I have been having a lot of fun animating and making a video. Walk cycle test… Hmm.. you will see the result below. And post production with my old friend After Effects to make a full HD video for youtube. After all is completed and I uploaded video to youtube, I have found out that youtube pics up the frame in the middle of the video as a video still automatically and there is no way to change it.. So, next time I make a video to upload youtube, I will put the film title right in the middle of the video !?…

Edit: Just published the post and tried viewing video. If you have hard time viewing video here, you can click here to view in my youtube account.

I have been working on lighting for a while now. First of all I would like to thank Darkstrider who has been huge help about lighting and using Lumix FZ50. When I first started, I did not know much about lighting a stop motion set. Now, I have some ideas about which lights I would need, how to setup those lights and which other materials I may need to achive a good lighting. Next comes using the camera to “take” that shot correct. So, a lifelong homework… experiment different lighting setups and try the best camera settings.

Let me start with the short animation test I made:

As much frames as possible I coud get with a tripod. What do you think?

Lighting:

To get this sunset like lighting the idea was: orange as key light, blue as fill light, red and blue as back light. I did not want to get an exact sunset look. Some time maybe right at the end of sunset.. little more darker and I wanted to add another light from the top right maybe as a moon light. That time of the day is too early for a moonlight but wanted to have that light there… Here is a picture of tree as a whole. You can click picture to enlarge.

And almost forget to write; I painted another background. This time a black and white sky. I will not use this in the actual film either; just for testing.

The most amateur lighting setup I have here. There are 5 lights. One regular house light on the right side as a key light. First covered with baking paper and then yellow, red (to get orange) transparent kite paper and then black crepe paper at the top to adjust the light intensity. A blue pin spot on the left as a fill light with baking paper as a diffuser and hanged on an umbrella stand. Between background painting and the tree, at the bottom; there are 2 back lights: one red pin spot with a baking paper diffuser and one regular small house light covered with baking paper and yellow kite paper. On top of these 2, there is a black crepe paper again. There is another transparent pin spot on the right back with kind of a gobo made with a black tape. I used a broken tripod to make a stand for this spot. This kind of setup can not be used to shoot the actual film for sure but worked very well for me to test some lighting ideas.

So, this is what I would do for my film set in terms of lighting: I will buy some better lights. Nothing like fancy expensive ones.. Maybe a spotlight and then make some barndoors etc,.. There are some great ideas both Mike Brent gave me also I read on stopmotionanimation.com I might use these pin spots; only need to make someflicker tests. I will definetely buy color gels and also ND filters. I tried to make substitues for these but no way to adjust light as the way I need and also using materials like kite papers are dangerous.. you know those can burn easily and should never be left for long times while the lights on.

This film is going to be dark. I want a very dramatic look. I have been thinking about even shooting black&white. There are some tests below here:

See the black and white one on the second row. Here I tried to get a “Dore Lighting” (another great information from Darkstrider) Picture quality is not very good but I like the dramatic light change on different parts of this picture. Again, you can click picture to enlarge.

Using Lumix FZ50

This has been the first time I have really tried Lumix on animation. It works pretty well. Even though I had those funky lights I almost did not get any flicker. Just a little and I think it is beacuse of the regular house lights I use. It took me for a while to really understand how this camera response different ligthing setups. I heard people saying that Lumix does not work well under low light conditions… Nonsense!! As long as you adjust the shutter speed and F stop correct; allowing long exposure times; camera works great. The only problem I could not get over was the noisy picture quality in full size. FZ50 can shoot 10mp at 4:3 aspect ratio and 7mp in HD. When I view the 10mp picture in full size, I see the noise. But, I never need to use that 10mp one in full size. When I make the picture smaller I get a full high quality picture for my film.

The most impressing thing for me to see how “focus lock” feature works great. You know, you need to use everything manual when you shoot stop motion. I was curious to see how Lumix stays in focus in manual focus mode. You first manually adjust the focus and then hit focus luck button. Then voila.. you have a focused camera even if you turn it upside down.. kind of like what i did here to shoot.

Here are the settings of my camera during this shooting:

ISO 100
F stop 10
Shutter speed 5sn
White Balance: Tungsten

So, again thank you Darkstrider for helping me out for the right settings! Also my friend Mert here showed me how to adjust some settigns and was very helpful.

Animator HD Personal:

This is the software I am using to shoot stop motion. My previous tests was without live view (with Canon) and I am suprised to see how much a frame grabber makes things easier. Lumix connected to PC with a converter sending live feed to Animator HD. Taking 2 pictures for one frame; one from AnimatorHD and another with a wired remote from camera for full resolution picture to be stored inside the card.

Camera Movement:

I shot these frames using my new tripod with a 3-way adjustable head. I knew this was not going to be smooth enough but wanted to use before I make a slider for the camera. I am not after a very smooth animation but definetely want to achive something better than this. I also tried ease in/out but no way with this tripod. Hey I am also learning how to animate Stop motion… a complete challenge for me; learning, learning, learning… how nice!!

So, I need to plan scenes carefully and make a camera slider.. maybe couple sliders for different parts.

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And as always, here is my little bunny woke up around 4 in the morning while I was working on lighting. Came to my room with her “kuzu” (means sheep in Turkish) in her hand and said that she wanted to make a film too Then suddenly she decided to be an actress and here is the result…

Finally, I am posting about Kush… A lot of things happening here since my last post. I moved my studio to another room in our house, tried making a rig for Kush, purchased AnimatorHD Personal and tried Lumix. This post is going to be long enough so, I will post about these later. SO, here she is; Kush… you can click to enlarge:

And a quick flying test done with Canon 350D without live view and a spycam.

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Here is the process:

Adding Rig Points and Final Tweaking of the Armature

I first revised legs and the tail. Added 2 rig points to the top on her back and 2 other below the shoulders through her thummy. Later I fixed the detachable wing part with epoxy putty. Because I decided to make the feathers in a different way and it was not possible to have detachable wings.

Preparing Kush for Feathers and Making of Claws 1

I glued foam onto the armature using a spray glue then trimmed with a small scissor. Old winter socks became the skin to glue over feathers later. I sewn the fabric with a black thread tightly. Then I wrapped claws with yarn.

Making of Feathers

For the wings; I used real bird feathers. Cut those into small sizes and then sewn over the yarn covered wing parts. For the torso, I glued colored feathers directly. Colored feathers are from a funcky hair clip of mine. Hey wait… “the master of puppets” came to give me some ideas in the middle of this process. See picture in the bottom center

Claws 2

Fingers seemed too thick to me. I ripped off previously wrapped yarn and replaced with a thinner one. Then operation time… Covered body with aluminum foil and applied liquid latex over yarn covered fingers by a piece of foam. After 2 layers of latex is dried I wrapped black thread to make the stripes over fingers. And applied another layer of latex and left it to dry. (you can also use hairdrier for faster drying.) Thanks to Nick Hilligoss  for his tutorials about how to work with liquid latex. If you have not done yet, make sure to check out his pages. I have learned a lot  from his tutorials.

Claws… I made claws out of a thin cardboard. Dipped each claw shaped cardboard into black tinted liquid latex (with acrylic paint) and left to dry. Then attached claws to fingers with un-tinted latex. Thanks to The Lone Animator for this great idea.
And my favorite process: patina.. I wanted this bird look very old, ancient… So, I applied blue antique powder paint first and then gold wax metalic finish. I did the same for the nib which you see below.

Head

I made the head out of super sculpy. Painted with acrylic and covered with feathers. Applied gold with a patina process to the nib. Then fixed the head into its place with a piece of epoxy putty. The head can still move a little allowing turning right and left, bending back anf forth.

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I cant help to post this picture. We had a lot of fun with my daughter in the dark room while shooting the above test. She came in right before I started shooting and mixed up everything. I had to adjust all again after she left but that was totally fine as I really like to see her around while I work on this film.

Did I ever tell you about the project I have been working on? Yes, it is a stopmotion film but let me tell you little bit about the first movie I will be shooting: It is going to be couple minutes long with one puppet, a big clock, big big tree and some birds. It is going to be dark, alone,… It is about time; chronos…