A little preview
| Production | 1 CommentEven though the production of our film is paused for a while, we’ve got enough news to share. This time we wanna show you a short animated clip that we made some weeks ago.
We’re happy about any kind of feedback! If you got questions about any part of the production, fire away. 
Coyote’s got a brand new bag!
| Pre-production | 1 CommentIt’s brown, round, and normally you only care about the content. What is it?
A bag of course. A bag of the Santa Clause type to be exact. Cause just like the guy with the red dress our coyote will carry around a bunch of things others would like to have.
Yet when it comes to finding the right bag, unlike our white-bearded friend our main character faces a bit of a problem: he’s just a couple of inches tall. Therefore he can’t just use any bag but needs a custom sized one, a miniature - one that looks like a big one in close shots.
Unfortunately we couldn’t get one with the right characteristics - size, cloth structure and so on. So we had to create it by ourselves.
For the cloth we chose one of those eco-friendly carrying bags you can get at German supermarkets. It was perfect for our matters, except its color. However, we could easily change that with some dye - coffee. With that little trick of my grandma’s we achieved not only the right color but a battered look. Yeah!
The last step: sewing. We consider ourselves quite able to handle clay or styrodure, yet to sew one good looking bag from scratch needs some different skill. Fortunately my grandpa once worked for a famous German bag/backpack manufacturer. He was so kind to help us and even let me take some photos to do the following little step-by-step guide:
In the first step the base surface area and nappe of the bag are drawn on and cut out of the cloth.
Then you put a hem on the top side of the still rectangular nappe and sew up the left and right side.
To prevent the shifting of nappe and base when sewing them to one piece my grandpa had a little trick: you fold the two parts twice each and cut off the “edges” to mark the quarters.
That way you can easily adjust nappe and base. Just some more sewing…
Now turn the bag inside out and it’s done!
Murphy’s Law
| Production | 1 CommentIt seems that this week is ruled by Murphy’s Law : “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong”.
While many of our team members have to write their bachelor thesis and therefore have little time for working on our film, the worst mishaps are happening right now. First, a third 500Watt spot burned through. Then, in the middle of a shoot, the camera shut down, which didn’t seem too much of a problem at first, since it continued working after switching it off and on again. However, after the shoot we found out that one of the pictures was distorted due to the breakdown. We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to replicate the picture with the help of Stop Motion Pro, but there’s still a little glitch in the animation.
Today an even bigger accident happened: While I moved one of the coyotes eyes with a pointed dental tool, a big chip broke off. Fortunately the next few scenes involve the coyote looking through a pair of binoculars, so we can postpone the repair work on the eye.
Despite the delays we managed to shoot another 6 seconds of footage. It’s not very much, but well, Rome wasn’t built in a day. 
First results
| Production | 1 CommentThis sunday we finally shot the first frames for the film. After getting up late and some initial planning we had about 3 hours left for the shoot. A dazzling total of 36 frames, equalling 3 seconds, were the result. Well, with a little more practice the output will hopefully increase to 2-5 seconds per hour.
- First, two of our large 500Watt spots burned through. They were almost unused, but the storage of several years seem to have shortened the lamp life.
- The pictures look different on each of our monitors. A calibration is useless without some kind of reference. Maybe we can borrow a calibration device and software from someone?
- Despite being fixed, one of our rocks moved when I touched it. We tried to put it back to its original position, so hopefully it won’t show on screen.
- The webcam showed a different angle and area than the DSLR camera. In the next shots we have to align them, to optimize the feedback during animation.
- Last but not least some of the joints of the coyote puppet are loose. This affects the precision of posability and sometimes we need several attempts to move it the way we want. Since the puppet is needed for the shoot, we can’t fix that right now.
Here’s a picture of the scene with temporary background for the right mood:
Less light!
| Pre-production » Production » Set design | No Comments“More light” demanded Goethe on his deathbed. We had to fight with the opposite. True the motto “one has it the other one not”.
Due to the white walls in our studio, a small spotlight is enough to flood the room with light. Of course that is not what we desire. The light reflections of the walls and ceiling complicate the illumination of the set tremendously.
For small rooms it is therefore important to choose a wall and ceiling color as dark as possible. Since we only rented the room, we can’t just paint the walls black of course. The only possibility for us was covering the wall and the ceiling with dark sheets. Thanks to our patented “spotlight frame” this was an easy task for us.
Be a Dog! A clay one!
| Pre-production » Storyboard » Character design » Tests | No CommentsDuring the process of making an animatic, the involved persons are usually faced with two major questions. First: Do the story and storyboard, which took months to create, still work when it is acted out with real people trying to perform the movements that are later going to be transferred to our characters? Second: How on earth are you supposed to play a dog or coyote in a nocturnal desert landscape, which, to make matters worse, is made of clay?
We were longing for answers. Thus, on a holiday, we dragged ourselves into the video lab of the university, put some chairs in front of a bluescreen to represent rocks and cactuses, and transformed into a coyote…
…also into dogs. Lots of them.
Big and small ones, fat and thin ones, stinky dogs and It-doggies, mean yapping ones and relaxed muchachos. We were filming “Pre-Ponanza”, cut it, added some borrowed snippets of movie soundtracks – and found answers.
First: The storyboard is working… by and large. Second: Puppets of clay don’t get sore muscles. But we do.
All in all the results of our second animatic production were humbling and motivating at the same time. Humbling because we realized that we ended up 90 seconds over the intended length, although some scenes were still to be added. Motivating because a lot of the scenes unfolded their humorous effect already in this abstract form and the dramaturgical structure of the story proved to be stable.
With only little time left until the start of our production-phase, there are still plenty of things left to do, we have to complete the storyboard and the scene-script by testing it via the animatic-clip and we have have to decide, what additional scenes we’ll have to plan and what scenes will be deleted from the first. This is one of the main differences between stop-motion filming and traditional video-production: We need to have the complete movie finished inside our heads, before we even start filming. After all, we have only a short number of days on which we can film , so we won’t be able to improvise scenes. But that’s the point in making a stopm-motion movie: Befor one can sculpture a dog made of clay, one have to become a clay-dog oneself… Luckily we start filming in a few days… All that squichy pre-production mambo-jambo starts to pound heavily on our brains…
Baby Elephant Dog Walk
| Announcement | 1 Comment
Peekaboo!
The first animation test with a raw version of one of our puppies is finished. Isn’t he lovely?
The puppets feet are too small to be attached to the set during animation, so we supported it from behind with wire and clay. Unfortunately the support wasn’t attached firmly enough and the puppet kept falling over during animation. But for a quick test the animation turned out ok. We just need a better support rig. After shooting the final scenes, every single picture will be edited on the computer to remove the visible supports.
Money - some have it, we don’t
| Announcement | No CommentsMaking a movie is a lot of fun, but also a succession of challenges.
After having found a room, the biggest challenge for us now is financing our film. We’re all working without salary, the usual way for a student project. Thanks to some gracious sponsors we were able to build part of the sets, but right now we’re broke again.
We’ve added a Paypal button to our blog (at the right side), so that it is possible to send us small amounts of money. If you want to support our project, please feel free to use it. Every amount is appreciated.
The the purposes we need money for include:
Sound effects: Since we’re making an animated film, every single sound has to be added afterwards. Good sound effect CDs cost up 300 $. We’re still searching for the best source, to be able to work cost-effective.
Webhosting: Even the internet isn’t free. Our website is causing monthly costs, which we have to cover.
Cost of material: We still need more materials for our sets and puppets. Wood, Styrofoam, Super Sculpey, Tools and other stuff have to be bought.
Everyone who makes a donation will be mentioned in the credits of our film. So please, open your heart and click on that button!
The people behind Ponanza
| Announcement » Production | No CommentsTo step forth from the anonymity of blogging, we took a picture of our team.
Two of our female members are missing in the pic, but our main character joined us for the shoot.
The technology behind Ponanza - Part 2
| Production » Post-production » Tests | 1 CommentSpecial Effects
For the effects in Ponanza we’ll use Adobe After Effects as well as two marvellous additional programs: Primatte Keyer and Particle Illusion.
Primatte Keyer is a plug-in for After Effects to remove bluescreen from videos. With this program we can replace the blue background, that we’re shooting in front of, with any other background we choose. That way we can concentrate on the “earthly matters” during animation and add a sky later. To test the efficiency of the plug-in we used this picture with a complicated blurred background:
The quality of the Primatte Keyer amazed us. The blurred edges were no problem for the software. With just a few clicks of the mouse we achieved this result:
Particle Illusion is a program that generates “particles”. You can create realistic effects like fire, water, smoke, rain or snow with it. It’s a little more complicated to operate, but it also comes with a huge selection of presets that can be used instantly.
We’ll use it for desert dust and several other effects.
