Saturday, June 27, 2015

Over a min of footage!!

Hey guys,

  Been a little gap since my last post.....

I passed the 1 min mark guys -

 .......I Have been busting my hump at LAIKA and have not had much time or energy to blog after some of those Hard weeks on the field....

Here it is Friday..... and I just finished my 19th shot....a quick 45 frame shot of one of  our heroes running from one of our villains.

Short or Long they all are hard and they all have at least one Puzzle to solve...
also....with all the sets getting over 100 degrees on stage it doesn't make it any easier.

One of the puzzles that you never hear about from stop mo guys are {RIGS- shadows- lighting?}

So......

In every shot I do....a rigger will set up something to help me control- support - move my characters through the shot.


this is like an erector set of metal gears and rods to control and rotate many axis's ......or float -fly characters.

It also is often used for BIG characters that are just too HEAVY to support them selves with their legs.

now ----once you have a contraption to support your puppet - you need to animate it smartly-














This can be a big puzzle-

......especially when dealing with multiple characters who are interacting physically with each other.

1. Keep the support rigs from overlapping the puppets - hard to paint out in post.

2. Keep weird rig shadows from crossing the puppets or - hard to fix places - this can often happen and can be a pain for post guys....its all just another puzzle to think about while trying to create smooth animation.....arrrghh

3. Animating then ----MID shot ---- switching out for new rigs throughout a shot -{Due to cross over or say coming in from flight to a landing..} spinning and needing to prevent overlap.

 This can be very very slow and often pulls your puppet out of position which you have to spend time getting back as close as possible.....

I never really knew about this stuff till I went Pro at LAIKA.....and Now I feel VERY comfortable with it......

because every shot I do is a Rigging MASTER class.....tons of action requires TONS of rigging.

just wanted to share.


in LAIKA news -

   I feel a full member of the team now......{been here almost 6 months}..and am producing on average 1 shot a week....all though the last 2 weeks have been 2 shots each..which is the most I have done so far.

This is over a min of footage guys...that's a big milestone. I left Paranorman with 3 min of footage....I am hoping for 2 min on KUBO.....but these shots are so much more complicated it might not happen.

The fight scene will be my task the entire time I am at LAIKA. The 19 shots
 are editing well together and with the post are looking quite Nice.

I really cant wait to share!!!

last but not least.

Since I have been in Portland I discovered an awesome BMX park...{The Lumberyard}...

.. I landed one of my DREAM tricks that I wanted since I was a little kid....and being 40 now and having pretty much quit riding.....

I truly thought I would never do it.....but....... I made it happen!!! IT was an incredible feeling...... another DREAM come true.

here it is ----

2 comments:

Shelley Noble said...

Really helpful post, J-riggs. Saw that landing score on YT. Amazing.

Alonso said...

Hot Damn fancy trick there. Impressive that you've got the guts to keep trying and trying, if you mess yourself up workings gonna be that much harder. You're hardcore man, tough as nails.
Super interesting stuff with the rigs, thanks for sharing. I'm wondering how they are attached to the characters? (in your Dirk shot you just wrapped the wire around the character, I'm assuming Laika's got fancier tricks then that.) Do you do much with foot tie downs? (seems like there's always some fly rig attached in all the behind the scenes footage/photos.)
How about the facial acting stuff? Do you preanimate that in the computer? (Boxtrolls had kind of a CG pop thru superimposed over storyboards in the extras) What about the animators who are anti computer?
Rock on man, you're an inspiration!