3D Stop Motion Animation #2

Part 2 is here! Yes, yes i know, now calm yourself. So the last post ended with the set being pretty much finished and the armatures being finished and foamed up, but they still didn't have any clothes. Luckily Christina Chan, a member of our group, knew how to sew and was able to join all the bits of the outfit together, so all we had to do was cut out the right lengths of material and pass them to her. She did a very good job considering the quality of the material was terrible and the size of the clothes were so miniscule.

So the puppets and set were finally completed, and it felt great. Seeing a flat picture that you drew turn into a lump of metal and then turn into a 3D fully clothed puppet is quite amazing. However, it also felt like we had just climbed a mountain, to find yet another mountain in our way, making the last mountain look like a mole hill- although the set and puppets were completed, we still had all the animating and editing to do.

Our finished set and two of the three main characters

Scientist

Assistant

We decided that we would animate the characters we designed and that Lisa would help wherever she could as she did not have a character of her own. George animated the scientist, I animated the assistant and Christina animated the cat with help from Lisa in some tricky scenes.

We set out to have someone taking the frames (someone sat on the computer constantly pressing the same key, a pretty monotinous job) who wasn't animating so that the whole team was sharing the work load but in the end it was mainly myself and George who did this. This was mainly because our characters were on screen almost all the time and so we were around the pc the most, having a third person would have been very crowded, although Christina occasionally stepped in to give us a break and let us concentrate on just animating.

The animating went rather smoothly with very few hiccups, a camera nudge and a couple of table knocks were the only problems i can remember. The work was draining and slow but surprisingly fun and the outcomes looked great. Our lighting, which consisted of a normal light and a light with a green transparent material in front of it were particularly effetive in creating the mood of the labratory and gave it a creepy edge.

George animating the Scientist

Push the button!

And here is our finished assignment!