My Studio

Pics of my home studio and some animation in progress from Dec.’06

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Some pics of what I was working with in Jan.’06
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Here’s what I’m working with:

Hardware
Laptop: Dell Latitude D820 w/1GB RAM, 80GB HD, DVD/RW player
Camera: Canon Elura 100 MiniDV

Software
IrfanView : Batch Image processing
Adobe Photoshop : Image tuning
Adobe After Effects : Creating and rendering the raw movie
WavePad : Audio editing
VirtualDub : Codec compression
AnimatorDV Simple+ : frame capture/onion skinning
VCDEasy : Video CD authoring

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The Process (needs updating)
I shoot traditional animation with very little post processing in the computer. The individual shots are taken as 2048×1536 JPEGs using my Fuji S3000. I shoot on twos usually for TV, so 15 shots per second.

I import the raw shots into After Effects and tweak them if necessary. I use Public Domain or recorded sound effects and music and edit them for volume and length using WavePad. I add these to After Effects and render the short Uncompressed. This results in a VERY large raw video.

I import the raw video into VirtualDub to compress using the DIVX codec. (I didn’t get good results doing this directly in After Effects, so this recommendation came from others on the web.). The DIVX 6.0 settings I use:

1) Unconstrained profile
2) Multipass, 1st pass: bitrate usually around 2000 to 3000
3) Balanced Codec Performance
4) Adaptive Multiple Consecutive with Q-Pel selected
5) MPEG-2
Everything else default.

This comes from various suggestions on the web and my own (limited) experience. If anyone has any suggestions please forward them along to me.

Multipass, 1st pass took me awhile to figure out. You render first with Multipass, 1st pass, then a second time using just 1st pass saving over the original file.

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Sets
Usually on the coffee tables in the living room or on the dining room table. I use a thin styrofoam base to pin the puppets and props down using straight pins. The puppets are made with pin holes in their feet.

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PuppetsClick here for all postings about my puppet creation.
The torso and pelvis are made of balsa wood. Head, hands, and feet are made with sculpey. Arms and legs are bamboo skewers wrapped in the wire used for the armature and super glued for stability. The armature is 24 guage florist wire twisted with an electric drill four wires thick. Clothes are either hand made from scraps or modified doll clothing.