New music video for Jones Unleashed…

Little details not only enhance realism, but they can be the most enjoyable aspect of the puppet and prop-building process.

Adding scuff marks with abrasives, distressing new/clean surfaces, wearing down edges, and just plain making stuff look old is all part of the fun.

This is what the boots look like now:

(Real mud will be added while filming.)

Here’s a shot of the blaster with holster and strap:

The front of the gun came from a small Maglite flashlight which was worn down with sandpaper, starting with 180 grit and finishing with 400 grit.
A small galvanized pipe fitting connects the metal front to the handle, which was sculpted from PaperClay and then painted. An old metal knob was added for appeal.

Undoubtedly the most enjoyable prop to work on was the backpack. Here’s how it looks currently:

It serves a functional purpose (basically a transmitter of sorts), so I wanted to make the bits and pieces tie together in a somewhat believable way.

I’m nearly finished as far as the puppet and his props are concerned. The next steps involve setting up some scenes/backdrops and some odd-and-end set pieces and props.

My biggest gripe with computer animation is the lack of spontaneity. There’s lots of STUFF that goes into it: Modeling, texturing, rigging, animating, rendering, waiting…

I almost always carry a small notepad in my pocket. If something comes to mind – such as a story idea, some piece of dialog, etc. – then I have it there to record whatever it is I thought of. But every two or three pages is full of little character thumbnails. Sometimes one of these characters catches my fancy and I try to translate that into a digital character that I can animate. This means doing tons of poly modeling (using the sketch as reference), texturing, rigging… just a bunch of stuff before I ever get to the point where I can animate the character. And when I do get to that point, my morale is shot because the character has lost whatever it was that I really liked in the first place.

That is largely what resulted in the paper cut-out animations. This really helped take the original “charm” of the character directly into the animate-able version, AND sped up the whole modeling process (since I’m only using 2D planes)… but as simple as it is, there’s still quite a bit of setup involved.

So I started thinking beyond that. Even so far as to wonder “How can I remove the computer from the whole process? How can I just get an ‘animated’ performance in-camera. No rigging, no texturing, no rendering.”

IMMEDIACY is what I was after.

This led to some experiments with moving paper characters in front of the camera by hand. I remembered the intro to an old show called “Mrs. Cabobble’s Caboose” (a public television program we had to watch in the 3rd grade). The characters in the intro were just sorta moved about, with limbs dangling – apparently attached by little springs or something. It had a nice handmade, energetic feel to it.

But I started to consider how I’d tackle lipsync/dialog in that scenario, which led me to think “Hey, I can just add a tracker point to the face and add the mouth shapes on… the… computer.” And this defeated the purpose.

A couple weeks after this, I see a post by animator extraordinaire Keith Lango. Not only did he just complete a short film… he completed it within a weekend! Using PUPPETS. (Check out Keith’s post HERE.)

Keith said many things that resonated with me:

It’s like a dream come true! And I’ve got ideas for more shorts, too. The key thing for me is to get the ideas done and out there, entertain, tell stories, reveal and live with characters. I finally feel like I can do that without investing months or years to get my ideas out. Plus I’m not just stuck in my studio on the computer. I’m up, moving around, breaking a sweat, learning new things. Even better, my wife and kids help, too- it’s really a family thing in ways that animation never was or could be. Working with my hands on something is just too cool. But I won’t be quitting my day job as an animator, though. I still like that too much.

Inspired by this, I decided to give puppetry a try. Here’s what I’ve got so far…

I’m a woodworker by trade, so I’m geared to wanna work with my hands; it’s way more intuitive. It’s also rewarding in the sense that I can take whatever I’ve made and show the kids right away, getting instant enjoyment from their reactions. And as a bonus, my wife likes the fact that she can help sew stuff for me.

I’ve got a bit more to figure out, including arm movement via rods (and I’m considering making a separate hand for closeup shots.) Also, some of the parts for this particular character are still a little “clean” and need proper distressing (sandpaper, dirt, paint, etc.) The vest, goggles and blaster are pretty much where I want them.

The character shown here is for an upcoming music video. I hope to upload video footage once complete!

Here’s a video I completed recently for a local group called Jones Unleashed..

The “story” part was filmed in an early-1900′s church, and the band performance was shot in a local field. All of the projected sequences were done here at my home/studio.

You can hear more Jones Unleashed on Facebook.

Well, “jittery” is the word I use for it, anyway.

As with the first experiment, this one started with a simple character sketch…

The original sketch was scanned and split apart.  This was a quick test so I didn’t worry about the arms, legs, etc.; just the head and upper body.

Multiple copies of the character’s head and body were printed  lightly across a sheet of paper.

The light copies were sketched over using 6B and 2H pencils.

The purpose of the guide was to keep the character’s head mostly uniform, but still allow the sketchy edge and shading variation to come through.  The same procedure was done with the upper body.

I added registration marks (little cross-hairs) to assist with aligning the copies later, as they would be “stacked” onto one another and then saved out as an image sequence.

The image sequence was rendered out as a 12-fps AVI with an accompanying black-and-white AVI to act as the alpha channel.  This was applied as an animated texture to the 3D plane object.

Very little thought was put into the animation of the character;  just a bit of head movement at the beginning and not much else.  The goal was to achieve a lively, energetic feel, even when the character wasn’t moving.

If I were to use this style character in a short film or anything beyond a test, the eyes and mouth would be treated as separate layers, each with their own variation frames.

trueSpace is a nice little program – very capable for stills work – but definitely not geared for animation. Never has been. That said, I’ve been using it for animation since 1998 or so, have grown very used to it, and to be honest – I kinda enjoy the challenges and workarounds associated with it. (Granted, I don’t do this for a living, so it’s no biggie.)

But when I see things like Keith Lango’s Squiggle Line Tutorial, I’m tempted to purchase industry-standard character animation software. Heh!

Oh… and it’s kinda hard for me not to play around with other things when I’m doing these tests.  In this one, I also toyed with keyframing in Richard Rosenman’s Depth of Field Pro. (Excellent plugin!) Other than that, colors were adjusted, grain added, and the whole thing was posterized to 18fps from the original 24fps.

Watching it back at this point, I’m really considering further testing with the framerate of the animated texture layers.  It seems that maybe 12fps is a bit too fast?  I’m wondering what 8fps would look like.  …and perhaps I could vary the framerates of the separate layers a bit.  Hrm…

Simple, low-tech methods of animation have always appealed to me.

In this short film, I’m simply experimenting with an essentially flat/2D character in a 3D environment.  As it turns out, I decided to do a bit of foley, hand-drawn titles, and post production.

The character’s parts were drawn in pencil on a 3×5 index card, scanned, and applied to separate planes.  Rigging and animation was done using Motion Studio in trueSpace and the eyes were animated using a simple object replacement technique with the assistance of DD Visibility Recorder.

It was a quick and enjoyable project and I am pleased with the results.

I’m hoping to do some longer shorts using this style.  Planned improvements include animated textures and alpha maps on the character for an even more “lively” feel, even on held poses.