Neck needed...

mid shoot, the puppet's neck broke...poor kid

no more green screen

just went with the good old fashioned colored paper.

I'm still playing around with the white balance and lighting though. The set up is looking pretty nice...

color key testing

Shotgun post

Sorry for the extended pause. Thankfully the project is still on schedule, not that I really had a defined schedule to begin with. I'm hoping to start shooting by Wednesday of this week and then just work like crazy until I have to leave for Japan. Well I will have a more coherent post with more development images at another time, but for now I will post some the puppet production stills.

An old puppet that sadly had to be skinned for parts and my fancy new foam buildup model. I had to abandon my foam latex dreams due to the fact that I had no idea what I was doing and no time to learn.

So I ended up baking all of my heads and had to make clothes for the body. I am not known for my sewing so the wonderful Lisa decided to assist me. Assisting me turned into her doing it all and making the greatest wardrobe I could have even hoped for. I'm so grateful. Below is an image of our combined work for the puppet creation. Here fantastic wardrobe and my mishap with baking puppet heads...

Well I need to get back to work, but I will leave you all with a glimpse of the completed puppet and his set. Still some work still needs to be done on both, but I am happy with everything and can't wait to start animating.

Pre-Production-01: Color Tests

This semester really is going to be a test of my time management, but complaining is probably not what the people want to hear. UPDATES:

After a couple of redraws to the storyboards and cuts for time ( 5 minute run initially = insanity), I've finally arrived at an animatic that I can work with. Still going to be somewhat dark, but this time around I'm hoping to get a couple chuckles in the mix. Above and below are some color tests for the set and puppet. It will of course look different because I'm going to bring it into the stop motion world, but this is what I'll be aiming for:

For our next production class we have to show up with already completed shot sheets and a schedule for completion, so this will without a doubt be an animation weekend. I'm also going to take my first attempt at the actual set creation with the help of one Mr. Lake. Tomorrow I'll post up some of the pictures of my very crude mock-up for scale purposes. I've also started on the rigging for the character so photos of that shouldn't be too far away. For now I need to get some sleep. There really is so little time to rest these days...

Production 1-Pome: IT BEGINS!

Well to be honest it started a couple months ago, but for the sake of blogging I will make December 20th the official start date of "POMEGRANATE", my proposed piece for the upcoming semester's class, Production 1.

image by Nancy Yu

The idea is actually a relatively old one to this blog, because its genesis dates back to the senior year of my undergrad. With the help of one nancy yu, original storyboards were created, goals were set, birds sang, and the sun shined with promise. Sadly, as most things run by student organizations tend to do, the project grinded to a halt and was filed away with the arc of the covenant. But I am not one to let something die, be it a project or movie references, so like the crazy russians in the fourth flick I'm going to resurrect that which has been hidden away with the hopes of world domination. Fingers crossed, it goes better than it did in the movie.

In honor of the new project I'm also posting one of my favorite comics about the creative process from subnormality and virus comics. (Click here for a larger version):