Saturday, July 24, 2010

10 years Married and a NEW Chapter begins.

Hey Guys!

We officially ended {chapter#3} last week ...2 down........Wooo Hooo!!!

Here is Awesome Intern Justin Connolly helping out on a late night shoot....This shot was a lot of running around...I had to animate Flea on one side of the table then run ---all the ways around the table to animate Dober. This put the Frame grabber out of reach for me......so Justin J offered to run the grabber for me while I animated which made the process SOOOOOOOOO much easier.


other than the annoyance of listening to me say..."Forward -Back"..."Forward -Back"...Play...

For hours on end....he got to see a shot animted right before his eyes.......

I thank him tremendously for his assistance....it would have never been as clean without his help.....Tag Team Animation......Ohhhhhh Yeeeaahhhhhh!!!!!

and as of last monday night ...I put our first shot in the can on {chapter#4}.............heres a pic of shel setting up an extra piece of blue to cover the antanna for our kick off shot on the new chapter.....
She had to sew 21 feet of new Bluescreen for the other side of the garage that we havn't shot on yet......cool pic.....
In this films production....we believe that its starting the down hill ROLL . Our latest chapter contains a large Montage which will mean lots of Quick Shots -......... I think it could take more time to move the camera around-setup the 3d- than to do some of the actual animation.....but it should go pretty smoothe.

In preping the Mini Dober Ship for Molding and replication....Shel ended up cutting the mini ship into pieces ready for molding.
COOL news!!

The book The advanced Art of Stopmotion Animation has released and we are sooooo proud to be a part of it...not only in it....but Flea Made the Cover...WOW!! TOTAL Honor!!! order your copy Now the books is awesome!!!!!!!

as for us.....we just finished our latest goonies adventure with a Huge ASS mountain climb in Yosimite- in celebration of our 10 years married...We climbed a hour and some from our base and came upon this amazing Waterfall....we didnt even know it was on the this hike...and it was just one of MANY on the way UP.....It was a shock of COOL exciting energy and Beauty....Apparently there is TONS of water in Yosimite this year and we are seeing the best of the falls and rivers....Super cool!! Along with all the waterfalls and Mist were GIANT Rainbows surrounding us....I have never in my life found the end of a rainbow....and BAMM there it was....and I touched it...I'm hoping we can trade in all those gold coins for some Feature film making Dollar's$$.After Hours more Heavy Hiking we finally set our eyes on the Peek...we first saw the ant line of humans pulling themselves up the wire to the top...they are super TINY in this pic...{at the halfway point in the rock the wires begin}...WOW this is LEGIT!!!


..as we got to the base of the climb{halfway up}.....you can see better in this one......I got excited.........Up we went!!! ......and after a nice sun bathing at the TOP we headed down for a long hike back to our cabin...ha!

We are both sooooo excited to have done this together....and it was Truely Majestic!!!
Inspiring and Plain FUN.

jriggity

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Pictures to Playdough.......

Hey Guys!

here we are back in the swing of things ......{yes....that's baby Aedon Rocking the swing}
I am getting a lot of animation done and making my quotas again.

Got 27 seconds since my last post...which made me feel MUCH better about how things are going.

I managed to get the sequence I shared all blocked in.....pretty happy with it too.

Flea Damage Readout-
Big Camera MoveReplacing Fan
We are now 6 minutes 40 seconds.....and climbing....2 shots left in this chapter...and DONE!

Me and Shel after having a few story meetings have decided to cut a whole 2 minutes off of chapter#3 that we are finishing right now. This had some of my VERY favorite Animation and character -moments in it ...{HURTS} but it was completely the right thing to do.

The Story moves right along now sooooo much better than before.

.....On a positive side I see this as a major TURBO Blast forward in finishing the Film ....... 2 minutes of footage = 2-3 months of work for me.....this means we get our film out that much faster.....which is very very exciting for all of us!!

so....in cutting the 2 minutes off.....We had to come up with some NEW camera work and layouts for the NEW ending of the chapter which means putting our director-Collaborator hats back on. After Talking the sequence through....I put the action to paper.

I actually struggled quite a bit with how best to lay out the shots....Its funny how some things come so easy and others are just like pulling teeth. but......I do like the new stuff much better.

Shel has been learning the ropes of {-Dragon Software-Camera-3d-setup-cinematography-} for the coming weeks of ANIMATION Directing she will be doing???{hmmmmm??? future post will explain this}

Here is MINI Dober's Latest Progress.....Bridget is painting him up and hes getting ready to take some test flights in his MINI ship....looking good!

Here is a pic of Intern - Justin J's. work on our Mini Flea Pilot Puppet.....hes progressing nicely.

Justin J has also started learning the craft of animation recently in preparation of a animation apprectice position I have opening down the line a bit. I am very excited to pass on some of the knowledge I have to somone as passionate about the process as him.

Shel is also back on the ships and very close to finishing them... in time to be Molded and cast for Multiple copies....{TOY'S anyone?}Just a few weeks away. ha.. We need to have a few copies of the miniships for a big scene in the End of the film......and I personally just think they are super mega cool Toys to have around.

trick of the week{I am presently injured again from BMX related injuries}Dangit!!!
.. since my right arm is out of action.......I am Leaning to RIDE the Bowl....on a SK8 board.I am not a BMX traitor.....just keepin it rollin.

FUN Stuff....

jriggity