Fire!

My film is due in a little over a month. Whoah. So here's that same scene from a few days ago with a few reanimated shots, a few new ones, and some effects composited in. I hope to have it done very soon. In the words of the great Pat Smith... FINISH THE SCENE!!!!!

I've Always Liked the Color Green

Boy am I glad I painted my room bright green when I was 15 or so... because now I can use it as a green screen! I shot just about all the stop-motion for my film over the past few days while I was at home for Spring Break. Things went surprisingly smooth with no major problems, and my only complaint is that the monster puppet was a bit tricky to animate. Despite all my planning and testing... the armature was not sufficient and there was a lot of "bounce" in the puppet, especially his arms and neck. I animated the best I could but I wish he was a little more flexible being a bread monster. Anyway, here's a snippet of the monster fighting some tanks. It's "raw" without the far background, people, or effects composited.

Holy Set!

The past week has been set week, and I finally finished what I started in July. Back then I thought I'd actually be done with it by the end of the summer, but I'm glad I put it off. Not perhaps for this long, but just because the story evolved so much that if I had the built the set back then it wouldn't fit the story I ended up with... or rather I would have felt restricted to the original story and not wanted to change it because I had put the time into the set. Something like that. Any way, I'm pretty happy with this set, especially the bakery. Just about every sign and store name is an inside joke. There's still more detail I'd like to add, especially more painted ads for HappyBread on the sides of buildings. I begin animating this weekend though, so I'll see what I have time to do. The lovely little street lamps and trash cans and mail box were made by Hans - Check out his amazing minatures.