| |
Previous News
MARCH
2003
03-31-03
* If one pursues Stop Motion as a
solo practitioner, one usually must be a
jack-of-all-trades, eclectic, renaissance person, etc..
My roots are in gadgeteering and metalworking and
basically self-taught and I learned other stop motion
aspects on my own too .... trial & error and
experimentation. I started when the internet was almost
non-existent. Today much information available to reduce
the learning curve. Here is site that I have not yet
linked to my website yet but giving it to you now Metal Web News ..... just a whole bunch of cool links
about metalworking, resources and forums.
* From
the SMA message board and just spreading the news here:
The channel Turner Classic Movies (or TCM) will be broadcasting
a three-night Harryhausen tribute near the
end of June and they will be airing the recently
completed 12-minute short film Tortoise and the
Hare, twice. This is plenty of advance notice
.....check your local TV listing/schedule for exact times
.....so there is no excuse for you to miss this and also
video record it!
____________________
03-26-03
* Damn! Marc Spess at AnimateClay.com, beat me to this news item. I just posted
this right now to the News page here, then I decided to
go to Marc's news page and he already had this up! Good
detective work Marc! I wish, I had the time to research
as thorough as he does. Anyway, take a look at this link Having Soul: 45 Years of Nukufilm
Studio. An
in-depth background about this puppet animation studio in
Russia and apparently they are still around! Just good to
know that Globally, Stop Motion Animation still has life
left and it is only in the hi-tech-digitally fanatical
mainstream production mills, where they consider Stop
Motion, out of date or old. As been mentioned before and
historically, Puppets in general, have
more of a European and also Asian roots (like Japan).
Many have said this a million times .....It's
GOOD Story & Characters and not necessarily
the animation method, but this falls on Deaf Ears to the
addicted CGI mainstream powers that be.
____________________
03-24-03
* Seems almost impossible today
seeing Stop Motion in the mainstream products from Tinsel
CGI Town but Stop Mo certainly has some kind of underground
existence or life in other
markets and people still seem to be intrigued by it
.....either actually doing Stop Mo as a hobby or just
watching it. Anyway, I just heard that the new Willard
2003 movie has an opening title sequence using
some Stop Motion. What a miracle, some
of the Hollywood Corporate "Suits" still going
for the Ancient & Archaic Stop Motion Animation
method? ;) The talented
people at Nirvan
did the opening Stop Mo shots and they have lots of
behind the scenes info including a QuickTime clip so you
can see their Willard work.
____________________
03-19-03
* With
Stop Motion especially for those starting out or even
those with some experience, there is always that quest or
journey to seek knowledge about it. Thanks to the great
resource of the internet, there is a just a little bit
more information (not that much yet) about this arcane
and ethereal animation craft which is trying to survive
the iron fist onslaught of the CGI'ist forces ;) Where am
I going with this? Well, I could do another rant but I
will not (for now). When you find information, tricks, or
something about stop motion or some other method that
might be adapted or modified for stop motion .... STOP
right now and PRINT IT! I am guessing you were in a
momentary state of shock when Anthony's
SMA message board recently went offline for awhile.
Internet is alway in a state of flux (always changing)
and that favorite website might not be there tomorrow and
that includes me .... I may just split one day and move
to Australia and live off the "fat of the
land"! ;) Sooooo .....one can use lots of
ink when printing with Inkjet Printers
and it is a Rip-off what retail stores
charge. There are also many online stores selling inkjet
cartridges but here is one I have used and I like their
service and recommend.....InkJet Savings ..... very, very low
prices and they pay for shipping in USA. How do
you like that abrupt segue/transition?! I should go into
marketing!
____________________
03-17-03
* Ever heard of Loose Moose Animation? A studio in England that does
high quality stylized stop motion. In the USA they are
better known for their Lipton' s Brisk Ice Tea television
commercial spots.... with caricatures of Bruce Lee, Danny
Devito, Bruce Willis, James Brown, Sylvestor Stallone,
etc. Lipton's still has online, a Puppets Against Brisk campaign site but it does not seem
active and perhaps Lipton are not doing the puppet ads on
TV any more. I think you can still watch quicktimes of
some of the Brisk spots. That is too bad we're not seeing
a continuation of the Brisk puppet ads, but I suppose
that is the fickleness nature of advertising agencies
.... these days their addictive need to constantly change
ad campaign's instead of building on a foundation
of a good ad & product identity. Here is a
small Loose Moose Background article, then an Oscar Myer commercial they did some work on. Although,
we are being innudated with a plethoric cornucopia of
CGI, there still seems to be some Stop Motion Life
in Europe and other countries. England for example, has
had a much longer history of stop motion on their
broadcast TV (compared to USA) and the Arts in
Europe/overseas just has a more historical background
& roots of general Puppetry.
____________________
03-10-03
* In this NY times article, In a Digitally Animated World,
Oscar Stands Rigid
.... it is the author's opinion that the Oscar people are
in the Stone Age. I do not necessarily agree. Technology
& Digital area moving so fast and perhaps the Academy
is just waiting to sort things out. The Two
Tower's Gollum character is such a varied
mixture of different methods, but the movement source was
primarily from live action performance via motion
capture. To me.... Animation is the
frame-by-frame creation & movement of some kind of
character that is initiated by the artist/animator.
Most of Gollum's motion was in real time, so is that
"animation"? What about traditional animation
where Disney did rotoscoping in the early days
(copying/tracing live action movement and did not
publicize it), then later Ralph Bashki did it. So, I do
not know what to think anymore .... it's getting to be a
very gray area. Academy says, to qualify
in the "animation" category, at least 75% of
movie must be "animated effects". Does that
sound vague? It sure does to me. Animated effects could
be interpreted as "special effects. Oh yeah, here is
another article, The Two Towers: Built on Weta's
Precious Mettle
.... pretty in depth and near the end it does allude to
Stop Motion.
____________________
03-06-03
* There are variations of Stop Motion
and actually, Cel/Drawn Animation could be considered in
a category of Stop Motion by its "technical
definition" (go to FAQ & scroll down to question 2). Ever
heard of Lumage Animation? .... a mostly
unheard of animation method. Lumage animation is perhaps
a fancy or high-brow description of a basic Cut-out/Stop
Mo animation technique but with more refined
methods that incorporates flat artwork in front of
backlit backgrounds. Well ... a little heard of movie
called Twice Upon a Time (1983) was
something most of the general public did not see. It used
the Lumage animation method. Directed by John
Korty and Produced by George Lucas.
Even Henry Selick, director of Nightmare
Before Christmas, worked on Twice Upon a Time
as a "sequence director". Kind of a slow film
and suppose to be targeted to adults. I saw it years ago,
I think on Showtime movie channel. Very interesting just
watching the animation technique .... very, very
stylized. Some say Twice is kind of a minor
cultish movie. I have an old American Cinematographer
that gave brief glimpse of how it was done with small
photos of behind the scenes. Anyway various links here
about Twice Upon a Time .... there is no
particular order and from different websites 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - Video
____________________
03-03-03
* In the past, I have posted on
forums about this hybrid-combo DV camcorder-digital still
camera, the Sanyo iDshot, but it seems to go unnoticed
by stop motion people. I think this is a pretty unique
product. Some on the stop motion animation forum
are planning & thinking of all sorts of complex ways
to use a Digital Still Camera to record single frames
(animation) in a high pixel image resolution for
supposedly highest quality and affords them future
options to transfer to 35mm movie film (How can you
afford movie transfer costs?) If your end goal is for TV
format then just go with the best quality DV camcorder as
the high resolution is overkill for broadcast TV. Check
this out .... with the iDshot, everything is digitally
stored on a mini-type CD disc (No tape is used) with high
capacity to store images (no limited storage memory
cards). You can use the iDshot as a camcorder and it's
the only camcorder that I know of that can shoot true
single frames and instantly playback your animation in
the 640x480 camcorder resolution mode which is reasonably
okay for broadcast TV. However, if you want to go the
overkill high pixel image resolution route, in the
iDshot's still image mode at 1360 x 1024 fine resolution,
you can store 1200 still images on its mini-CD. That is a
lot of high-res digital still images compared to still
cams with the memory card storage. So at 30 fps ....
about less than a minute of pretty high resolution
animated still images stored on the disc. Just have extra
discs and you can continue to store more still images.
Afterwards, you then have to firewire download the stills
from the iDshot to your computer's drive. Also, because
the iDshot works & focuses like a camcorder, I am
guessing that as your are animating/shooting with the
iDshot, you might not get that possible frame-to-frame
"focusing shift problems" as some have
experienced with standard digital still cameras. So, a
possible animation setup might be ..... a webcam used
with a frame grabber program (Stop Motion Pro, Animator
DV, Framethief,etc.) to monitor the progress of
animation, then you have your iDshot to record the master
high-res pixel digital still images. Probably among
digital imaging purists or nerds, they might question
iDshot's imaging sensor quality which uses one 1/2"
CCD, here are Specifications and here is Sanyo iDshot Distributor.
____________________
|
|
