"Dance of the Dolls"

"Dance of the Dolls" is a thoroughly mixed production format movie made with the aid of my program StopMotion Station.

The producers, Johnson Imagineering, have kindly let me embed the movie here. They show us what can be done with a vision, imagination, and a liberal dose of digital technology. Shall we dance?

If you have a movie you've made with the help of any of my software, I'd love to see it. Just email me at StopMotion-Software.com.

A mini-lockdown Nov. 10

The November 10 Zanymation Workshop on Stopmotion Station at QAS went well and was a lot of fun for the seven people attending. Here's a quick look:

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(Summary) In the first part of the workshop, we animated to a soundtrack. I managed to animate and talk at the same time. We took a break and Alan Ferguson animated his version in about 30 minutes.

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I had thought to have two segments in the workshop: one on animating to a soundtrack and one on copying motion from one movie to another. I hadn't thought to allow time for the group to try things out, but that's what I should have done, and it's what I'll plan for next time. As it is, we did two animations to my track, and could have done more.

In an "animation lockdown" participants spend an "insanely intense" period of time creating a movie. Quickdraw's first Animation Lockdown happened over three days, with 3 teams animating to a 30 second soundtrack. Judging by Alan's performance on Saturday, we could have a StopMotion Station Lockdown that lasted just one day. The 4 hour workshop would have been enough time for a "mini lockdown" with cutouts or plastic shapes or clay or other things that lend themselves to improvisation in front of a camera.

I used a "buddha board" for part of my animation. This is a sheet of paper that darkens when it's wet, with the marks fading as the water dries. I hadn't worked with it before and wanted to try it. It's fun and very immediate.

Trying two distinct techniques in one day was definitely too much. Just like in a movie, it's best to focus on one thing and take it as far as you can. I'll be seeing just how far I can take my ideas...

StopMotion Station workshop synopsis

Here's the 45 second promo video for my Saturday, November 10 2007 workshop at Quickdraw Animation Society.

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(Summary) In the workshop we'll create an animation in sync with a soundtrack and see how to copy motion from one movie to another. I'll answer questions about StopMotion Station and we'll talk about your animation challenges.

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The cutout animation is fresh today. I was (of course) using the Dial feature in StopMotion Station to stay in sync with the soundtrack. I'm still learning how to think about motion while watching the counter to make sure I hit my marks. It's one of the things any actor has to do; in animation, we're doing it in slow motion.

The "gravel dancer" is an example of copying motion from one movie to another. In this case, it's live action copied to aquarium gravel. Working with sand, stones, seeds, beads or other loose material is almost another whole category of classic animation. Wikipedia has a short article on Sand Animation, with links to performance artists and animators.

A minor update to StopMotion Station

I've made a minor change to StopMotion Station based on a workshop that I'll be doing at Quickdraw Animation Society (QAS) on November 10, 2007. One of the things I'll be doing in the workshop is animating in sync with a soundtrack. I animated to a soundtrack during QAS's Animation Lockdown earlier this year, and the sync was perfect; but I've realized I could make working with a soundtrack better and easier.

To animate to a soundtrack you use StopMotion Station's Dial counters. Just press the D key when you're Shooting or Viewing a movie, and the Dial overlay will pop up. Press D again to hide the Dial. The Dial includes two counters: a footage counter that shows you how many frames are in your current folder, and a frame counter that keeps track of how many frames you've shot since the last time you reset it (by pressing Alt-D).

I had set up the footage counter to be a literal footage counter - counting in frames, feet of 35 mm film (16 frames per foot) or 16mm feet (40 frames per foot). This was a throwback to animation stands, where that's how you kept track of your shooting. Working on a little promo video for the November workshop, I realized it would be a lot more useful to show the footage as seconds and frames.

So now (Ta-DAA) the footage counter shows frames or seconds and frames. And you can choose 30 frames per second, for working in NTSC video; 25 frames per second, for PAL video; or 24 frames per second for working film style. The Other options tab of the Setup dialog lets you choose the one you want.

This change lets us break down a soundtrack at the frame rate of the movie we're making and use those time and frame counts directly when we're animating. This also shows an important facet of my programming: I actually use my software in real-life creation and make the changes that I find genuinely helpful.

I'll be resubmitting StopMotion Station for the malware-free certifications. I also plan to shoot video at my QAS workshop, so you'll see me in action animating to a (short) soundtrack. The other technique I'll demonstrate is copying motion from one movie to another, a little like rotoscoping. If you check out my movie "Beginning" at Stopmotion-Software.com you'll see some of this at 1:14, where I copied a dancer's motion in aquarium gravel.

The updated StopMotion Station 1.3 installer is now online at Stopmotion-Software.com. If you've purchased StopMotion Station, the license file I emailed you works with the updated version as well. Just download the new installer, uninstall StopMotion Station, reinstall it from the new download, and unlock it as per the instructions in the email.

Happy animating!