2007

My Uncle’s Dental Health
22.March.2007

This was my first finished short. It is based off a K. Ungeheuer story by the same name. I can’t say much more than I’ve already said in previous posts.

2006

Adult Swim Interstitial
15.January.2006

This is an station id I did for the Adult Swim block of cartoons on Cartoon Network. Never used by them. It was done traditional stop motion. Top down. Unfortunately my jury-rigged tripod screwed up the initial shots. I had to readjust every frame in the shoot frame by frame.

2005

Trouble
5.December.2005

My first test in 3 years. This was just done on the fly with no plan in mind. The music is public domain from a great web site the offers such things for download. The lighting was just whatever was on in my living room, so it’s rather dark. Still haven’t mastered my camera’s macro feature, so many of the frames are out of focus. It was a lot of fun putting this together. About 2 hours went into filming with me just shooting until my storage card filled up.

2002

Happy Pops Day
June.2002

“Happy Pops Day” came a day after doing “The Bullies”. It was for my Pops for Father’s Day. It was also my first foray into sound. I Used WAVTracker to break up my recorded voice into frames in order to plan out the mouths. Torn paper filmed with my Kodak DVC-325 webcam.

The Bullies
June 2002

“The Bullies” was my first animation since starting a new job at the end of February 2002. I was bored in my office but luckily had my trusty Kodak DVC-325 webcam. This short was made with Anasazi SMA, VirtualDub and a couple of binder clips (when no one was looking).

Ball Toss
February 2002

“Ball Toss” introduced a new generation of puppet. The body was made of balsa wood to make the puppet nice and light. The wire armature is 24 gauge florist wire twisted 4 thick with a power drill. The tie downs are accomplished with small holes in each foot. I use a two straight pins in each foot to pin the puppet to a styrofoam base. The clay portions of the puppet are done with Super Sculpey.

I was also testing how to float objects. You can see the wire holding the ball in the air for each frame. The path of the ball was done by marking it out with a dry erase marker on a computer monitor and previewing each shot in Anasazi Stop Motion Animator.

Silence is Golden
January 2002

“Silence is Golden” was another project from The Animation Book. The puppet was made of construction paper and tied with thread. The sun was done with 15 replacement cutouts. I only got around to painting the first one. Because of that it wasn’t until half way through the shoot that I decided to run the sequence anyway. Although it didn’t work out quite right, I love word balloons.

2001

Flipbook
December 2001

Toward the end of 2001, after a long hiatus, I got back into animation. I picked up The Animation Book by Kit Laybourne and began doing the projects at the end of each chapter. “Flipbook” was one of these projects. “Make a flip book from Post It notes”. This was completely impromptu as evidenced by the pictures. Now you know why I’ll be sticking to puppet and collage animation.

2000

The Evil Trunk
February-March 2000

This was a compilation of several different tests done to plan out “The Evil Trunk”. It was my first attempt at an actual story. I never had a chance to finish it and opted instead for editing the tests together.

This was earliest puppet. Its clay torso (Sculpey) was too heavy. I also hadn’t figured out what to use for tie downs. Tie downs hold the puppet in place from frame to frame. You can see the effect if you don’t use them. Instead of walking around he shuffles and pretty poorly at that.

Nobody
February 2000

“Nobody” was a short visual pun done very late at night. It was a test of a thinner gauge armature wire than I had used on past puppets. Also notice the replacement eyes again.

Eyes
February 2000

“Eyes” was a test of some replacement eyes I had made. By replacing the eyes between frames I get the effect of blinking, looking to the side, or surprise (maybe too surprised). The eyes were cut out of a magazine and glued to wire loops that fit into slots in the puppets face. This puppet was also used in “The Evil Trunk”.

1999

Halloween
October 1999

“Halloween” was my very first stop motion short. The puppet was one of those hobby store doll blanks with wire skeletons. I added felt clothes, eyes, doll hands and rabbit fur for hair.

The puppet was supposed to cut his own throat, bleed (red tissue paper) and wish everyone a “Happy Halloween”. Done with AVIconstuction kit and my cheap ass Fuji DS-7. As you can see I hadn’t quite figured out how to toy with the auto focus and auto exposure.