A few words from Lancelot Squeeze...

Following on from the filming for the lip-synch and having edited that together and got the timing down so I'm fairly happy with it, a couple of videos. Still to be done is the colour correction and treatment of the RAWs (the high quality pics taken before being converted and run together as a video sequence), the compositing of the puppet/Poppet footage into the foreground (which I'm still animating and filming) and crops/camera movements (which will be done in Adobe After Effects, along with the compositing).

There's still some way to go with the lighting (but pleased with the progress) and with getting the animation of Lance Squeeze - I don't want to lose the 'jerky' look, but do want to exaggerate the facial expressions, movements and timing for these.

Here are the videos:

Lip-synch test 1:

(...and on the bit-better-quality Vimeo)

Lip synch test 2:

(...and, once again, on Vimeo)

Lastly, an initial quick treatment of one of the JPEG frames to give an approximation of the sort of colour-corrected look I want to go with - darker, cooler, more contrasty, quite desaturated:

Lance Squeeze filming session

A mini-update, having made some progress with animating and photographing Lance Squeeze.

The good stuff: The efforts on lighting have definitely moved forward and, I think, complement the character nicely. Also feel that I'm learning more about how to (and how not to) do the make up effectively - both in how to achieve the look and how to make it durable enough for several hours sweating under hot lights. It was quite gruelling spending a long time on the make up and then holding sequences of hundreds of poses frame by frame. The lip-synching (mostly) worked and the character looks odd and inhuman animated frame by frame - loads of room for improvement, but lots more learnt in how to do this since earlier tests.

The downside: the biggest hitch was keeping track of the frames and reference material for the lip synching of the dialogue. With a cloudy contact lens on one eye and no glasses, I wasn't able to read the frame numbers on my monitor a lot of the time and so had to keep my glasses hidden and 'break pose' to check this on many occasions. I think rigging the monitor up (ideally a bigger monitor) close to the camera where my eye is and a 'real' contact lens for my 'good eye' will help with this.
Worse than this, although my setup with a bluetooth keypad controlling the computer to trigger each shot works really well on the whole (sometimes hidden in part-folded arms, at other times on the floor and triggered with my trusty big toe), Dragon Stop Motion has an absolutely infuriating habit whereby from time to time it puts up the option to trigger multiple frames - the only way to pass this is to physically go over to the computer and respond to the dialogue pop up.
This is something I badly need to get to the bottom of so I can avoid it happening in future. For all that's great about Dragon, it has it's share of eccentricities and doesn't integrate with Windows in a lot of ways that can be safely taken for granted with other software (common button functions, drag and drop, etc).

Of course, having a friend present to assist when I'm filming Lance squeeze in future would address a lot of these problems, and I intend to do this as the process approaches being polished enough for the actual real-deal production of Ties. I'm just stubbornly self-sufficient and, as it's a pretty long and slow process, I've felt inclined not to 'use up' favours until the process is further along the testing phase.

Anyway - I'll update with some of the current edited footage when that's done in the next couple of days. In the meantime, a still frame to show the look, which I'm pleased with and I hope reflects some of the work that's gone into it so far:

Creating a hero 1: Introducing Poppet

As an update is well overdue, I wanted to post some pictures of the Poppet character, somewhat retrospectively, which I'll follow with pictures and a description of the development and build process in due course, along with stills from animated sequences.

This was certainly the most challenging aspect of the project so far, and, in some ways, it feels like I've been trying to 'run before I can walk'. It's fallen short in some ways from what I intended, but it also represents substantial personal progress and a lot of invaluable lessons learnt and tucked away for the future.

I'm pleased with meeting the challenge of new materials, some of the controllability of the character and the overall look and texture. He's fallen short in that the weight of the puppet is a bit too much for the armature I built (i.e. his jointed metal 'skeleton') and so, even with some adaptations, requires the use of a rig a lot of the time (i.e. a heavier duty, jointed support arm that screws into the back of the puppet and can also be used to suspend him mid air for jumping, running, flying, etc). I also didn't reach the level mobility I wanted for his facial features - he does have some mobility to eyelids and mouth shapes, but not as much as I'd intended and hoped for.

The photos show Poppet in 'insect' and 'human' poses, the first pic shows the scene lighting for the table top where the majority of animation occurs (I'd love to say I made Poppet's guitar, but that would be a big, steaming lie. Luckily, there are a bunch of mini instruments available through eBay, etc - definitely promising props for a future music vid when I have enough puppets to form a band)

It was shot in RAW a bit underexposed, both for the sense of gloom and to have a fair margin to play with the highlights and ramp these up a bit without the nasty clipping that is characteristic of blown highlights on digital photos and allows for something a bit closer to the elegant, less abrupt 'shoulder' that's characteristic of maxxed out highlights on film. This is another area I'm still very much getting to grips with, but am pleased with progress on so far. I also intend to tone down the blue edge/kicker light with a subtler, paler blue gel than what I had available.

Annotations, poses, expressions and action shots will follow in future posts and edits. Pics are clickable for big versions...