Yesterday I tried creating some 3D stopmotion for the first time in years, and below is a video of what resulted:
The video above features a plasticine fish, filmed from several angles, moving tail and fins. It was made as research for an animated music video, however I've since discovered that this won't be a suitable technique for the final video...
While working on that animation test I also filmed a live-action video sequence of myself animating the fish, which has since been edited as a short time-lapse style documentary of the animating process:
The time-lapse style video starts with a playback speed of 4x the original footage, and quickly "ramps-up" to a playback speed of 200x the original footage, before coming to a sudden conclusion at real-time speed.
At work this afternoon we went for a location-scouting walk along the old railway line (and tunnels) near Bridge of Allen in Perthshire. The old line runs almost parallel to parts of the M90 motorway, which I regularly travel on, yet until I conducted some research last week I had no idea that the line was ever there... One of the random facts I picked up last week is that part of it was bombed by the Nazi's during World War 2!
After parking our cars on a farm road in the middle of nowhere we went across an over-grown railway bridge and then walked the trail for about 1.5 miles; during which time we had gone through two very long, pitch black tunnels and encountered numerous decaying objects (of the mechanical variety).
I had never encountered a tunnel that can compare to these (while on foot), so thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and I think it would be a great location to film all sorts of things... Indeed I was actually asked last month about filming a music video there for a metal band! So now that I know what it's like I can't wait to push ahead with that idea.
On another note, I used my digital stills camera to experiment with some time-lapse photography & experimental stopmotion (similar to Pixelation) on the way back to the cars. I haven't really done much time-lapse or pixelation before, but I am planning another music video (for a different band) that uses this kind of filming technique, and so thought this would be a good opportunity to experiment with the process.
For this experiment I basically just took a photo every 2 seconds (roughly) while walking along a short part of the trail leading up to the second tunnel.
I had a good idea of what the footage should look like when played back as an animation sequence; but because I was photographing while walking (and without a flash) I had no idea whether or not it would turn out any good... To be honest I expected that the footage would be all blurry and randomly jump all over the place, but I think it has turned out surprisingly readable. You can judge for yourself by watching it in the video below:
And to conclude, here are some other photos from the day...
(This final photo is more or less what you see without a torch - and that's relatively near the entrance!)
My graduation project is a slightly experimental suspense film about a young woman searching through a spooky mansion for her lost dog (which is a Beagle). It will be animated by rotoscoping [a hand-drawn interpretation of live-action video footage] with ink on paper. I will record the live-action footage in January and then I will be drawing the footage every day for several months until it is all interpreted on paper... It is due to premiere in June 2009 at The Filmhouse on Lothian Road, Edinburgh.
I will be drawing in a style similar to Arthur Rackham and Edward Gorey but on a very small size so that the drawings are loose and the animation movements look vivid on screen; it will mainly be in black and white; there are influences from the New Wave cinema of Jean-Luc Godard and Aki Kaurismäki; and I will record the dialogue for my film in Finnish (why not?!). What else is there...? As well as getting Finnish dialogue recorded by Erica Weiste in Helsinki (Finland); I am getting video footage for the Beagle shot by Annalise Wimmer in Budapest (Hungary); and I am shooting video footage of Darryl Ryznar in Edinburgh (Scotland). The production of my film is basically a little Pan-European jigsaw!
Below is a short rotoscoping test (using footage from Jean-Luc Godard's Bande a Part) as a teaser for my graduation film.
