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!!!

Meeting Aardman

What a busy week, as I've come back from Spain. My room was invaded by all the house's furniture because they are shooting Dear Ana... (the film) in the house. On Thursday they shot in a basement, and I helped the production department to cook food for the whole crew. The highlight of that day though, was that I started chatting with the two make up artists involved in the film, and the conversation derived to foam latex. Guess what, they  are amazing foam latex painters for prosthetics!!! So I got myself a deal!!

On Friday my idea was to continue helping my housemate with her film, but I had to go to uni to book a kiln for baking my latex next week. Funny enough, I had forgotten about the lecture we had in uni, but I arrived just in time to be reminded.

Merlin Crossingham (Aardman's creative director) came to Uni to share his knowledge with us :

Here he is, with all the puppet he took with him (I hope you can appreciate the scale) And now a close up video of the characters!!

I am sorry for the quality, but this is what my phone gets up to.... Anyway, I notices straight away, that the were-rabbit was made out of foam, and I couldn't resist to ask how the head was animated. He answered me with images and videos:

This was part of the character development of the Curse of the Were Rabbit, I think it is quite helpful!!
During the lecture, Merlin explained to us how he became what he is today: he has being working in Aardman for 16 years and started as a temporary runner for some projects. After that he was trained to became a senior animator and  some time after, he was creative director.

Yes, that is Wallace's armature, created in Aardman studios. Normally they make their own armatures, but sometime thy order them to Taiwan, I can't remember the name of the man that makes them, sorry. Very surprising was to hear that unless there is a camera move on the shot, the shoot at two's (that is two frames for each pose of the puppet). A camera move doesn't work with two's so the shoot those in one's.

 He explained to us how to make the motion blur on the persecution scenes, and is a very interesting strategy:
The make high exposure pictures (lets say 2 sec) and they maintain the puppet in his pose for the first second, and move it backwards on the second second (that sound weird) but what you achive is a clear image of your character followed by a blur that gives a great sensation of speed.

 He also commented on how to prove your animation skills, and that is, if you are still thinking in how much you have to move the puppet to get the next interval right, you are not ready for character animation. It is when you think only about the performance of the puppet and not the animation principles to make it move that you really understand character animation.

 He told me he hardly looks at previous frames while animating, maybe the previous one, but he already knows where everything is got to be for the animation to go fluid. 

 He also made a lot of emphasis in the importance of the poses. Everyone can learn the technique of animation, but to find the expressive poses of the character to transmit all his personality, that is another story.

 Also interesting is that  an animator is expected to make ONE second of animation a day (while shooting feature films). Shooting at two's, that is only twelve pictures a day!! I thought it was very slow, but then he explained all the modeling involved between frame and frame, and I had to shut up.

Merlin also mentioned the importance of minimal animation, this is, trying to express the most, with the least animation possible.Subtle movements of the eyes, or the eyebrows. A slight tilt of the head can express much more than a lot of overcharged animations.

After the lecture, he was cool enough to concede tutorials for whoever was interested. I was certainly.
So I asked him the questions I have being looking to be answered for some time :
How do I fit my head armature in the mould for my foam latex puppet?
He looked at me and said : I am sorry but I don't have the answer to that: foam latex is a craft itself and if I were you I would try to make the puppet in clay!! I almost started crying!! Then he said ,you have to take into account, that in Aardman, our foam latex technicians get one batch right out of five!! (I am two out of two...hehehe) and finally he recommended to shoot my film in white screen

I think I am going on for a bit too long now, so if you have any further questions please just comment the post and I'll answer shortly. That will be all for today.

Animatic

Hi!!
Sorry I´ve been absent for a few days...those are side effects of visitting Madrid. I haven´t being working too much on my film, only putting together the animatic, with the pictures I took last week.  This helps me with a reference of how long the shots are going to be, and also, if the puppet is able to make the posses I require from him. This is an example of a shot (I didn´t pay any atencion to the lighting, sorry about that)

I can judge how the shots fit together and is all around a very usefull thing to have. When I finish it some time next week I´ll post it , so you´ll be getting an idea of the film. Apart from that, Madrid has being to bussy for me to work on the handcrafted side of the film. On Sunday, I went with Repaté to the shooting of a Coca Cola advert for a competition. I had lot´s of fun, and I think there´s going to be a great end product!

The other good news, is that and interview about my film has being published in a very interesting blog about stop motion animation: Interview . Hopefully this will help me meet some new people in the proffesion.

Not much more to say,I hope I´ll be able to post some behind the scenes footage of the coca cola advert soon, and I arrive to England on Wednesday, so prepare for battle!!

The Camera Loves Him, He Hates Me

Today has being one of those long, long days, with a lot of things done.....so prepare for a long and boring post!
Before getting the puppet to stage, I had to  cut the edges. I don't have the necessary elements to make the Pro-Paste, so the middle line across the puppet is quite visible.

After getting the puppet clean and isolated, I had to dress him up. I had plan to cut the hands off, as the are replaceable, but I found it also made the job of dressing the puppet much, much easier.

 After suiting him up, it was time for his hair style. I divided the hair in three parts, making one of them animatable. :

After the hair was ready, the was nothing left to do before shooting. Here are some Studio Pics: 

Yes, he hates me. But I think he looks fairly good. I have to work on the hands A LOT, because I snapped 6 of them today. But the body armature responded great!. I placed the puppet in all the possible posses I am needing in the film, and it survived them all! But I still need to work on the final head (of which a have o make about six replicas ) and make as many hands as I can.

Tomorrow I am going to Madrid, so for the next week, I'll be working in Orli Ivanov's porcelaine sculpture animation, and the animatic of my film. I didn't have time to shoot the face closeups of the character...so I'll also be doing that. I hope to be able to upload the animatic soon!!

So just a few hours from now, I'll be Home!!!! Speak to you from there!

Foam Latex Day

 This morning I woke up at about 9a.m, with a knot in my stomach. Foam Latex day had arrived. The first thing I did was to go and check the fourth head armature I made last night.....as you can imagine, failure: the lower lip fell off as soon as I tried to move it around a bit. But it wasn't the end of the world...eyebrows, eyes, teeth, cheeks and chin, all seemed to be in place (I would realize later that they were not)
Anyway, upon my arriving to uni, I started setting all the armatures for their correspondent moulds. Glueing the nuts to the puppet's feet, and attaching the last copper tubes for the replacement hands and heads.

So, once I had applied the foam releasing agent (in perhaps an exaggerated way, I'll lower the dose next time) and brushed away all the powder remaining in the moulds, I was ready to start measuring grams , with a very funny looking gas mask, some protection goggles and latex gloves that were not made out of latex....(Health and Safety never has enough..)

Now , I am really sorry, but this next few lines will only be interesting for those of you who are animators (maybe just as the rest of the blog......?)


FOAM LATEX_ RUN 1                       

Room Temperature: 28* C           Room Humidity: 31%

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

NOTES:

I couldn't do the Backbowling (consequences of buying the cheapest stand mixer...)
I thought it was a bit slow to gel, as at the time of pouring the latex to the moulds, it was still to fluid.
Maybe there was not enough mix to begin with, the 195 initial grams barely made it up to the mixer's blades.
For next time, maybe increase the time in one minute for speed number 4, and make twice as much foam.


Once the foam was in the moulds, I let it gell for about 20 min, I then put them in the kiln at 85*C for two hours (I could say  they have been the two longest hours of my live...) . I had to find something to do during those two hours!! So I did, I approached a computer nearby, and started editing yesterday's animation of Orli's sculpture. So here is a quick look at the footage:

This is now becoming a really long post, and I still haven't shown you what happens when I open the kiln after those two hours, but as you know, I like to keep the tension of the audience. So tomorrow, as I have no money, instead of going out to grab a drink, I'll be blogging, uploading some more pictures, eating garlic pasta and watching some movie on BBC2 (did I just sound excited??)

Until tomorrow then!!                             

Good News

Today has been  a busy day, I did my first test for the head armature this morning, and it was a failure....but I know how not to do it now!! It's hard to fit 4 different types of movement in a 3 cm head! But I have to get on with it, and fast.

Later on in the day, I finally got hold of all the extra gadgets I need to make the foam latex, and I have half of the ceramics studio at uni closed during all Friday afternoon for me to play with my latex without intoxicating anyone!
I've also had a meeting today with a ceramics Ma student, and tomorrow I am animating one of her beautiful sculptures in stop motion. There will be a full post on that soon!!

The  bottle is only there to hold the head...is not part of the sculpture. I will be animating the fingrs and the head in stop motion, and we will try to make him breath with after effects. I am really looking forward to this tomorrow!!

I promised a video for this post, and I will give you two, the first one is a little short film I animated, and my great friend Javier Garrido posproduced in the headquarters of Repate just a couple of months ago, I hope you like it. This was shot without any capturing software, or photo preview. I like to call it instinctive animation (although I think the name sounds a bit over the top...like to cool for school)

                                              Repate, Producciones Audiovisuales


The second video are some test shots I animated with the puppets armature, just so we could get to know each other better.  Only a 10 sec video, I guarantee you will not have time to get bored, unlike the previous one:

So that is all for tonight, I have a lot of work to do between today and the weekend, so hopefully I will be posting some exciting stuff .
Until next post!!