This is the end......

Yes , believe or not, after a year of hard work, a summer of non sleeping and a week of getting drunk, Money for Nothing is at last ready to be watched by YOU!!!! So please, enjoy with the trailer and the film, and please leave your comments!

I´ll keep you posted if it gets into any festivals or anything els...... Until the next production!!!!

Non stop...

Hard times.....4:15 am and I have just finished shooting a couple of shots. Tomorrow a have a 15 hour shift in the chiringuetto...and sunday I´ll be animating from dusk till dawn again. I´ve being editing the animated shots into the animatic, and the short is beginning to look like something. I am pretty happy with the way the animation is going so far. 

I am travelling to England next week, I´ll pass by the uni to chat with the tutors.  Now I can say I am half way in the animation process. And with Sunday´s and monday´s animations, I bet I can show almost 2 minutes. Also the music is already coming together. I´ll try to post something on Monday, before I go to Farnham.
Just for fun, the other day I was cuttting peppers at work, when I suddenly came accross this one:

I think there is some potencial in here....I don´t know why, but I find it very cool..... I´ll work on it!!

On the right track

3:44 am, and I´ve just finished shooting 120 frames.....wich I started just after finishing another very long shot. I´ve been here since 12:30 pm, and I feel a bit dizzy.

This summer is absolutely killing me, but I feel that by the end of it, once the film is done, I´ve closed the chirighetto, and I get payed for the animation job from Repaté, I am going to be one of the happiest man in the world!! I have to say, I can´t complain anyway, here is where I work:

 I have no boss and I work this with 2 really good friends (although I don´t really know why I am writting this) So anyway, tomorrow morning more animation. I think I can reach half way if it goes well tomorrow, although one of the tie downs has broken today....

Irony

It´s funny how after 3 and a half years of finishing my stop motion studies in Barcelona, I had never got a job related to stop motion animation. You only have to be absolutely ready to start shooting the film you´ve spent your last year working on, for an amazing job offer to come your way...so fast that you can´t say no.
So there I am, with my foam latex puppets stack in a shoebox in the corner of the room, and the animation set used for the new REPATE proyect. I cant´say too much about it because aparently there are some confidentiality issues with the project. I can´t even show you a picture!! But don´t worry, as soon as we finish, we are alowed to show it.

So nothing more to say....we have to get this job done by the 22nd of this month....and it´s 2 minutes of animation, with a few different characters and interacion with objects.. (I hate it!!) so just imagine the levels of stress and tension we are suffering this days!!....OK, I´ll show a picture...but don´t tell anyone..

There you go!

The cameback II

Hi again....I should be ashaimed of myself for not writing anything here since april, but better late than never!! Today I´ve had my first day of shooting, I am righting from my studio/home for the next few months. A lot has being going on, but of actual interes for you...not much.

I got my puppets a day before flying back here, to Spain, but I couldn´t start shooting straight away. I send the camera for a nice industrial sensor cleaning, we built a set....

But it was too small and ugly....so we built another one, and I built a giant lightbox for the shortfilm:

We have built a camera move device for stop motion:

But it didn´t work too well....so we made another one!!

We did all the ilumination tests:

And today, after 7 months of Preproduction, finally, the animation has began:

I hope you like it. I´ll try to catch up with some "behind the scenes" pictures in the next posts, and tell you how the animation is going. So far today, even though I got two shots done, the puppet is already having skin problems with the paint coming off, and it has a neck injurie, that is not too dangerous for now, but it can turn into spinal damage!!!

Hopefully, I´ll write back soon!

The comeback!!

A long time since my last post.....I always blame Spain for this, and I've being there for the past 3 weeks, so I have the perfect excuse! I must say I have also been ill for the last two weeks...and I haven't had much time to work.
Nevertheless, I am back in England, with my batteries charged after a little  music festival,

 and of course after finishing what seems to be like the final animatic of my short film.Sorry I can't show any of that at the moment cause it would be like showing the film, but with the worst quality possible in every aspect.

So, I am just going to show a couple of pics so you can see how it is all coming together...I hope you like them:

So I mam still fighting with my essay, but I must say, the two authors have being very helpful with me and they both allowed me to interview them!! So I think, the teacher will like that. I'll be starting to get some tests of the painted puppet very soon from London. I'll keep you posted, and sorry for the big brake!

Camera Moves

Hi, sorry I've being absent for a couple of days, but yesterday I spent it researching for the essay I have to write about two authors to whom I relate my work with. I finally chose them :
Tom Otterness (a sculptor ) an John Zerzan (an anarchist) . For those of you who don't know them, here is some work of Otterness:

And here you can learn a lot about John Zerzan (and other intersting topics)this is just the trailer, if you are interested, I strongly recommend to see the whole documentary :

Ok, so, today I headed directly to the stop motion studios at Uni, to test some camera moves, it took me a couple of tries, but in the end, I think the result is quite pleasing. This is more or less what the firs 15 seconds of my film are going to look like (spoiler alert!!!) I hope you like it:

Also, I have a couple of good news, It is very likely that I will be giving a workshop for Ba students, here at Uni, on Foam Latex Puppets!! I am very excited about it. And I've being invited to France to animate a couple of shots for my old Stop Motion teacher's short film.That is even more exciting!!!

Not much more to say, this days I'll be focusing on the essay writing, so I won't update the blog to tell you how my boring text is going. Nevertheless, any animation progress, you'll be the first to know about!!

It's Alive!

Yes!!! today, after a failed trip to London (I didn't get passed the train station in Farnham ) I started watching all the behind the scenes from Tim Burton's stop motion film. It got me a little sad / anxious / motivated, so I decided to give the puppet it's first expression test. I am in my room, so the technology surrounding me is very, very poor.  One little light, a smashed Canon, and a cheap tripod. No video feedback (so I've animated "blind")
but I got to see more or less what the puppet will be able to do once the full armature is well in place. Also I already noticed a couple of errors in the head armature that I will fix for further ones.

Here is a little animation then . The puppet just moving his face really, there's not much acting I have to admit!!:

I now is not very cool, but , HELL, it feels good to see the potential of  the puppet!!

There is not much more to say now. Only a little reminder that last week , while I was in Madrid, I helped in the shot  of an advert for a Coca Cola competition with my friends of Repate...well here it is:

Nothing more for today, tomorrow, I'll try to put some hair on the puppets head, and make a cooler animation. It's a pity the upper lip and left eyebrow don't work......just imagine if they did!!
Have a nice weekend!

Armature Making..

I am cooking some foam latex on Monday (as long as it gets delivered in time... ) So I wanted to get everything ready for then. My fingers are in pain, and my skin is falling apart,I am very tired, but it was worth it.
I have made a lot of armatures today, and good looking ones too.

First thing I did though, was open the mould I left curing yesterday to see the final result:

 Then I took the plasticine hands out, and washed the mould with plenty of water:

Now I was ready to make armatures that will fit in this mould in the future:

And after making some hands, I've made a couple of heads:

Those two wires that stick to the side with a brown blob in the end, are the wires that are going to make the puppet smile (I hope). And I am not putting eyes in this armature 'cause I've decided to put the blobs of clay directly in the mould, to place the eyes after the latex is cooked.

After the heads, I went for the body, but this time, I made the final design of the armature, with replaceable hands and head:

And to sum up, this is a picture of today's work, all very tidy!!:

Before I finish this post, I wanted to point out the top pair of hands on the top of the previous picture, basically this ones:

 Notice they have a couple of nuts in the armature. This is because in early stages of preproduction, while I was doing some animation tests and I came across this shot:

I think the animation is not bad, but if you look at the hands, the keep moving around all over the place. In order to maintain them always in the same position, I needed the same tie downs I use for the feet. I simply chose a smaller size nut so they fitted inside the mould along with the armature. When I start animating (hopefully soon) I'll show the tie down system (to those of you how are not animators).

.........I just got  an e-mail from my foam latex suppliers saying they are out of stock until the 18th of April, this makes me very sad...and a bit stressed out!!! My schedule is getting a bit tight....but anyway, this means that I have to get ready (make A LOT of armatures) for as soon as I came back from Spain on the 28th of April, make three consecutive runs of foam latex and  rush to London to get everything painted..Then I'll go back to Spain to shoot the film!!

Nothing more for today...just have a nice weekend and be aware, I might be animating expressions in my puppet tomorrow!!!

Mould Making

Today I arrived at uni, with a mission: to make a cool mould for my new pair of hands. I made the mould, but it wasn't cool. Here are my steps:

 I placed the pair of hands on top of a block of water based clay.

 Then, I raise the clay  half way up the hands, in this picture I've done the first 2 fingers :

I continued with this long an precise process until I had both hands covered in clay up to half way. Once that was done, I stack a couple of "keys" that have the shape of a weird pyramid that will help both sides of the moulds stick together in the right place:

After a quick spray of Crystal Clear, I built the walls around the clay:

And we are ready to pour the plaster, in this case Keramicast, but I made sure I mixed it really well for almost  ten minutes so I achieve the hardest plaster possible:

Once the plaster is set, I took the walls apart, and I got something like this:

And now, I removed the clay. Here I had some difficulties: The plaster, as it sets, reacts giving out quite a lot of heat, and the platicine the hands are made out went really soft because of that heat. As a consequence, a little finger got ripped off, and some detail was lost when I pulled off the clay. For next time, I'll just let the whole thing cool down a bit, so the plasticine hardens again:

The next step is to clean off all the clay left in the first part of the mould, and rebuild that little finger. Special attention needs to be paid in the line where hands and plaster meet:

After cleaning all the clay, I build up the walls again, rubbed the plaster with vaseline all around the hands, put a couple of blobs of clay on the edges (this is to stick two screwdrivers and pull the two parts of the mould apart) and poured plaster again. Waited until it was set, and pulled the two parts of the mould apart. (The pictures from now on are from a different mould I made about a month ago):

You see in that picture there are already two hand armatures that fit in the mould. Also, notice that from the wrist, there are two holes that go to the edge of the mould. Those holes are where the copper tubing for the replacement mechanism goes.They are also the point of reference to where the armature is going to fit.

All there is to do from now, is to mix some foam latex , shove it in the kiln for a couple of hours, and this is the result I get:

You take it out of the mould, gently, Here I had a picture of a cast I made in regular latex (not foam)to give a reference of the sacale I am working on:

Now, all I do is trim all the remaining latex around the edges, and my hands are ready to ....snap!!
Tomorrow, a lot of armature making.... (boring)

Finally, expressions!!

This morning was one of those mornings when you wake up in tension, expecting some kind of news, maybe good ones, maybe just the opposite. I took my bike and sprinted to uni to empty the kiln. I couldn't of dreamed better, the latex was perfectly cooked, and the armatures were in the right place!! (well, at least most of them).

There, you can see a bit of wire sticking out of his upper lip. But, the lower lip is perfect, it gives me all the rage of expressions I need. And the eyebrows work very smoothly. I am very happy with the internal armature, as I have being playing around with it to push the expressions, and it's responded great. Also, the clamps I used to push the two parts of the mould together worked better than I would ever expected.
 The hands I was so happy about yesterday, turned out to be undercured, and lost all their detail as I was trimming the latex surplus.But I can still use them for long shots, not close ups.
 In the big body mould, I decided to stick two balls in the eyes, so the cast would come up whit two holes where I could stick the eyes, and it has turned out very well. I might adopt this method for the head mould:

After testing the range of expressions I could get in both heads, I decided I wanted to make some more moulds for the hands for three reasons: I don't really like the hands now, I want to be able to make six or eight hands at a time, not only two. And I always end up with some leftovers from the latex run, and it is good to have spare moulds to fill so you don't waste such expensive material. So here is how the new hands are coming together:

They need more detailing tomorrow, and a little baby oild to smooth the surface, but I think the nails will give them a good realistic look..
Tomorrow mould and armature making!!

Same Old Story

Yes, just as it happened last time I cooked latex, in the same kiln as last time, it wasn't fully cured by 5:00pm. Only the hands, being a very small mould had cooked properly:

They came a bit dirty, because the brush I used to apply the mould release was not as clean as I thought. But I have a good feeling with this armatures, they look much tougher than previous ones.

Following the same instructions as first and second run:

Base Latex: 150gr   Foaming Agent: 30gr   Curing Agent: 15gr   Gelling Agent: 12gr

1. Increase from speed 1 to 12 during 30 sec.
2. Maintain speed 12 for 5 min
3. Reduce to speed 4 gradualy
4. Maintain speed 4 for 3 min
5. Add Gelling agent at speed 4 for 30 sec
6. Backbowl for 30 sec
7. Ultrarefine speed 1 for 2 min

Here is a little edited video of the main stages of the process. It's a bit too long and boring, but the music is nice! (sorry for the quality, and specially the format):

 

There was a difference today, I used clamps to put preassure in both parts of the moulds, the result is a much tighter link in the foam cast, I'll never do it it without them again.The head mould and the big body mould  were left inside the kiln to rest the night with the kiln's residual temperature. I hope I don't have the same problems as last time when I left it overnight. This time I rubbed quite a lot of vaseline int the moulds to make sure they didn't stack together. Nevertheless I opened the head mould and it was almost cured, it looked pretty good (I am feeling too lucky...) I left it opened in the kiln.

After a very long day in the uni, I went to some friend's exhibition, Aaron Golding and Alberto Deleze, glass artist and ceramicist:

Alberto was aiming for more than a hundred fishes, but I still think this few are very impressive.

I love the colors in Aaron's work, quite psychedelic!. And  this is all for today, looking forward to see if the head armature finally works tomorrow.