Back Breaker- BIG shot

Hey Guys,

sorry for the pause between the last post....been super busy-

Film Animating- Freelance Animating -and Day job Animating - LOTS of FUN stuff for me...

I am just 4 weeks from E3 which happens to be our also be our ALPHA date.....This is a HUGE deadline at work before the title ships....Our Game was announced and is going to be a HUGE hit this Holiday so keep an eye out!!!

so....on to the Film.....

I spent the last 2.5 weeks on this Monster shot which was just a BIG ole pain filled piece of work.
 Nothing was comfy about this set up......and I knew it was gona take a serious amount of time to accomplish.

For this shot I had to crawl up on the set almost every frame to reach the puppet.....
The puppets for most of the shot were supported by my trusty 5 pound weight








which is not the most precise way to maintain controll of a puppets poses through a piece of animation.........I usually had to crawl crawl all the way under the tables and try and hook up a tie down for the feet......recipe for a stiff back.

....I spent time trying not to squish the clay too much...
or bump the set pieces too much to recover in post....which of course happend..ha!!

I knew the set was going to shift over such a long shot.........I also knew that my puppet might not make it all the way through the shot in tact.{Dober broke-2wice}...

.but I started this one with some serious hope and excitement for a possible REEL piece of animation......

 technical difficulties - whatever........ performance - the most important element....Is what I was really worried about...and I worked that out in advance with my trusty film Partner- Shel.

Instead of Drawing thumbnails for this ....I decided the walk through approach was the BEST approach.....we literally went into the garage.....and Choreographed the path with a broken stunt puppet in hand....

we tried to get most of what we wanted in the path- flips and Nimbleness...close calls- and then some fun timing in the animation that would keep the tempo from being too Flat or even.

after that it was just HARD work

so.....after a couple weeks of feeling  low back pain.....i finally finished this guy and am here to share it with you.

I was fairly happy with the shot but I feel some of the moves needed different staging for optimal read - which i hope to apply with some tasty cut ins and closeups.

there is definitely opportunity for some Fun shots and We hope to take advantage of it......

here are the NAKED frames to show the behind the scenes magic before I painted out the wire...

so....onto the NEXT big challenge which after some fun one nighter shots- I will have to figure out
how to do a sandstorm in Cotton balls......stay tuned for some fun tests on that one.

In other news I have been doing some freelance again at a few of the local studios.....this has been incredibly rewarding and great for paying some billz all together....Its truly an exciting time for stopmotion animation out there....and I feel so lucky to be able to animate on both sides of the fence.

Big cool adventures ahead-

In Paranorman news-we have the Art of Book up for pre order on Amazon and I love the cover!!
It just says it all to me.....

I also just saw on BigBadToyStore.com that Paranorman figures are up .....my toy collecting dork hairs were tingling when I saw these!! I am so excited that our film will have figures...he he


As for the trick of the week - I am injured at the moment again with a groin pull{sucks} always warm up guys.......... but I am still managing to throw a couple of stunts here and there in prep for my Bday at the stuntnasium!!!!!.

 Trick of the week-

FrogHop to front

Aedon Obstacle course-

Robert - monkey skip hop-


jriggity