Falling: Color and Lighting Map

Here is how I am thinking the color and light will change as the Klimt puppet falls to the bottom of the ocean. Also, I think that she needs a name. Maybe I will call her Klimtina :)

Can't wait to start shooting this in October. Also I am so excited because my super talented fellow USC alum Justin Conolly is going to help me create a mold for my puppet so I can cast her in latex. This is the first time I am fabricating with this process so I am really looking forward to it. 

Falling: Short film inspired by Gustav Klimt paintings

I have made good progress on my short film. I am using the working title "Falling," and hopefully will come up with something better as I go along.

Here is my first storyboard:

the hard light of the sun casts a menacing shadow

{rotating camera angle}

{vertical letterbox to emphasize the drop}

{fish mobile inspired by Klee and Calder reference}

As she reaches deeper waters she starts to get cold

she notices the chill is affecting her skin...

it breaks apart in pieces

She continues to shiver and her skin breaks apart as she sinks

Her skin falls away to reveal her organic armature {inspired by Calder sculpture}

she sinks to the deepest part of the sea...

 

 

 

..charged with the electric jellyfish.

She finally comes to rest on the seabed among the jellyfish and seaweed. She has been through a lot, but with time, she adjust to her new environment:

Her wire body becomes home to algae, barnacles and seaweed...

And although she is not the same, she is happy flowing with the soft movement of the water.

But time has not been kind to the mechanical hand, who has rusted in the salty sea air...

... and is stuck forever as the same. 

The End

New Project inspired by Gustav Klimt paintings and drawings

This semester I am creating a short 2 minute film that was inspired but looking at the drawings by Gustav Klimt at the Getty Center here in Los Angeles. I started thinking about how cool it would be to try to get the same expressive gesture and movement in a stop motion puppet, and I started doing some sketches and ideation about how I would build her. I also decided that I would love to try animating more stop motion underwater scenes after my experience as assistant animator on a student shoot at AFI.

You can see here the images by Klimt and other artists that inspired me.

My basic concept is that a Klimt-inspired woman is terrorized by a mechanical hand that casts her of a cliff into the sea. I like the idea of showing the conflict and contrast between these two puppets, which kind of remind me of the two sides of art and technology at odds with each other.

Here are some sketches I have done:

Mechanical Hand- the bad guy

Puppet reference based on Klimt painting

Fabrication ideas

more fabrication ideas and sketches

Hopefully it will come looking good! I want to experiment with using green screen backgrounds for my shoot and comping in cool backgrounds and lighting in After Effects. We will see how it goes!

Working with After Effects and Maya

Here's the short film Hynogogia, that I completed with After Effects and Maya and in collaboration with Joe Yeh (mad talented! http://aeroscythe.blogspot.com/). A quick recap: it's an exploration of the sound and space the mind wanders through as it falls into dreaming.

I hope you enjoy it!

https://vimeo.com/46844620

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!