Cleaning out your computer always has its unexpected benefits... this poster is pretty far from what ended up as my final concept for the film, The Hand of One Hundred

Chasing the Money Bunny

Chasing the Money Bunny

Here are some sketches of scenes from my newest film, Money Bunny. It'll be all the cuteness I ever wanted to make, rolled and sugar and topped with rainbow sprinkles. Just you wait! :)

The Hand of One Hundred from Ellen Coons on Vimeo.

the film is finished :)

THE HAND OF ONE HUNDRED <-- click me

ALIEN SPACESHIP
Step 1: design
Special credit to my brother, Marty Coons, for designing the alien spaceship. This is his initial sketch. He's got beautifully wacko designs in his head (here's more of Marty's work), and I'm glad we got to collaborate on this.

Step 2: vacuum forming
Marty made models for the three base shapes out of 20lb foam, and we molded them out of clear plastic. It's funny, as I write this I can smell ghost fumes. The paint is on the inside so they'll be nice and shiny on the outside!

Step 3: assembly
I took my broken boombox apart, and used some of the parts to make the spaceship look more technologically advanced. I wanted the look to contrast with the crafty handmade-ness of the cardboard city and its wax citizens.

rear view

side view

front view

Step 5: ANIMATE!
I just shot the first scene with the spaceship in it. Now I'm looking forward to destroying it :)

Me! and Cardboard City
This is just to give you an idea of scale... or it was supposed to be. It's actually a lot larger than that in relation to my head.

The Cast, Backstage!
A couple of the ponies, waiting for their scene to be animated. It should be within the week. Also a little pile of cars, and a row of wax men. They are frozen in positions of the different frames of a walk cycle. Replacement animation seemed a lot easier than animating something so tiny and mushy by bending it.

Crayon Melter
This was really fun: I painted the wax people with crayon, melted by this thing made specifically for painting with wax! Ali gave it to me :) You're the best Ali!

The Citizens of Cardboard City
Here are all the wax figures I made. I didn't count them, but i'm estimating a population somewhere around one MILLION. They were all made by hand out of microcrystalline wax, which melts pretty quickly when it's zapped by an alien lazer!!

WATCH some of my rejected scenes! Official footage will not be released until I'm finished :P

Whoa check it!
So, the strings are tricky, but I've decided to go ahead and use them anyways. Here is the link to my flight tests as of yet:
pegasus frolicking loopy loop
the clumsy descent from heaven
I'm learning that NOTHING in stop motion can happen right the first time. Who'd have thought? My violin-string-flight-adjustor boxes work perfectly. But silly me, I did not design them so that my flying horse/angel/spaceships will be able to CHANGE DIRECTION in midair. I thought I could get away with animating the turning of the set and create the ILLUSION that the horses were flying through place, however it's a little fake because the horses remain perfectly placed within the frame as everything else moves around them. This was a dumb, lazy thought. Luckily the violin-string-flight-adjustor boxes are only fastened to the stands by masking tape, so I can easily take them down and make adjustments. What I will need is some sort of pulley system, something like a rod that extends from the box, and can be adjusted left to right. However, there is a problem in that I could only attach one arm per box, when I had planned to have up to three flying objects at a time. Only one of three would be able to change direction! Here's a diagram, it may or may not help you understand what I'm talking about:


BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD :)

Yay! My set is finished!
A city of cardboard was all I could afford.
I cut it up and glued it in,
and strung it through with chord.
Mostly, it is made from stuff I had lying around or snatched from friends and family, but there were a few things I had to purchase: glue (both super and hot), wood (for the base and table), dowels and wire (for the telephone poles), foamcore...
For a pan-view clip, link to vimeo!
http://vimeo.com/19933495


Now remains the question: how will I animate the flying angels and ponies!?!? I am hoping to order the Dragon Stopmotion software within the next couple of days. It looks awesome! I watched a tutorial and the interface seems very sensible and as if it were actually designed by an animator.
But now to ask the real question: is it more sensible to animate the ponies flying through my set on strings, or to prop them up on green screens and composite later? I will be testing this out this week. String flight first; I really do want to avoid as much compositing as I can. Why? Because there is something magical about seams and strings that you don't see so often these days. My animation is done by hand and in this project, I want to emphasize that fact. Not to mention, it seems like less fun to match lighting and angles for compositing.
I'm thinking that I will have to make some sort of wind-up device to adjust the string height. Just a simple peg in a hole-type-thing. Something that would remain snug, but loose enough for me to adjust. Like my violin strings! Good idea Travis, you're sweet!

Does anyone read this shit?