Shot

Well the set survived its transportation to Montreal and is now set up for the final few shots (well the ones for that set anyway).


This pic is massive so for any of those compositing inclined click the image and save it and you can see how tight you can zoom in, or a real nice little drift in emmmm...: yummy.

I am shooting the whole thing absolutely massive like 3000/2000 pixels, why am I shooting this big? simply because I can, well that was my reasoning at the start. Combustion/AFX has no problem handling the file sizes and a 400g hard drive is well cheap nowadays... so IMAX here I come.

Well maybe not but it is really handy having the files this size because I can add in camera moves in post. So if I zoom 3x I'm still at HD and for TV I could nearly go in 4x and then pan around.

Ill post up a clip in the very near future so check back!

Montreal kicks ass but I can smell the cold on the way.

Magnets

Magnets are really great.

When building the set I really wanted the floor to be plaster coated, this caused problems for the model and how to attach it to the set, ie what tie-downs to use. If I was to screw through the plaster at every spot where the models had to be attached the set would be totally ruined.

On a previous project I had put tiny but strong magnets in the models feet and a metal plate underneath the plaster but this caused problems, when the characters feet got too close to the ground they just snapped down wrecking the piece of animation.

In the above photo the magnet isn't even fully under the model and it is still holding the weight

So the new way is to have metal feet on the character and a really strong magnet on the underside of the set.

Sol

Here are a few pictures of the set contruction and couple of lighting tests.

Annecy

Big thanks to Tom, Eoghan, Kevin, Laura, Carol and Denata for a fantastic holiday.
Here's a few random photos.


Food eatting place... snails were quite nice.

Downtown.

Day-lake, pedaloing kicks ass.

The grass lands

View looking over the lake in the evening

The dreaded junky mattress where every(one/lad) had to spend a night, in some cases a few nights!
One of the little side streets/canals.

An issue with Carols garments, Eoghans totally about to flip out.

Le Grand Écran, Annecy.

Saw so much good stuff here, really surprised by the amount of stopmotion and really good stop motion not just plastercine men with finger prints, Madame Tutli Putli and Peter and the Wolf being the stand out films.

Doll Shop

I was in Rome at the start of the year with my girlfriend and came across this little shop window on a side street. Immediately I thought of the old Svankmajer and Brothers Quay films, if you don't know anything about these films check out this site.



http://www.darkstrider.net/gallery2a.html
There's loads of old stop motion animation links and videos of the old masters

and youtube

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=svankmajer&search=

and here

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brothers+quay&search=


Well there is definitely a story in this little shop. I had a look in the window and behind all the dolls is a little work shop with all sorts of antiques and trinkets, it wasn't open though. So got back and started having a look around the eld inter-web and found a load more people through the years had been taking photos of the same shop front. Lots of different arrangements...more of a story.

So now I have an idea for a short.

Here's a few more I found.

T25camper blog

Here's my new blog, its going to follow the work ill be doing on my van.

http://t25camper.blogspot.com/

Comic strip generator

Here's a nice little site for creating your own comic strips in two shakes of a lambs tail.

http://stripgenerator.com/create/

Here's my one.

Disney Short - Troy Ride

Here's a little Disney short that we did here in Boulder.

Bat ant wasp chap

This is posted over on the boulder blog along with loads of pictures from fellow workers.

11.

...and here's a much more recent addition, which is also posted on the boulder blog.
Its not finished yet but I will get back to it and sort out the colour and add a few more little bits and pieces.

New additions..

Here is a Halloween pic i did a while ago.

Drummer Vid

Really need to update my blog but just too busy at the moment so here is a little vid I found on 100nka myspace..

They're a Polish Jazz band, apparently playing Trinity Jazz festival in February.
Guitar Trio.