Worked on Money Bunny's armature today. It may not look like much to you, but to me.... hoo boy. Lot's of good life lessons can be learned from working with metal. The pieces aren't attached in this photo, but work pretty decently when they're put together. So the spine is finished, next order of business is to solder spine and clavicle joint to ribcage. Then make arms, hands, legs, feet, and tail.
How to drill a good tap:
-Sit down, take deep breaths, slow and careful, make sure it's straight, USE TAP LUBE and the threads will cut like a butter sandwich.
- Also, the taps split in half seem to work better than the taps split into 3rds.

:D

Zoetrope Tunnel, LIGHT TESTS.
Richard Roy, CCS instructor and very camera-savvy friend, is helpin' me out with the final shoot of my zoetrope elements. That'll be this coming Saturday morning. Each layer will be shot along-side a back-lit matte for clean compositing. Process: capture one frame in toplight, then capture one frame in backlight, animate, and repeat until 12 frames are captured. This means no green screen, and the greens will show up in the final composition just as I please.

Zoetrope 1: toplight

Zoetrope 1: backlight

Another one

And another one

THINGS THAT I REALLY SHOULDN'T FORGET OR RICHARD WILL HAVE TO TELL ME AGAIN:
- set ISO at 100 for controlled light situations like this, in studio settings
- always shoot video elements in medium-light situations; this leaves more information in the files for post-production correction if you please to turn up brightness or increase contrast
- with lighting, start as simply as possible, add more to fine-tune (bounces for soft light), and
leave room for yourself when access is necessary, i.e. stop motion animation :)
- get a lazy susan
- other stuff that I probably forgot already (when it comes back, which it will, I'll edit the post)

Just a stupid animation that I did yesterday. Hope it makes you smile :)

I'm taking a ball and socket armature building class with my mentor and friend, Larry Larson. This is Armature #1, lots of trial and error but she functions pretty well... a little rust from blood and tears but not enough to impair mobility :) Armature #2: Money Bunny's skeleton, and I can't wait to get him together.





This is DOLLY. She's got the starring role in The Money Bunny Blues now. I can't wait to animate her, all cartoony and stuff. It's gonna be great. Wire armature and stitched up seams with a wooden head.

Zoetrope tunnel, object zoetropes composited in after effects. Pretty hypnotizing! This is for the Money Bunny Blues, when Dolly falls down the Money Hole.