Monday, September 5, 2011

Dreams and Nightmares...Half Way MARK.

Hey Guys,

A Shot from Chapter 3- Flea Bends the Rules.


LINE News - Shel and Aedon returned to L.A. .....but we are having our fellow stopmotion buddy Sven create Flea a real Live armature for my return to the film in January.


This is exciting!! ...since Flea has been all Wire armature until this point in the film....Sven is giving us an incredible gift in doing this job and I am excited to see the final piece.

LAIKA news- Here I am at the 5 month {half way} mark
......and I have now animated OVER 1 Full Minute of footage for the new film.....If this is a pace of My output I should have close to 2.5 Minutes when I return to L.A. Not a bad contribution to the Film......and I should have a pretty Nice Stopmotion AND just plain Animation Reel when I get back into town.

I Got through another Monster Shot last week....My longest Yet- Close to 6 seconds of animation with subtle acting- Dialog- and ACTION all in one BIG shot. This was quite taxing to complete but I had a Nice couple days of testing out a new puppet to ease out of the High stress shot.

So Hear I am going into a New week and new challenges.....and I am FULLY INSPIRED!!
I Went to weeklys last week to watch on the BIG SCREEN what the folks have been creating for the film and it was Breathtakingly AMAZING!!
UNbelieveable -.....I feel so Honored to be a part of this production guys....this film is without a doubt the most Amazing Stopmotion animated film EVER- #1 - CHAMPION....Poor JACK.
There has never been acting this good through puppets- there has never been Camera work so amazing - there has never been puppets this expressive before - There has never been ACTION in a stopmotion film anywhere near the Scale of this - WOW!!

HONORED-
I feel so Lucky to be living this Dream here in Portland.

Speaking of Dreams -HA!

- I here in Portland have struggled with sleeping on occasion due to a Mind and imagination running overdrive. This I found out this week is not just a justin thing- I talked with a few animators this last week who struggle with the same thing.....and describe the same symptoms..

for instance- I will find myself Turning in my sleep one frame at a time....and realizing I moved too far in my turn will reset back to my side before starting the turn animation again....Jeeeez!!

I will also Find myself....animating a hard spot In whatever my current animation is Over and Over..and over....all night long....NIGHTMARE.....

I have not found the best way to deal with this yet...ha!
this is one of those things you don't know about until your in the game of stopmotion...

more to come.

Still Havin fun!

jriggity

10 comments:

Vincent Tétreault said...

Keep going man.
You're the "bestest" !! :)

Stuart said...

I've had that sleep anxiety thing happen before. It was when I was working on a film. I stayed up all night animating a shot (11 straight hours). At the end I was a complete mess.

I tried to go straight to class, but because I had some problems with props moving while I was animating I would almost have an anxiety attack when anyone walked in the room or moved something in front of me. I would think "AAHH don't move that! I'll have to re-shoot!"

I only lasted about an hour before I went home and went to bed. I had to keep reminding my self that I didn't have to plan out my walk home frame by frame because the idea of walking was stressful.

I eventually fell asleep and woke up with a (mostly) stable mind. I was very thankful that I don't have plan out my own movements frame by frame.

MT said...

sounds great bro. Have you announced what the film is you're working out at Laika? I assume it's Paranorman?

It's great tuning in and seeing what's going on your end of the world. I look forward to when the non-disclosures are out of the way and you can point out which shots are yours!

M.

Shelley Noble said...

Most hilarious news of the month: that you guys SLEEP in Stop mo! LOL!

Most exciting news of the month:
that Sven is making you an incredible armature! It'll be a work of art even before you animate it!!!

Best to you all.

jriggity said...

Vincent} Thanks bro....

Stuart} yikes....I think leaving my own body out of the animation planning is a good idea....

Mattson} Paranormon is announced...and thats what I am on.
Wooo Hooo!

Its the most amazing Stopmotion Film ever!!

Aww man...I cant wait to share it either man....my best work ever.

Shelly}yeap...its crazy doing this stopmotion stuff.....and YES- I feel incredibly LUCKY to be getting a sven armature.

rich said...

ah man that is freakin amazing! congrats! dreams!! Nightmares..can relate to those, not the same but close. I was dreaming about taking on and off a coat of cg fur from the "monster" for about 6 months. also showing and hiding it from people and months of dreams just staring at it. hahaha. ridiculous.

can't wait to see this flick! Hey Jodelle Ferland ( who stars in monster) is doing one of the voices in paranorman! did u animate her character by any cahnce?

amoebaboy said...

I have heard it said the older you get the less sleep you need.

but this is obviously crap.
I seem to need just as much as i ever did.
hang in there man.

Joel Fletcher said...

Justin says:
"UNbelieveable -.....I feel so Honored to be a part of this production guys....this film is without a doubt the most Amazing Stopmotion animated film EVER- #1 - CHAMPION....Poor JACK. There has never been acting this good through puppets- there has never been Camera work so amazing - there has never been puppets this expressive before - There has never been ACTION in a stopmotion film anywhere near the Scale of this - WOW!!"

Really? The character performance in this film is better than THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS? It better be, there have been huge technological advances that benefit the stop-motion animator these days. I don't know why you are comparing to an 18 year old movie, except that it has iconic status. Lets see, you have frame capture software, digital rig removal, digital cameras, and replacement heads made by computer rapid prototyping. A better comparison would be against CORALINE, which arguably has the best stop-motion character work to date. I wonder how amazing the animation would be on the film you are making if the frame capture software was taken away? It's great that you are hitting your stride and proud of the achievements of the film, but you sound a bit smug.

On a different note, you really like to illustrate your posts with various pictures that clearly are not yours. Do you have permission to embellish your blog with them? This is one of my pet peeves, as it happens to me all the time. People mistakenly think it is OK to snag images off the net and post them on their site without permission or at least attribution.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like stop-mo delerium, Jriggity. At least you're healthy, man. A fever combined with it is the worst thing going. Everything starts to become a game which you have to win before you can go back to sleep. I've woken up and gotten that chill of someone being in the room with me when it was just a nightmare complete with auditory hallucination and the inability to move... Argh!

Unknown said...

Well written, well designed, inspiring and entertaining. Keep it up