Stop Motion Demo Day!

At Woodbury University, on a gray and rain day, 

six High school students got a chance to play.

Shooting stop motion at 1 or 2 frames at a time.  

Here are the results and the end of my rhyme.

Stop motion by: Jameah Palmer, Katleen Bolanos and Brian Hung

Woodbury2018_Group 01 from Toondini on Vimeo.

Stop motion by: Nathan Severson, James Wilcox and Brandon Macias

Woodbury2018_Group 02 from Toondini on Vimeo.

And the 2017 24 Hours begins...

In past month, students have been preparing for this year's 24 Hours Animation Contest and have formed into teams. Each team has 5 students, some team members have been through the process before, while others are doing this for the first. Everyone is up for the challenge.

Each year this contest increases in size due to its popularity. Last year's contest in 2016 there were 27 schools participating and 124 teams or 620 students in competition. This year, there are 44 schools schools participating with 183 Teams completing or 915 students all working to complete a :30 second animated film based on the theme in 24 hours.

 

The 2017 Woodbury University 24 Hours animation teams gathered in the Design Center's D105 at 3pm. Great hordes of excited Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors gathered as timid,but curious Freshman stayed to watch. The live streaming announcement came from Aubry Mintz in his top secret classroom, hidden somewhere in Long Beach, CA.

The goal of the 24 hours contest is to create a 30 second animation piece from a theme which is announced at the beginning by 24 Hours. Aubry Mintz, Associate Professor at CSULB welcomes all the school's participating, thanks the sponsors who have donated prizes to the final top five winners and finally announces the theme of this year's 24 Hours contest.

This year's theme was announced by Mintz on Friday, Oct 6th at 3:30pm PST and is as follows.

The 24 HOURS 2017 THEME:

Is based on the Sesame Street song, " One of these things is not like the others."

Let the Brain Storming begin! 
And off they go in a wild giggle of animation students to find an area to work. Some are on Macs, others are on PCs and a few have taken over the Stop Motion studio. Snacks appear along with laptops, pencils and pens. Dry erase boards are suddenly filling up with thumbnail sketches, words, images and ideas are starting to be born.

 

 

 

The Creative process is alive tonight and everyone is working on turning this year's theme into their own unique vision. There are a variety of animation projects being produced from Traditional, to Digital and even stop motion.

Team Deception from Toondini on Vimeo.

But with great brain power comes food for thought. At around 9pm, Several pizzas were delivered. 

 

All the students took a quick dinner break and returned to a long night of animation ahead.

And into the night they work.

Next Post: The final WU films

Kubo and the Two Strings

"Kubo and the Two Strings" is the latest animated feature from Liaka and is a very interesting story with amazing animated imagery and character design. This is stop motion at its best that blends together to tell an amazing story of Kubo and his journey. I don't want to spoil anything, because I saw it without seeing all the trailers and promotional material.

I will say, if you want to be amazed and taken on an exciting journey, this is the film for you. If that's not your thing, then maybe "Sausage Party" is for you.
 

Here are some of the animated armatures from the film. To call them puppets is almost an insult, since they are so alive on the big screen. I would also recommend watching this in 3D to get the full effect.

And without spoiling any of the story, here is a few scene set ups from the film featuring Kubo, Beetle and Monkey.

 Photos above by Kevin MacLean

Here's a quiz for you: Travis Knight told me that The Moon King's facial design was inspired by two very famous movie villians. Can you guess who they are?  

Send in your guess to the comments section below...

If you live in the Los Angeles area, you can see a free exhibit, “The Artistry of Kubo: A Magical LAIKA Experience” at the Japanese American National Museum to coincide with the start of Nisei Week, the annual festival celebrating Japanese American culture and history in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Downtown Los Angeles.

Visitors will get a behind-the-scenes interactive peek at Kubo and the Two Strings through puppets, sets, props, monsters, origami, and costumes from the production presented in JANM’s George & Sakaye Aratani Central Hall from Saturday, Aug. 13 to Tuesday, Aug. 30.

Here's some animated inspiration...

Occupation: Animatorfrom Bruna Berford
Posted by Let's Animate on Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Gumby Fest 2015

I remember as a kid watching Gumby on TV and wondering how these toys could move and talk by themselves. I even had a toy Gumby and Pokey, but could not figure out how these characters came come to life.

This week, I learned that, after all these years, Gumby is alive and well at Gumby Fest in Glendora, CA.

Joe Clokey, son of Gumby's creator Art Clokey, helped organized this event which was held this weekend at Citrus College.

It was a really hot day, the kind that can melt clay into a liquid goo, but not even the heat could keep true stop motion fans away from this 3 day event. A family friendly atmosphere with many activity tents, food trucks and live music that filled the air. 

I went on Sunday, the last day to see several panel discussions beginning with Stop-Motion Puppet Makers.  Panelists Liz Allen, Nikki Rice Malki and Margaret Meyer all shared stories about how they began their careers, showed the puppets they made and briefly explained the process they used to make their puppet actors.

Margaret Meyer showed her puppets from "Coraline" and stressed the importance of taking pictures of your creations for your portfolio.

Liz Allen from Bix Pix talked about painting with pastel powder to give a softer look to her puppets. Below she shows how she embedded a magnet into the character's face to allow for easier use of replacement mouths.

Below are several puppets made by Nikki Malki of Stoopid Buddy for "Robot Chicken". The puppet builders at her studio are responsible for a puppet's creation from the beginning design to the final product.

During early episodes of "Robot Chicken", a variety of toys were purchased through Ebay and reassembled with stop motion armatures.

The next seminar, Stop-Motion University, featured a few colleges that offer Stop-Motion classes. Jim Ovelmen of California State University, Matthew Manning of Woodbury University and Musa Booker of USC talked about their early stop motion careers and showed samples of student work.

Other fest events included art workshops about drawing, background painting, creating a bendable armature, screenprinting and creating stop motion with digital media. There were various Gumby items for sale and the Gumby Museum, temporarily housed in the Citrus College library, will continue to be accessible to the public for another few weeks.

Dyane Duffy, a Citrus College' art instructor, introduced the final lecturer, lead puppet maker Julie Zobel, who discussed puppets from Jim Henson's Creature Shop. She showed the various types of puppets and gave a brief description about how they were put together. She talked about her career and gave us a lot of insight into working at Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

Before I left Citrus College, I ran into Joe Clokey, the man with the green hat, and thanked him for helping to put this three-day event together.

Can't wait until next year!

WU HS Summer Academy 2015

Recently, I taught a group of 14 High School students  a 7 week course from Woodbury University called "Intro to Animation". For seven Thursdays, I gave them a taste of 3 different types of animation production.

Stop Motion

In the first and second class, we explored Stop Motion production, where everyone got to animate themselves in front of the camera and learn how to move frame by frame. It was an exercise called Pixelation, which got everybody outside and thinking of what they wanted to do. It was also a fun way to shoot stop motion and a great way to get to know one another.

StopMotionFilms2015 from Toondini on Vimeo.

After lunch, the class returned and four groups were formed. Two groups went to animate on two table top sets while the other two groups got to shoot on a large whiteboard. We only had one whiteboard and one camera, so while one group was making their artwork, the other group setup and started shooting.

Drawing Animation

The third and fourth class, we went into the drawing animation studio where the students learned how to animate a bouncing ball and shoot a pencil test. I also had them bring in a horizontal color image of whatever they wanted for the Metamorphosis project.

They taped down their images onto animation paper and then we had to figure out what image we would begin the film. It was a fun and very noisy process, but eventually a list was drawn up and everyone then knew what image they would begin and end with. The hardest part is figuring out how to go from one image to the next, because there are millions of ways you can go. Here's what this class came up with...

Metamorphosis from Toondini on Vimeo.

Computer Animation

The last two days, (actually 3), were dedicated to learning how to animated a simple box rig called "Johnny the Box" in Maya software. The students also learned how to make simple polygon models which the box could interact with in the scene or use in their set. 

Students learned that sometimes Maya or the computer does not always work as perfectly as they imagined. When they saw the tab called Paint Effects, they were like crazy little kids in a paint store and I spent a lot of time removing paint effect choices from their outliners. Adding features like these will slow down the animation process and take more to render. Here are the final Maya animation projects.

Johnny the Box from Toondini on Vimeo.
First Maya projects using the Johnny the Box rig

We had the final screening for the students and their families showing all of the above animation work. Everyone got a chance to see their work on the big screen in Woodbury's screening room and it was a great way to end the class.

If any students would like a copy of the above projects, please send me an email and if you enjoy this blog, let me know. Hope you enjoyed the class! 

Stop Motion Animation

I was first introduced to animation thru stop motion when I was told that there were 24 frames in one second of film. I wasn't clear on that concept when I set up a small clay character to test this fact. I had thought that each sound was a separate move and so, everytime I moved the character, I clicked the camera 24 times.

After shooting this test, I had thought that my little clay man would wave to the camera and then walk off screen. At the time, a second seemed like a very short amount of time and I hoped that I had shot enough of the test to be able to see it. Back in the day, you had to wait about 3 to 5 days before you could get the developed Super 8mm back from the lab.

I threaded the projector and flipped it on to see my little clay man standing there and then
he moved and a second later moved again. My animated man was not as fluid in motion as I had imagined, instead he moved like a clock, changing his position every second. It was then I realized it was possible to move the character every other frame and that a second had suddenly become a longer period of time than I had thought.

Flash forward to the High School years, I've made more super 8 films, and even a subscriber to Super 8 Filmmaker magazine. I also look for books about Animation, trying to learn anything I can since I'm in Florida with two friends who are doing the same thing. We all to go see some movie called "Star Wars", one reviewer called it "The Wizard of Oz in Outer Space." That Summer in 1977, 3 inspired High School filmmakers run through the parking lot acting like Tie Fighters, life suddenly changed.

Lightspeed forward to today, I am teaching a group of High School students three different types of animation in 7 weeks. Beginning with Stop Motion, I have discovered that the best way to introduce the whole concept of animating is to begin with Pixelation. This is allows shy and awkward students to get to know each other by working as a group while creating stop motion frame by frame. 

I once tried the same process, but allowed everyone to get into the act. What happens is that when a whole group is moving at one time, its hard to focus and can turn into a mass of motion. Everyone is moving constantly while attempting to give their own performance visually and its fun to watch. The process does get everyone interested, moving and reacting to one another. The beginning is an example of what I'm talking about...

GroupShoot01 from Toondini on Vimeo.

To eliminate the crowded animation, I limited it down to 4 people; 2 people enter, followed by two more people. The first 4 people play for a while and after, say 5 seconds or 120 frames, you have 4 new people assume the previous poses and whatever the previous costume the person has on like a silly hat, sunglasses, etc. 

We are using DragonFrame software which allows us to see the previous frame as an Onion skin effect. The 4 new people get into position and then you can have them continue animating from the new start position. I did this with 2 more groups of 4. The people who are waiting and watching can also help the performers by switching out props or moving other objects in the scene.

I always start off the project by showing how long it takes to A to B. I also like sliding instead of walking. I walk all the time, but in stop motion I can glide in without moving my legs. I explain how to ride a broom by jumping up we the picture it shot, this does take some practice since there is a delay when the camera takes a frame. Also you have to do this one frame at a time, because shooting on two's will look great on the first frame, but you body will be down on the second one. Here's an example of the group of 4 animation approach as well as. Which one do you like better?  

StopMotionFilms2015 from Toondini on Vimeo.

One of many great things, about this software is that you can check what you have shot at anytime. And when everyone has gotten a chance to perform in front of the camera, you can instantly view what you have just shot. I would have loved to have had this when I was in High School.

Everyone now gets the idea how long is takes to animate themselves around in front of the camera and are ready for more. And so, we head inside the animation studio under the hot lights of two animation sets. Note to self: turn on the air conditioner before filming begins, otherwise you will soon have a very "hot" set.

A simple set with a roll of white seamless and a sheet of foam core placed on the tabletop for clay use. Two lights are set up and everything was place there before the student showed up saving us time. Here's one of the stop motion projects created by a group of 4 student with no previous stop motion experience...

To the Gordon Ramsey animation critics out there, who might see this as poorly animated, I say WAIT! What you are watching is an idea unfolding roughly before your tiny critical chef eyes. This animation is crude, but I'm sure your first Soufflé wasn't as tasty as this animated
delight. 

My point is, the appeal is in how the idea is revealed. The idea to presented here and it doesn't have to be precisely animated to do this. And without any prior animating experience, I think they did a great job.

Still editing and adding to this blog, if you have any comment, suggestions or can't see a video or photo, please let me know. Thanks!