Stikfas are small, articulated plastic figures that are a nice tool for anyone wanting to try out a quick stop-motion puppet animation. They clip together quickly and and are light and small for table-top animation (I find them a bit too light and small to work with, but many others create really interesting films with the figures).
But it seems the company is going out of business, so if you want to try out some animation ideas using Stikfas, better snap up some figures now. I found out from the fine Stopmotionstore.com, which is selling off its stock of figures, but there’ll be other suppliers (eBay, especially, I imagine).
Curses – just missed the stop-motion animation maestro’s 90th birthday yesterday (June 29th). Belated best wishes to the master of fantasy skeleton swordplay!
This landmark coincides with a special exhibition of his models and puppets at the London Film Museum on London’s South Bank. The Ray Harryhausen – Myths and Legends exhibition will be open for a full 12 months, so there’s no excuse to miss it.
After that, If we’re lucky, his collection of storyboards, props and sets should then be donated to the National Media Museum in Bradford – as long as it can raise the money to preserve the collection.
Why was Ray Harryhausen a stop-motion genius? This scene from Jason & The Argonauts [DVD] [1963] of a sword fight with reanimated skeletons should give you a clue…
Stop.Frame is reporting on some of the student animation shows around the country over the next few weeks. First up is UCA Farnham graduate Chloe Rodham.
Chloe is responsible for the standout film of the UCA animation show this year – Smile – a story of frustrated love set in a travelling circus in the 1920s. It wears its influences on its sleeve a bit (basically it’s Madame Tutli-Putli goes to the circus), but it’s a beautiful piece of work.
The film isn’t available to watch in its entirety, but there are some clips in her showreel shown here. Watch out for Smile in animation festivals around the country over the next year – I bet it’ll be in the running for some prizes.
Why is this film so good?
Lovely puppet design – quirky, evocative and expressive. Like Madame Tutli-Putli, there’s no lip synch, and very little mouth movement, but the puppets are so expressive you don’t notice. All the work is in the eyes, and the result is characters that seem real.
Beautiful character animation – this isn’t an all-action film, but nor has Chloe skimped on the animation. There’s a heap of beautiful character animation on show, with lots of emotion and it’s all well-paced and fluid. I really believed in the life of the characters.
Great set design – it took me until the second viewing, and some inside information, to realise that the sets and backgrounds were all computer generated. Normally this is something you have to grit your teeth through – students use a ropey CG background to save time set-building, and it shows. But this is brilliantly done. The sets seem lovingly created and, though they do have a slightly different quality when you really pay attention, this actually enhances the slightly unreal, dreamlike quality of the film. And the compositing is seamless. Great work.
Story – well, possibly the story is the weak part of the film, in that it doesn’t really make sense on first viewing. But then, no one knows what on earth was Madame Tutli-Putli about, and that had an Oscar nomination. But what it lacks in plot it makes up for in atmosphere. And this is a mood piece first and foremost, so it absolutely works.
So many student films have good puppet making, or good sets and props, or good photography and lighting, or good animation. Smile has them all – a superb effort for a student project. I hope we’ll see much more of Chloe’s work in the months and years to come.
It’s graduate show time around the UK, as animation students prepare their showreels and reveal their creative work for probably the first time.
Animation festivals rely heavily on graduate work for their shorts programme – so if you go to some of the leading graduate shows you’ll end up seeing a lot of the year’s animation in advance.
This year, Stop.Frame will be sending its team of crack stop-motion animation critics out to as many of the student shows as we can fit in, to report on the state of student stop-motion and puppet animation work.
So how is this year shaping up? Thursday night’s opening night party for the UCA graduation show(see showreel above) revealed some top talent to watch in stop-motion animation, so we’ll be focusing on those first. Stay tuned for reviews and clips of the best of the puppet films over the next few weeks…
I’m not usually a big fan of pixellation (animating the human body), but this is very well done – a music video of the track “Her Morning Elegance” by Oren Lavie.
Typically, I’m so out of touch that this is totally new to me – but it won a deserved Grammy this year for best music video.
Stop.Frame has been following the progress of Doctor Knowgood – a short puppet animation film by Dutch animator Arnold Zwanenburg, shot in Indonesia over the past six months or so.
It’s taken a few weeks for Arnold to adjust to being back in Rotterdam, but he’s now put together the fifth instalment of his account of the making of the film.
5) The shoot
Stop.Frame We’ve got to the point of the shoot itself. How did that go? Tell us about the things you learned and the problems you had to overcome. In a way it’s the biggest question – so lets break it down into some of the technical elements – from lighting and camera to rigging and animation.
Arnold Zwanenburg Finally I send you a new entry for the blog! Sorry to keep everyone waiting for the next episode – it’s taken a little while to get back to my normal routine.
Lighting I wanted to use indirect, soft lighting in the set. A strong light source was needed, but I didn’t want to use 1,000W, heat-creating lamps like they used in the Bristol Animation School. So I looked for the strongest energy saving lamp I could find.
This was 125W (equivalent to an old 600W bulb). It was so big, it didn’t fit in any existing armature – so I made the armature myself with a bit of wood and aluminium plate (see photo, right).
The light was reflected on three styrofoam panels above the set. This was enough light for exposure times around half a second with my camera settings. For a darker corner I used 6 seconds, which is do-able – but it does break the flow of animation a bit.
Though energy saving lamps generally worked well, they did cause me some problems too. Tweaking is difficult, as light regulators for these type of lamps are not so common yet. Ideally, I would have lit a corner with plants (see photo, left), as if the sun was shining through a collapsed roof. It was hard to direct the light of an energy saving lamp to it, and the light from special stage lamps I could borrow (halogen) looked very fake, because they have a very different colour compared to my main energy saving lamp.
In the end I improvised with the lid of a cookie tin that reflected the main lamp. It helped to bright up the spot a bit, but nothing like the blinding sunbeam I had in mind. Time had run out, so better luck next time!
Camera set-up I really like the small depth of field that you see in animations of the Brothers Quay(see photo, right). I learned that SLR still cameras have the best features and lenses for this. I bought the Canon 40D, which was one of the first with Live View. This enables you to have a live image of your scene on your laptop, seen through the lens. With older DSLR cameras you have to take a picture before you can judge the position of your puppet.
This Live View feature helped me a lot to make smooth animation. Most was shot with a lens with a range of 17-85 mm. A bit more zoom capacity would have been helpful for some shots – then you can place the camera further away from the set, with less risk of accidentally bumping into it.
Shooting in RAW image format would have been ideal for the image quality, but hard drive space and processing speed held me back.
Computer set-up I bought Dragon Stop Motion 2.0 to install on my MacBook Air. This program has a nice workflow. I love working with the keyboard, and this program even comes with a customised USB-keypad, which gives access to all important functions, right on the animation table.
Too bad I couldn’t use it, as my laptop only has one USB connection – and that one went to my camera. I used my laptop keyboard instead, which worked also fine. More important to tell is that the program displays the animation smoothly, even when you shoot in high resolution (3888 x 2592 pixels in my case). That is, if the computer doesn’t overheat, which brings us to the following issue.
Heat and noise Afternoons especially can be very hot in Indonesia – about 30-35 degrees Celsius – and the air is very damp. I noticed that my computer always gave up working properly just a bit before I came to my limit.
I bought one of these small fans that you place under your laptop – which helped a bit. But bigger material was absolutely necessary (see photo, left). For my personal comfort I placed another big fan on the floor. This one blew the cooler air up, without disturbing the tiny loose bits in the set. However I noticed that I worked much more productively in the cool night, when computer overheating is not an issue, and it’s absolutely quiet outside.
Rigging To prevent the lion and the monkey from falling over, I used screws to attach them to the floor. This picture is taken from under the animation table (see photo, above left). Using strong magnets (see photo, above right) to hold the feet in place is a little quicker, but the monkey could still turn a bit when standing on a single foot, that’s why I preferred screws for animation. I used the magnets only when I quickly wanted to place a puppet for planning shots and composition.
In my animation, a lion makes a jump, so special rigging was necessary to suspend the lion in mid-air (see photo, above left). I used fishing wire around the neck and the waist of the lion and attached it to a bar over the set. For every movement I simply slid the bar a bit sideways.
What I like about this method is that I could give the lion a bit of a swing, to make it look blurry on the photos (see photo, above right). This didn’t only give me a natural motion blur, the blur also made the fishing wires invisible. No need to erase them in PhotoShop afterwards!
I also used wires to make a bottle fly through the air (see photo, right). The method is a bit like hanging marionettes. The small bottle is attached to wires, which in their turn are attached to a piece of cork. The cork is held on a thick aluminium wire that can be bent to position it.
Animation From the six months of this project in Indonesia I used only 1.5 for animation! The other 4.5 went into preparation – organisation, set and prop building, puppet making (mainly the lion), making an animation table, lights, making the storyboard, preparing the studio space, etc.
For most shots I made a little video of myself for reference. In the video above I’m preparing for next day’s shoot. This shot appears when a roar of the lion blows the monkey away.
I analysed the movements and wrote down durations (see photo, left). The resulting shoot is my favourite. In the video below, the paper the monkey is holding is actually made of aluminium foil covered with normal print paper. The jacket is animated by bending aluminium strips inside the seams. Leaves in the background are animated with a fishing wire.
I was a bit afraid for the shot where the lion comes in and sits down (see video below).
Sitting is not always easy with animation puppets – armatures can be too rigid. Often a separate puppet for sitting is made. In this case that was not needed – the construction of clay and aluminium wire was very flexible: I could just bend the legs aside the body.
The most time-consuming shot was the lion walking in the room (1.5 days of work for 4 seconds of animation). Particularly time-consuming were also the shots where the lion shows his teeth (see video above). For every frame, I had to meticulously remove the Plasticine stuck on his teeth. Meanwhile, the lion was getting impatient to perform. But he behaved well – and I still have all my fingers…
Still more to come from this Indonesian extravaganza – stay tuned for editing and post-production.
I’ve been following the progress of Dutch animator Arnold Zwanenburg, who has been shooting Doctor Knowgood, a stop motion puppet animation about a know-all monkey in a lab coat, in scenic Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
The film is now finished, and had its premiere a couple of weeks ago in Indonesia. Unsurprisingly, Arnold spent the last few weeks of the shoot not sleeping, let alone answering questions for Stop.Frame. But now he’s back on his sofa in Rotterdam, he’s starting to put together the final reports on the production for this series.
4) The script
Stop.Frame You have talked about the character concept. First, did having such a clear idea of the character and the set-up help you with your script? How did you approach the writing? Was it “written” as such – or did you just storyboard?
Tell us about the storyboarding and anything else you think is interesting about the writing process. Also, maybe you could share any insights about creating a story for a short film – what are the important things to think about? (eg keeping the story simple; reducing the number of characters; having a strong central idea and no sub plots etc). I think it’s a real challenge to write something that’s suitable for a small-scale, short film, but still make it interesting and fun to watch, and have some depth of character and situation. How do you solve this conundrum?
Arnold Zwanenburg It’s absolutely worthwhile investigating your characters. Where does he come from (or she)? What does he want? How does he act? If you bring your story to a producer, they will probably ask this.
With one of my previous story ideas – about a girl being lost in an animated world – I couldn’t answer that question very concretely. The story was abstract and impressionistic. In my case funding would be difficult, the producer said. A track record of previous stop motion animation would help in that case. But it was just a first short for me… so how to make a start? ‘Why don’t you look more at Tom and Jerry,’ the producer said. The roles are clear, the problem is there, just rock ‘n’ roll!
Tom and Jerry I always enjoyed animating real action, but how do you write a story like for Tom and Jerry?! In short it’s just: cat wants mouse, but mouse is smarter and wins. The jokes are in the visual; in the timing; in the unexpected way the character solves a problem.
Clearly I need a problem. I started writing more stories, and came up with the monkey doctor, treating other animals. Patients would bring in their problems all the time. So we are in business. It’s not exactly Tom and Jerry – but at least the roles are clear from the beginning, and there will be problem-solving.
Learning from fables We already know much about animal characters. Just like in the old fables, the fox is cunning, the owl is wise – the characters already exist. There’s less time needed for introductions. I can always choose to adapt those characters, or play with the expectations we have from them.
I investigated the story ideas, and selected the ones that are under three minutes, have only two characters, and are still funny. At least a bit! In the end I am very happy to have finished one complete animation – even though it’s only 2,5 minutes long!
Storyboarding I find storyboarding very difficult, and waited too long with it, mainly because I wasn’t sure about the set design – the background. But the background plays a small role in the story, so I ended up with a storyboard with barely any background at all, drawn in thumbnail size. It’s better than nothing, because even a rough storyboard tells you if the story communicates.
Next time I will make a more detailed storyboard though – it helps to foresee problems – you already have to think about camera angles, composition and how to frame action. A clear storyboard would also help to communicate to others – especially if you want to use much action. It’s much more attractive to see a drawing of an action shot than to read a description of it.
Tips for writing All the process of finding a good story for animation has been a long struggle. I have got a big pile of ideas as a result of that. There is much to say about making a good scenario for animation. Here are some tips that might help you on the way…
Collect short stories, read them, analyse them… what is so good about it? Would it work on the screen? Most short stories are still too long to start with, so think of anecdotes, columns and poems too.
Find a course in writing for animation / for short film / or even for short stories. I found it a bit scary at first – I’m more a designer than a writer – but I got more confident when I learned that a scenario is just a description of what you would see on the screen (and hear of course). Just write down what you’d see is something I could do. Leave interpretation for the reader / the public.
Write a lot. Don’t stop writing stories until you have the feeling: this is the one! If you’re stuck on something – work on something else for a while and come back to it later.
Let others read your story – ask them to tell you in their words what happens. This way you quickly find out if your story is clear, what they see in it, and what they think of it.
Cut down on your characters. If you want some depth of character, you have to reduce their number. Also remember that making puppets for all your characters is going to be very time-consuming.
Keep your story simple. And small. When you get enthusiastic your story might grow endlessly. It’s a beautiful process, but before you know it you’re carving out Battlestar Galactica. Ambition is one thing, but if you want to go to outer space, you might want to fold a paper plane first and see how far it gets. Isn’t that what all those animators do at the Annecy film festival?
When Arnold’s recovered a bit, I’ll get him to revisit some of those gruelling, 16-hour days on the film set…
It’s always nice to get some feedback from animators about Stop.Frame. Puppet animation is a bit neglected online, so the point about this blog is to publicise some of the animators working in the field and also give some practical help and advice to would-be stop-framers.
So I was really pleased to receive a comment from Wales-based Gustavo Arteaga, whose animation Rapunzel’s Flightwon top place in the British Panorama section of the London International Animation Festival.
Gustavo’s work is really interesting – quite dark and surreal, using real locations and natural lighting alongside the puppets. He’s now gone online with a web site – gustavoarteaga.com.
On it you can find several more examples of his work – including an extract of the intriguing looking The Barter. It’s well worth a look – though as the films are hosted on his own site and not, say, on YouTube, they are quite small and you can’t expand them to full-screen. (And I can’t embed them here, either.)
There’s also a behind-the-scenes glimpse of his current project – a puppet adaptation of Rickie Lee Jones’s Alter Boythat I’m really looking forward to seeing.
They’re part of its wider collection of 1000+ live action, experimental and documentary films online. You can search the whole collection by film type, and also language. Unfortunately you can’t search the animation section by animation style, which would be really useful – I’d love to be able to just filter the puppet films, obviously.
But there’s lots of good stuff here. This one is Le Noeud Cravate by Jean-François Lévesque. Which means something like a knotted tie in English. No – I have no idea either…
This is a bit off-topic for Stop.Frame, given that Tim Burton’s new Alice in Wonderland is a part live action and part digitally animated movie, but what the heck. Here’s my two-minute critique (warning: spoilers ahead).
I did enjoy it – certainly much more than the other high-profile 3D movie phenomenon everyone has been talking about. In fact Avatar‘s script weaknesses went a long way towards offsetting its spectacular visual world-building. Alice in Wonderland had much better writing and was in its way more interesting to look at.
But for heaven’s sake – can fantasy film-making never escape the hand of Peter Jackson? First Alice wanders in a blasted landscape on her quest to rescue the Mad Hatter from the evil Sauron Red Queen, then she has to jump from one giant dead floating head to another to get across a stagnant moat. It’s Mordor all over again, from the ruined land to the dead marshes.
When the Jabberwock appears, it’s with a piercing scream straight from the creatures ridden by the Nazgûl in the battle for Minas Tirith. And there’s Alice doing battle on one of the ruined battlements, just like Aragorn (only a bit prettier) all in the service of Galadriel. Oops, I mean the White Queen. Oh dear – Lord of the Rings was a titanic achievement, but please can we move on now?
I also find myself in the awkward position of having to agree with something said by motormouth film critic Mark Kermode.
He hates 3D – in fact he’s made himself a pair of “un-3D” glasses to take the effect away. He pretty much argues that it’s a pointless frippery that takes away from the real purpose of film – telling stories – and adds nothing to the visual experience.
And after seeing Alice in Wonderland in 3D, I can only say he’s right. It would have been just as visually striking, and more comfortable to watch, without having to perch a pair of cheap plastic specs on your nose.
(I also thought this about Coraline. I’d have been quite happy to see that in plain ol’ 2D too – I’m pretty sure it would be just as effective.)
Slightly more on-topic – the animation is terrific. I loved Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the Cheshire cat was a triumph. I was also taken with the flying rocking horse insects that appeared from time to time. Great stuff.
Which all goes to show that you need more than cutting edge technology to create fascinating and engaging characters. After all, Lewis Carroll first came up with them in 1865…
It’s always nice to get some feedback from animators about Stop.Frame. Puppet animation is a bit neglected online, so the point about this blog is to publicise some of the animators working in the field and also give some practical help and advice to would-be stop-framers.
