Puppets are done!

Well, I finally finished my puppet's costuming, head sanding and painting, and eye insertion. The most enjoyable thing was seeing the puppets I've been working on and planning for more than a semester finally come together into a finished product. The most difficult thing was working nonstop and skipping sleep to try to finish on schedule. Pictures below of the finished puppets, as well as some set photos.

update

this week I've been working mainly on sanding, painting, and finishing the heads I printed out on the 3D printer. I also worked out an eye mechanism to make the pupils rotate in the skull, and fitted the two tiny magnets into each separate piece. I had a lot of fun figuring out which colors to paint the characters to make them fit the coor scheme but without needing to have extremely realistic flesh and hair tones.
Costuming is also coming along; the most difficult thing this week has been figuuring out how to make the shoes for each character; in terms of materials that need to be both flexible and tough for when I animate the walk cycles.
A lot of the feedback I got when I presented my animatic to the graduate seminar advised me that the beginning of my film was too slow, and that I should speed it up and get to the main action of the stick bug and ghost boy. This was really helpful, and should allow me to cut even more out of my animatic, making it more feasible as I am nearly but not quite on schedule for animating.

I will post pictures hopefully tonight of my progress so far, unfortunately I don't have a camera right now so I need to locate one

Update

This week I've been working extremely hard on finishing my set and completing the last stages of puppet-making. It requires a lot of various random skills that I've had to learn, like sawing very fragile wood panels, cutting through steel rods with a dremel tool (I wouldn't recommend it), and the proper application of resin to fiberglass cloth, in addition to sewing skills, clothing design and pattern knowledge, balance of color and contrast within each puppet as well as how each one fits into the color and tonal range of the set as a whole.
The most difficult thing, outside of all the physical labor, has been planning how to coordinate the color choices I would LIKE to have ideally, with the reality that certain materials only come in a limited range of colors, like a certain shade of beige for the subway seats or a certain metallic tone for the paneling on the floor. This also applies to costuming; forcing me to work around the patterns and colors of fabric I can find, rather than planning exactly what color each piece of clothing will be and then trying to find it at the fabric store, which gets really frustrating.
The most enjoyable thing this week has probably been realizing that, although I didn't get as much up-front tangible puppet and set building done over the summer as i would have liked, all the trial-and-error experimentation with materials and processes I did during that time, as well as the extensive thought and problem-solving concerning HOW I was going to build things, has helped me a lot now. It's much easier to focus on making the puppets and set look good when I don't have to worry as much about details of a specific process that's really easy to mess up, like how many times to dip latex hands or what size of square brass tubing to track down in a tiny Santa Monica craft shop.

Process Description

Process in Modeling and Printing a 3-part Stop-Motion Puppet Head

1: First, I created 3 polygon primitive cubes in Maya. I drew up several model sheets of my character’s head from the front, side, top and back view, in order to give myself a frame of reference while modeling.

2: I moved and scaled these polygon cubes to correspond to the back of head, top of face, and bottom of face respectively of my character. I then scaled each of these cubes down by half, so that the left faces of each cube rested on the y-axis. This is to enable me to model both sides of the face simultaneously, by selecting each cube and clicking Edit: Duplicate Special (making sure in the settings it is parented to the original object as set as an INSTANCE), setting the object’s scale to -1 on x-y axis, and to 1 on each of the other axes. If this doesn’t work then you may have to experiment with the settings to see which axis the object is being mirrored across, and see what fits.

3: after each of the three polygons was mirrored across the y axis, I added edge loops to each one in places that seemed necessary, then simply moved vertices around, added edge loops and extruded faces as needed until I had a low-poly model of my head.

4: I then extruded the inner part of each of the pieces, so as to have a hollowed out inner shell. When I liked how it looked, I deleted the duplicated objects on one side of the y-axis that I created earlier, selected the original 3 objects that remained, and used Mirror Geometry on each one in turn to simultaneously mirror and merge them across the y-axis.

5: I selected only the faces of each piece on the part of the head that is visible to the eye when all pieces are put together, leaving the faces that touch the other pieces and the inside hollowed out part unselected, and used Edit Mesh: Smooth to smooth out each piece. This creates some polygons with more than 4 sides, which Zprint doesn’t like, so after smoothing I used Edit Mesh: Cleanup, checking only the box that says “faces with more than 4 sides”.

6: I checked my model to make sure there were no holes or 5+ sided faces, and to make sure that each of the three pieces fit together seamlessly, then exported each piece separately as an OBJ file.

7: I then opened each OBJ file in Rhino, exported them as STL files, and imported them into Zprint, where they were (hopefully) ready to print!

Update

The past few weeks I have been printing out a lot more heads for my puppets; I should be nearly done except for a few expression changes on the minor characters, and some in-betweening on the main characters. I've also made more progress on building my set, and once I get the reimbursement from my production budget I can buy more supplies and finish things up.

The most fun thing has been seeing all the heads I've printed out in their true 3D form, after drawing them on paper and modeling them virtually, and the subtle and not-so subtle changes that come with each translation to a different medium.

The most difficult thing is trying to figure out what to use to make each part of my set LOOK realistic without being too heavy, bulky, or expensive, especially the metallic pieces. Hopefully I'm achieving a balance between feasibility and believablity as far as set dressing and props are concerned.

I also wrote up a progress description for my technique in modeling the puppet heads, which I'll post

Progress 10/26

This week, and in the last month generally, I worked on finishing up the Maya models of my heads, so they are ready to print on the 3D printer. As I do more and more modeling in Maya I find it gets faster and easier, although the models are still not quite as I imagined them, they are definitely serviceable and look fairly close to my ideal. Coming to terms with the fact that I cannot control everything and have it turn out perfectly has probably been the most difficult thing this past week, as I cut my animatic down significantly. I realized that at some point I have to accept that I can't produce everything to the perfect levels of a real animation studio that employs several thousand people and takes many years to finish a film, but I can do my best and set myself up to succeed in what I can accomplish, rather than setting myself up for failure by being overambitious and having more shots and characters than time allows.

The most enjoyable thing this week was probably feeling like I'm getting a grasp on the 3D printing process; I find I'm getting a lot less unexplainable annoying errors when I go to print, and the errors that do pop up I now know more or less how to deal with them, rather than it being a huge frustration and waste of time, like it was a few weeks ago.

 Some of my Maya head models, ready to print

Some tips if any aspiring stop-mo animators want to use the 3D printing process through z-print: obviously, you need to close up any holes in your geometry, but it is equally important to check every so often as you model to make sure that all the face normals are pointing outward. Especially check the normals before you smooth, because changing them after is a lot harder. Also, I found that running (Mesh): cleanup, with the settings checked to cleanup only polygons with more than 4 sides, can be a big help if you do it just before exporting out of Maya as an .obj file. This saves heartache later when you can't figure out why the Z-print preview has mysteriously dropped a lot of random faces on your model, leaving ugly holes instead.

3D printouts

Well, after many problems, troubleshooting, and complete redos, I finally managed to create a model that was compatible with the multiple programs required to print my puppet heads.
The most enjoyable part of the last few weeks was when I finally got a workable model, so I was able to get more creative and adjust it to get different expressions. By Thursday I should have some of the actual expression heads printed out; right now I only have the basic head (3 parts) in two different sizes. I've decided to go with the larger size for the rest of my models.

The most difficult part was, obviously, having to remodel so many times. But now I'm good to go, and I'm planning on modeling the other characters' heads shortly. The last picture shows the lineup of the expression heads in Zprint, just before beginning printing

head models

Well, after several weeks of problems with Maya modeling, including a broken hard drive, incompatibility between Maya versions, holes in models, and issues with normals, I am now on model #3 of the main character's head, so hopefully THIS one will work out and jive with the 3D printer. I also began modeling the mother's head:

Thesis Update

Well, this week I am finishing up my animatic and building the last 2 armatures I'll need. I've also got the basic set materials and I'm beginning to cut them according to the scale blueprints I've drawn.
The most fun thing this week was doing composition/film studies in preparation for my layout/color keys. Once these are done I'll head to the Fabric District to buy yards of fabric in the colors dictated by my color keys, and begin the costuming process.
The most difficult thing was staying up really late every night to try to finish this animatic. It's been taking the majority of my time and I'll be more than happy to get it over with and move on to more fun parts of the process.

Weekly update

   This week I've been focusing on character facial expressions, specifically for my main character. So far I've drawn: Blank, Concentrating, Annoyed, Annoyed and Disgusted, surprised, nonplussed, confused, unsure, discovering a pastry, ambiguously skeptical, rolling eyes, embarrassed, mouth full, eating, scared and disgusted, scared, more scared, grossed out, confused, sticking tongue out, ghostly, screaming, etc.
I drew them all on paper from the front view, some also from the side, and a lot I drew in 3/4 view in the actual animatic.

I've also been working a lot more on my 3D model of the boy's head. It's been fun trying to figure out the logistics of translating 2D expressions into 3D models, but it will also be a huge challenge. We'll see how it goes.....................

Week 2 Fall '10 thesis blog

This week I've been working mainly on storyboarding for my animatic, and modeling the boy's head in Maya so it can be printed on the 3D printer.
One thing that was difficult was trying to draw my storyboards in Photoshop without a Wacom driver for the computer. Being in the new animation building is great but it has its drawbacks, as the new computers still need some tweaks and programs to be fully functional. Without the Wacom driver installed, the tablet has no pen pressure setting, which has been hard to work around.
I've tried making some hands out of wire and liquid latex, which has been a lot of fun to experiment with. Some turned out okay and others look like a drippy mess, so more work is needed as I expect to need approximately 3 pairs of hands for each character, and far more for the main character.

As soon as I finish my animatic, I can move on to color keys, which are essential so I can lock in the color palette and buy fabrics to begin costuming the puppets. The head modeling is coming along on schedule.

First post of Fall 2010 semester

     Well, I did get some work on my puppets and set done over the summer, but not as much as I would have liked. The most difficult part of my process has been trying to find the money to buy the supplies I need, and looking for methods of making set pieces that will cheap enough not to strain my budget while still looking good. Pictures of my puppet armatures to come soon.

     Another difficult part of the process this week has been re-working my storyboards and animatic. I've cut out some scenes that seemed either too boring and irrelevant to the story, or too difficult to animate in the time frame I'm working under. Right now I'm redrawing all my boards in photoshop, trying to work adding in more dynamic angles and shots. I've seen enough subpar animated student films where the characters just sit flatly in the middle of the screen to know that is NOT what I want.
     I want to take my film in a more cinematic and hopefully more professional-looking direction, cutting on the action and using interesting closeups and angles, even though with my limited stop motion equipment a lot of camera movement (pans, tracking etc.) won't be an option. To help me conceptualize what a successful film looks like, I've done some film studies of shots from Coraline, Spirited Away, Corpse Bride, and several other movie clips.

     One thing I was happy with this week is how the seats I'm building are turning out. I thought a lot about how to make seats that (a) all look more or less identically mass-produced, (b) are cheap and (c) are strong enough to hold up to about 5-6 months of animating. The best method I could come up with was to use fiberglass cloth with resin, molded to a curved piece of metal bent to the shape the seats will be.
     Using this method I now have 4 more or less identical, fairly smooth double seats, though they still need to be sanded, primed, and painted. It's too soon to know how they will look at the end of the day, but I was happy to find a reasonably economical method that met the seat criteria I had set. The background seats that will not be in heavy use will just be thin aluminum metal, bent to the appropriate shape and primed and painted to look like the fiberglass seats.

Shot List and Production Schedule

Shot List
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document-preview.aspx?doc_id=37651345&key=Njc3N2MyZTgt&pass=OWY2Yi00YTdm

Production Schedule
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document-preview.aspx?doc_id=37651346&key=ZDEyYWJmMjQt&pass=YmExZS00MjUz

rough animatic

this is my rough animatic (close the ad then press the full screen button next to the timeline to view it):

Main Character Turnaround and Details

#3: Style Boards and Inspiration

My last style board was inspired by the simple graphic style of Japanese prints:

Inspiration: Japanese print (author unknown)

#2: Style Boards and Inspiration

This was inspired by Heinrich Kley, a German artist who drew in pen and ink:

Inspiration: Kley

#1: Style Boards and Inspiration

This board was inspired partly by Arthur Rackham and partly by the simple color block-in style of Walt Peregoy, color artist for Disney's 101 Dalmatians.

  Inspiration: Arthur Rackham

Walt Peregoy

Rough First Draft of Story

This is a rough draft, so none of it may even make it into the final story... I do like the weird tone it evokes though.

-----------------------------------

The camera begins by looking out between a pair of subway train doors at the people walking by in the underground station. The sounds of ambient chatter and whirring machinery can be heard. The doors slide shut, and the subway takes off.  On a seat near the front of the car, a tall gentleman in a dark suit with neatly-combed hair sits stiffly, bending his knees at an extreme angle to fit in the short seats. Across the aisle, a figure in a long robe-like hoodie is slumped over, elbows on his legs, sleeping soundly.

On a seat in front of these two characters sits a young boy, about 7 or so (I’ll call him Arturo for now). He has a small briefcase on his lap. He opens the briefcase and takes out a book (probably Carl Jung‘s Red Book) , which he begins to read intently, frowning slightly in concentration. A few moments of peace are shattered by a screaming baby from further back in the car. The mother pats the squalling infant as he tries to escape her arms, making shushing noises and clutching him tighter. Arturo glances over, annoyed, then continues reading.  The train moves forward, then suddenly halts. It has come to a new station. The lady with the baby gets off, and another gentleman (much like the one already seated) boards the subway car. The only discernible difference between the two men is that this new gentleman has a heron’s skull instead of a normal head. Arturo notices, confused, and reaches for his glasses to better view this strange sight. The heron man calmly and politely takes a seat behind the sleeping robed figure, gazing wistfully out the window at nothing.


Arturo stares for a second, but as the heron man is not being especially interesting, he goes back to his book. He is soon interrupted however by an umbrella-like sound. Whump. It sounds like an umbrella being opened and then closed again. Arturo looks up. The other gentleman sits calmly in his seat. Suddenly with another strange whumph  noise, the mans’ head explodes into a round lump of raw hamburger meat, then with another whumph  goes back to normal. Arturo stares. The head explodes again, then goes back to normal. Arturo is getting nervous. The man’s head explodes again. Arturo closes his eyes, but he can still see the raw red meat, and now there are writhing maggots crawling in and out of it. He closes his eyes tighter, when, with a squeal of air brakes, the subway stops again. Everything goes back to normal. The gentleman serenely stands up, picking up his briefcase, and exits the train. The heron man follows.


Arturo’s eyes are still tightly shut, and he is shaking slightly, when something gives him a heavy prod to the shoulder, causing him to jump and recoil, eyes snapping open. A huge lumpy creature with large protuberances stares down at him. Arturo sits for a minute petrified. The creature stares down at him, giving a heavy burbling sigh. Unsure what to do, Arturo stands up gingerly and makes a frightened little bow to the creature. It inches closer, still staring down. Then it reaches out a massive paw/hand and gives him an approving pat on the shoulder. It flumps down on his vacated seat, spreading out wearily over all three seats and into the aisle.


Arturo moves over and stands at a subway pole, keeping his balance. The car moves on. At the next stop, in the window behind him, a face completely identical to his own, except for its extremely gray unhealthy pallor, stares in the window for a heart-stopping moment. The doppelganger boards the train and, oblivious, walks past Arturo and takes an empty seat next to the sleeping lump. It looks exactly like Arturo, but its skin and clothing is all a desaturated greenish gray. Arturo looks at this thing, appalled. He examines his own hand, then looks back at the green boy. Their hands are the same. He touches his own face, cautiously, while staring at the green boy. But Green boy ignores everything around him and stares intently at a small mechanical device in his lap, which ticks faintly. Arturo tries to get the boy’s attention. He waves his hand, but the boy doesn’t respond. He tries calling out softly, then louder, but Green boy doesn’t hear anything. Arturo’s  noise seems to have woken up the sleeping hooded figure next to Green boy, however, as it is now stirring and making strange rattling and rustling sounds.


Arturo gives up calling out and looks, still a bit shell-shocked, at Green boy as it carefully winds a little key in its mechanical toy, stroking it lovingly and wiping a bit of grease off one of the gears. The hooded figure, still rattling, sits up straighter. It pulls long stick-like fingers out its sleeves and slowly begins to wave them hypnotically. For the first time, Green boy takes notice and looks down at the fingers, intrigued. The stick-bug creature waves its fingers faster, making complex figure-8 patterns. It leans in towards the green boy. He stares unblinking at the fingers. The stick-bug slowly, gently begins to ooze a bright colored liquid from one of its fingers, forming a sort of colorful drop at the end of the stick-finger. The green boy is still hypnotized. The stick-bug spins more drops out the other fingers, each one a different color. Green boy is enthralled.\Arturo too is becoming hypnotized, when out of nowhere, the green-yellow color of Stick Bug’s finger-balloon becomes the green-yellow of intestines. Rapid flashes of images show Stick-bug enticing, then killing some small indistinct creature (Arturo himself?), with much red blood and yellow-green guts spilling nastily out. Worms and bugs writhe on the ground, covered in blood. 
Arturo jolts back to reality, where Green boy is just reaching out to touch one of Stick Bug’s balloon-fingers. Arturo, a look of absolute horror on his face, throws himself across the aisle, screaming, to stop Green boy touching Stick Bug’s trap. But as he does the train lurches and throws him against Stick Bug. Green boy’s finger has just touched Stick Bug’s, and precisely as Arturo falls on the two of them, Green boy and Stick Bug suddenly vanish. When Arturo collapses, it is on an empty seat. Fade to blackness.


A loud cough above Arturo brings him back to consciousness, making him jump. A tall mustachioed subway official stands over him sternly, peering intently at Arturo’s face. The official holds Arturo’s briefcase out to him in hand, with the other hand stretched out to him commandingly. Arturo sits upright looking frantically round the subway car, but the many people now seated on the car look completely normal. Stick Bug and Green boy are totally gone. The official gestures to Arturo’s briefcase, then to a tiny mechanical device, which is still lying on the seat where Green boy was. Arturo sits for a second, then, very gently, picks up the mechanical thing. Cradling it in his arm, he takes his briefcase and follows the official. The two stand behind the subway doors as the car slows once again. The doors open, and the boy’s mother is standing outside beaming, arms outstretched. The boy slowly, hesitantly steps off the train, clutching his suitcase, and his mother embraces him in a smothering sort of way. He gazes over her shoulder at the subway car behind her, looking a little dazed. As she hugs him, however, his mother’s broad back and strong arms transform. Arturo is suddenly being held by a machine made of wing nuts and screws and hydraulic cylinders. His machine-mother wheels away, carrying him. Arturo’s trapped, unfocused eyes stare into the subway car behind her, until the doors slide shut once again and Arturo and his mother are lost to view.