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 !