Anyone have Stopmotion experience?

[fastbilly1]

Complete shot in the dark, but It thought I would ask. I have always loved stop motion, and thanks to my new shutter release for my GH1, I can finally start playing with it at a proper level. I am planning on building a small studio with a cycwall in my office, but I was curious to what others have used.

My stopmotion will all be done on green screen so I can superimpose it on existing footage mostly as a gag. And to make horribly bad C movie dinosaur thrillers or some sort of space epic (though that is a hybrid of stop motion and traditional miniature videography).

[Limewater]

I played around with it a decent bit as a kid, but never seriously. I didn't have proper equipment, so I was limited to using a camcorder, which meant low frame rates. On our oldest camcorder, I got pretty good at hitting the start and stop buttons right to get about 3 frames per second. Later, when I was fourteen, we got a camera with a mode to shoot 1/4 second at a time.

In seventh grade for a class project I made a silent semi-epic depicting Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, Moses receiving the ten commandments, the Israelites worshiping the Golden Calf, and a prelude to their forty years of wandering on the Sinai peninsula. It was made mixed media, I guess, as part of it was animated on a chalk board.

Later, when we first got our better camcorder, I made a five-minute film using a micro machines Star Wars playset I had gotten my brother for Christmas. It featured a Wampa managing to sneak into the Rebel outpost and wreak havoc until the rebels manage to kill it. I actually re-made it three times until I was happy with it.

In tenth grade, again for a class project, I made a film based upon Animal Farm. Interestingly enough, that was the one time I did animation for a class project and wasn't the only one.

I've done some other little doodle stuff, always with toys. One involved a guy getting eaten by an alligator and then being attacked when he arrived in hell. I think he managed to win and the alligator spit him back out, but I don't entirely remember. That was the only one where I recorded a separate audio track, because I had found a really cheap, crappy mixing board at a thrift store. It didn't work very well, though.

I actually really wanted to try to find work in special effects and stop motion animation when I was younger, but I think I was born about fifty years too late for that to have been a good idea. I'm sure my childhood experiences weren't exactly what you were asking for, but I enjoyed recalling them.

[BurningDoom]

We did a stop-motion video in our high-school video class. This is when Celebrity Deathmatch was popular, and we emulated that. It took freaking for ever! You literally film the thing frame-by-painstaking-frame.

[neilencio]

Sorry for not being any use fastbilly, I have had some experience but they're way less than what would be considered amateur.

See, when I was in gradeschool I used my parents' sony digicam to make a 2 minute stop motion video of Batman humping Barbie. My career in filmmaking was tragically ended shortly after my parents saw the premiere of said movie.

I'm just glad they never saw the other movie, which had Snake Eyes humping the black lion from Voltron.

[Hobie-wan]

I did some at school, but it was quite a while ago. I couldn't tell you what the camera was to save my life but we were using a frame recorder on an Amiga. It will help to have the ability to flip between the last frame(s) and the current view before adding a new frame so you can check your motion.

If you've never done any animation at all before it might be good to do some drawn animation first. Basic stuff like a ball bounce, squash & stretch, follow through & overlap, and maybe a walk cycle. You could do these on index cards and use your setup to test getting the cards filmed first. If is essential that you be able to leave your project alone for a bit and have it not be disturbed, especially if you are stopping in the middle of a 'scene'. If you're going to film 3D stuff, keep in mind you will be lighting it just like a stage. You'll need a lot of lights unless you're going for something very dramatic. This also means your workspace is likely to get very warm. Something to remember especially if you're going to do any claymation.

Not trying to dissuade you from your project, just need some prep and some things to look out for.

[Anapan]

my friends and I did something with modeling clay and a die-cast trans-am a really long time ago. We were all smoking pot so all I can really remember is cutting out fake blood from red wrapping paper and the phrase "vagina poop".
Here's a behind-the-scenes from robot chicken. It shows you what they do to put it all together. There's more of these on the DVDs.

[fastbilly1]

Dont fret over yall sharing stories, its all good. Fond memories.

I understand Hobie. Ive worked in the film/tv industry on and off my whole life so I understand the importance of rigging and practice. I was going to build a cyc on an old table and the mount my totas on cstands about 8 feet above it. I figured that would give an even spread of light, but if i have to Ill switch to chimeras. I figure an even soft light would be ideal for this - based on what Ive seen from the Harryhausen workshop. Ive actually read two of the three of the Harryhausen books and all of the ASC's books on lighting models and low cost special effects lighting but I am still a amateur by all means.

Anapan, I sadly forgot to look into Robot Chicken. I guess its time to buy those dvds.

[Hobie-wan]

I'm not sure if the movie DVDs have behind the scenes stuff, but the Wallace and Gromit short collection does.

[Jrecee]

I used to animate my ninja turtle figures. And I also had these really poseable lego guys that came with lego car kits.