Production Update: 15/05/2012

Today we've had a really productive day at the studio as we have covered quite a lot of shots for our project. We have been keeping to a very strict schedule which has been shared throughout the group and has constantly been updated by our team director and producer. 

Monday night, Katie and Jen striked the foyer set and set up the next set (shoe shop interior). It is a smaller set so we are using 2 trestles and 3 lights. 

Tuesday began by preparing the puppets for animating, (repairing hands, tightening joints etc). In shot 32, we wanted Grandpa to stand up and admire his shoes whilst Fred steps into shot. We added extra flooring infront of the set so that Fred could be closer to the camera. taking the frame of a spare prop chair, we glued it to the floor and gaffa taped Fred on top. The camera was positioned at a low angle to look through the chair frame, and then fred's legs come down over the camera's point of view. 

 

Kendra animated Grandpa, whilst Moses animated Fred.

Our whole team was here today which really helped us push our level of productivity as different shots were assigned to each member - which worked really well, as it started with Katie and Jen animating  Grandpa listening to a shoe (the spats) and then Moses animating Fred's hand beginning to move followed by Kendra animating Grandpa putting his new shoes on and reacting to Fred coming to life. 

The trickiest part is checking continuity. Jen had reshoot the scene where grandpa ties his laces, so we could include an extra scene before it.  

The two photo's below is a look at our shot list and the ones marked with red are shots we have completed, and as you can see in the photos we have a little bit more to go which are all shorter shots, that contain stills, shorter timings and minimal movement shots.

 

As the day went on Katie shared between each of us still shots to clean up so that we are ahead of things when it comes to post-production. We completed 5 shots also today as this was our target today, which were the shorter shots. The schedule is in constant flux as we plough through scenes, dropping scenes which don't work, combining other scenes and adding extra scenes for continuity. Each day we have an outline of the shots to be completed, and then when we have completed the daily quota, we try to squeeze in another shot or two.

Pre-Production 1 - Before Easter

Production Update 2

In these production photos Jen and Kendra are both making and touching up props. Jen is working on Grandpas spats as they were made of silicon and needed to be a jet black colour for his shoes. There was a slight problem with the shoes as Katie cast them in silicon and tried to make them black but the emulsion made it a grey colour instead so Jen began to sow black material over the shoes.

Kendra finished making the extra boxes needed for the shoe store which look great, and gave a hand at animating Grandpa in the underwear department. 

Production update 1

So far this week we've put together a shot list for our animation as we have completed the pre-production stage as everything is in working order. On Monday the 23rd April we began to animate our opening scene where Grandma and Grandpa are walking along the department store. It was a very tricky task as we ran a couple of tests before shooting this scene, but we've managed to get through it.

 

The puppets and background set we had to be animated at the same time which was a challenge in its own way, as we had to keep an eye on moving the set whilst animating Grandma and Grandpa.

We each took turns to try and animate the characters so we can get a better understanding of how to use and animate puppets in stop motion - which is all about practice, repetition and consistency.

We carried on to animate throughout the day and worked quite hard and then retreated on home quite late that day.

Grandpa's glasses broke a few times but we managed to fix them asap - he's all better now. 

Katie put together a schedule for our production stage which is very helpful and yet due to change if needed.

During this day, we had our whole team in and working on different parts of the project. Kendra helped to work on making extra props for the sets as we were short on quite a few boxes for our shoe store section.

                                                                                         






Jen and Moses  gave a hand to help animate a couple of shots set out for today and setup the set for the next days shoot.

Katie began to work on our mysterious character Fred who is new to the scene, the photo's above show Fred's outfit and armature along with stuffing.

visual tests - 7 March 2012

Here is  a look at Grandpa and a special pair of shoes, followed by a character turn around of Fred in the early stages of design. The middle image is a test to see what our animation would look like if we were to go ahead with a split screen theme between Fred and Grandpa - to reflect their opposite worlds.

Kendra designed the background image and Katie created Grandpa, Fred's character turn around was modeled by a friend of Katie's.

shop and pattern trials colours ect. markers

Multiplane Test

Our character finds himself in a paper world where he meets a character made of paper. We filmed a dancer and then printed off each frame, cut them out and re-filmed them on the multiplane. It is a long process, but I think that this character will look really interesting against the stop motion puppets.

Posted by Katie

Initial designs of shop exterior

Kendra has been drawing up some designs for shop exteriors.