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Computers Accenting Stop Motion
Posted by: Marc_Spess on Thursday, July 03, 2008 - 09:56 PM
Picture of: A Short Love Story

There is a lot of debate over CG films taking over stop motion. The truth is that computers can make a big difference in the look of stop motion for the better. Especially when it comes to things like smoke, fire, rig removal, environmental effects and style.

Carlos Lascano created a kind of stop motion CG hybrid film called A Short Love Story. It uses a lot of effects and camera moves most likely done in an editing program like Adobe After Effects or Premiere. Take a look at it here.

Big Studios have been using computers to accent stop motion probably around the time of Nightmare Before Christmas. In that film they used CG snow flakes during the final shots because it would have been too hard to do by hand. Well...maybe not too hard, but very very time consuming.

Recently Portland Oregon's Laika studio released a short film called A Dream for Hokusai. What they tried to achieve was a transition between 2-D drawn backgrounds into stop motion backgrounds. It's a simple process "so it seems" where they just fade one element into another as layers. Again it's probably done in something like Final Cut Pro or After Effects. Take a look at how it turned out here.



General News
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Beginner's Guide to B&S Armatures
Posted by: Marc_Spess on Sunday, June 29, 2008 - 03:38 AM
General News Castlegardener's Ball and Socket Joint

Blogger and stop motion animator Castlegardener wrote a tutorial for some very simple ball and socket joints. He made some of his own when he realized he needed a flying rig for a shot in his latest film.

The construction is simple enough for most people to do on a low budget. Check out his how-to guide here.

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What's the Next Animate Clay Plan?
Posted by: Marc_Spess on Sunday, June 29, 2008 - 03:25 AM
Phew, it's been a lot of work to get the site to where it is today. The new design is completed, the affiliate program is ready for anyone to join and the new site stopmotionmagic.com is finished.

So what's the next plan? Well I have two plans, and the first one will take me a while. It's going to be a new newsletter. If you subscribed to our newsletter, most likely you only got a few mailings when something big happens at the site.

The problem is that the newsletter is broken. It doesn't work properly - and it is a major chore for me to use and send messages. What I originally wanted to do was have a weekly newsletter with tips on clay and stop motion.

So that's something I'm working on now behind the scenes. A free weekly newsletter, and the best part is it will be automated. This will help free my time so that I can work on new products....like the set building DVD that I desperately want to create.

I need to write 48 tips before I can create the new newsletter, and once it's done anyone on the old newsletter will have to join the new since it will be deleted, along with all the members. Once we're ready to move things over we will send out a message for anyone who wants our weekly tips.

If you want a stop motion tip explained in the newsletter just send me a message and I'll make sure to include it.

Animateclay.com Site News
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Edison and Lio
Posted by: Marc_Spess on Thursday, June 26, 2008 - 12:54 AM
General News Edison and Lio Puppets

Recently while surfing around for news I came across a project that sounds really promising. It's a film being produced in Canada called Edison and Lio. There is an 80 person crew working day in and day out up in Vancouver, and it is the first Canadian-funded stop motion feature.

There are a few web pages we found about the film with plenty of pictures and stories to check out. Here are some of the good ones:

Vancouver studio tackles painstaking animation project

Photos of the "Edison and Leo" stop-motion movie set

Edison and Leo, and Automatic Duck

There is a rumor that the producer Bill Vince of the feature recently died. Is it a bad omen for Canada's stop motion industry? We hope not. You can read the rumor here.

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The Brothers Brick
Posted by: Marc_Spess on Monday, June 23, 2008 - 09:08 PM
The Brothers Brick

Are you a Brick Filming Maniac? If you are we found a site you might want to bookmark. It's called the Brothers Brick and is created by a small group of dedicated Lego fans.

They report on all the latest Lego brick and minifig releases and are heavily involved in the Lego community. Recently they visited a Lego convention called Brickworld 2008 and took lots of pictures and videos. Check out the latest Star Wars Death Star Lego sets they filmed here.

So if you love making Lego films you should definitely check this blog out here.

The only negative is they don't cover Brick Films very much. Just the new Lego releases and major news. If you want to watch only films made with Lego - the most popular site is of course.....Brick Films.

General News
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