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!
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…
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.
Back again!
| Announcement » Pre-production | 2 CommentsAfter enjoying semester holidays our team is back and ready to go on with our great film project! To have a better overview over the next steps and the whole project we began with a strategy planning day. Now we all know what kind of work needs to be done in every phase of the filmproject and who is going to be responsible for what part. The most important duties at the moment are getting a room for filming, our meeting every thursday afternoon, to find some nice music for the film and to design a press kit for finding new sponsors and new team members.
So let’s start working!
Practice makes perfect
| Tests | No CommentsThe last days were spent with lots of animation training. What use are pretty sets and puppets if the animation is choppy? No one wants to see that, including ourselves.
So we just nailed a simple wire-armature, the “victim” of our tests, to a piece of set (don’t worry, it wasn’t harmed 
). In addition we started a webcam and the program StopMotionPro, and off we went.
How our first attempts turned out, you better take a look yourself:
Since our coyote has to do a lot of walking and sneaking around in the canyon, we also tested some walks.
The most important lessons we learned during the test animation:
It’s advisable to attach the set elements to the set floor, cause it takes a lot of time to re-arrange them if they are accidentally moved.
Of course it is also hard to animate fluent movements. Not only do you have to move all relevant body parts of the puppet, but you have to take into account the distance to the last pose. If you also have to animate the facial expressions it’s going to be even more work.
Conclusion: We need to keep practicing!!!
What would life be like without color?
| Announcement » Pre-production » Set design | No CommentsWe forgot to mention one of our sponsors before, so we wanna catch up on that. An art store, the Ideenhaus Siller & Laar in Augsburg, supplied us with several bottles of acrylic paint, that we have used a lot so far. All of our set-pieces like sand, rocks and cactuses have been painted with it.
Thanks a lot for this donation!
Creators of the desert
| Pre-production » Set design | 4 CommentsThe work goes on and on. After the first labourous days we can look back on the achievements of the last days. The base plate of the set is now covered with Sand, we hand-carved several rock walls for the background and some rocks and cactuses too.
This did not go without some injuries. I already have several small cuts on my hands from little slips with a knife or saw. But we are prepared for this and our room is always equipped with band-aid and disinfectant. On the other side I am also proud to see the successful results of the work (I even received the honorary title of “Sergeant Rock” 
).
We did some video documentation of our work for the Making-Of . The first clip shows us covering the set floor with a sand-glue mix (which also serves as a marvelous hand-peeling lotion), while the second clip shows me painting part of the rock wall.
Today Daniel and Marco were busy doing animation tests. We have to start practicing smooth animation. The first test shots of the wire armatures don’t look too bad, so we’re staying optimistic.
You can visit our gallery to see some pictures of our achievements. Just now, in the busy phase, it will be upgraded regularly since we are advancing more and more.
On your marks, get set,…
| Pre-production » Set design | 3 CommentsWe’ve reached the point where new progress is visible every day. We moved into our “studio” with lots of equipment and raw material. Lighting, tools, tables, chairs, paint, cables everywhere, but we found a place for everything.
Unfortunately the team is incomplete, since some of the students have internships or spend their holidays abroad or at home.
The work is advancing well. The blue screen has been set up (9×6 feet!), the base plate for the set is assembled, a part of the storyboard is hanging on the wall and some rocks for the set have been carved and painted. Some aluminum wire armatures have been constructed for testing purposes and the digital camera has been tested.
Full speed ahead!
Plenty of muffins and more planning
| Pre-production » Film budgeting | No CommentsNow that we have a room, the planning went on. Whats our schedule? How and where do we get the materials? Etc.
To be able to pay for the materials and jump into the hands-on part of the workload, we had to make another pastry bazaar. The muffins and cake were delicious, we couldn’t help and tried some ourselves.
After that we kept working on the script. Camera angles were discussed, difficulties were resolved and we also had to abandon some ideas to tighten the story. An important process, since a good script is the very foundation of a good film.
