Side-by-side

With the original TV commercial.

Here it is

I'll put more text this week.

'Til then, enjoy !

Last shot is in the can !!

I finally made it..  The last shot is done.  

There's only a few details i need to adjust before delivering my short.  I talk about: editing, polishing the title screen and building up the closing credits part.

Oh !  Before i forget about it, this week, the visitors counter hitted 10,000th visits.  I didn't expected that much traffic around here, but i'm very happy it does.

The last shot was very tricky to animate and there was decisions, i had to made.

First of all, the Corpser is moving toward the camera on each frame, so i was considering doing a dolly for the puppet on wheels.  Then, i was thinking about a dolly for the camera and get back to my first idea, but without the wheels.  

This is how it looks.

Animating the legs one by one was something i was considering at first, but after doing some tests, i though that would be to hard to animate for the little results i would have had.

So, my final setup goes as follow.  The two middle legs were removed.  They was an issue because they were blocking the light that comes upside the creature.  The front legs were mounted on some homemade skates.  They move forward with the rail.  The four back legs are fixed to the table, but they move a bit with the creature movement.  Some nuts broke while animating the first trials, so i respond to the problem with rubber bands.  They worked perfectly.

Note:  There's a threaded rod that was supposed to move the rail forward.  A nut was attached to it and with every turn it would have get with a spanner, the rail would have move a little forward.  This idea was forget and i was moving the rail with my hand.  A ruler was use to measure the distance it has to move between each shot.

There was one and only light (LEDs) that come from a desklamp upside the Corpser.  The green cardboard is use to block the light.  The sequence shows the creature coming out of the darkness.  I wanted a drastic separation between light and darkness.

On the two bricks you can see below, there's white glassy paper sheets to reflect the light on the bottom part of the puppet face.

Some pictures of my setup

The sequence is available here for those who entered (or will enter) my contest: http://vimeo.com/27697801 (same password as last time).

For the others, here one frame of the sequence and below, a frame from the sequence i did last time.

I'll let you know when the movie will be finished and available on Youtube and Vimeo.  Till then, take care !

Death blow sequence done !

Pheww...
At last, the final sequence is meeting my quality standards.  I'm very happy to achieved it the first time.
- 77 pictures
- 3 seconds of video on 1's (24 frames per seconds)
- 2 sessions of shooting on two different days
- 6 hours of work animating that

Everything goes as expected (hopefully).  As i thought, animating a big puppet is way easier than animating a small one.

In order to simulate the lightning coming from the machine gun, i worked with three different lightning setups. 

2 lights

1 light

 

No light

Repeating these 3 lightning setups did a good job.

Here's my lighning setup.  The light no.1 is a LED desk lamp with foil on it to reduce the light that come out of it.  The light no.2 is a little and single LED light.

As an awared animator, i taped down the camera's tripod and the electric cables that were on my way.

Here are some pictures that shows how small is my shooting room.

The tied-downs also worked perfectly.

Oh i almost forgot, the sequence...
Here's the link.  http://vimeo.com/26750281
There's a password that must be entered and all the people who submited (or will) pictures for the wallpapers contest will receive it by email.

Enjoy !

Corpser completed !

Corpser's wallpapers + CONTEST !!!

I was doing some wallpapers for myself and thought i should share some with you.  Feel free to use them for a personnal use only.

The first one is my favorite, closely followed by the second one.  The third and fourth ones, were done with the intention of having two different views on the Corpser's head on the same picture, but i'm not fully satisfied with the results.  A nice wallpaper isn't done randomly and i don't think i really understand how to do that properly.  Anyway...

CONTEST !!!  -> Send me a picture of yourself showing your computer screen with your favorite desktop's wallpaper using one of the followings.  Show a thumb up or any creative and original facial expression (example).  Send it here.  I'll put your names in a hat and i'll pick a winner randomly.  A free "signed" DVD will be sent to the winner when it will be done.  Good luck !  =)   

Corpser's head painted

Here's some pictures of the Corpser's head painted.