Ubatuber Productions

I felt like animating today :P, had about 2.5 hours to do this before work, quick and dirty....Nola has been feeling neglected and I absolutely need to rectify that situation soon....2007 is all about the Jenny film...fewer distractions, more focus....the pier set is high on my list of priorities, after my foam tests...This little clip is sort of what I have in mind for that 'Nola's Bad Day' series I've mentioned a few times, a string of short mishaps for poor unfortunate Nola...I've got sketches for about a dozen of them, obviously with more time and care spent than on this clip here.....I have a feeling, tho, that brief as this clip may be, her fans will be happy to see her alive and kickin' :)

No animation here, just me trying out some camera angles and lighting with the sculpt...I like what I see, can't wait to paint him up....started playing with color in the last bits here, but I think I'll go for more of a red-clay-brown-earthy scheme for the final puppet...I haven't even thought about what kind of set I want for this guys tests, probably layered painted backdrops, sort of 2 1/2-D :) but right now I'm focused on foam latex...tomorrow I remove the hair stems, untie him, finish up the underneath area, and Thursday I mold....looks like next week is foamy, fingers crossed....

OK, having trouble uploading to SMS right now so I'm going to post the wmv version for now, and will figure it out later....I want to post a QT version to StopMoShorts, but I think I'll need Mike's help for that.... Til then, here it is, in all its glory :)

I didn't get any work done on the book prop today, but I did shoot a little campfire test clip to see how the cgi/3-D integrated idea pans out...lighting will need to be rearranged, my first attempt here isn't so great....more red on Pepper definitely, and a dimmer bulb in the main foreground light, which completely drowns out the red here....I included the integrated clip and the un-cgi'd clip so you could see the animated flames...thoughts? suggestions?

Here's a little test clip I shot after working on aging and detailing the book's innards a bit....a more detailed post about the aging is coming soon....

Some folks (Mefull, Nick H) have had trouble viewing the wmv file, and some folks (Sven most, I've come to find) just outright prefer mov, so here it is in glorious Quicktime. Thanks to Eric Scott for converting for me, he's quick!I find the wmv's visuals and audio quality is better, but maybe I just need to futz with the QT settings some when I render, see what I can come up with....in the future I'll try to post both versions :)

...here's what Ive been up to for the last two weeks...this started out as a campfire test clip and turned into a sort of short film, with a little nod to Paul Berry's 'The Sandman'....I've got a lot to blog about with this one, so stay tuned......really....

OK, FINALLY started working with a framegrabber, don't mind the line through the vid, I am using a trial version of StopMoPro v4...very cool, it is everything its cracked up to be...only had time to do one quick walky test, but I definitely can see improvements on the horizon...the quality from my analog camcorder is not too shabby after all, with a little clean-up in Sony Vegas...

Going to do more tests, but heres what I've got so far...

...felt like animating a bit today...timing could be better but I had a lot of fun with this.......though I think Nola now has some gender issues ;) This one's for you Ale....

....a little test vid using wax for butter, stop-motion, for a short film project....

...the clip says it all....

...been a long, long week for me, stress galore, and to boot I got nothing done on the Jenny project for the first time since I began in December...but its bound to happen now and again unfortunately, as the big iron fist of life comes crashing down periodically...On the up-side, I spoke to someone at RueMorgue, trying to get some freelance work, which they don't need right now (a nice way of telling me to Shove off ), but the art director did visit my blog, and seemed very interested, mentioned plugging the film in their 'Roadkill' section...asked me to drop him a line when the project is done (woo-hoo!..........2 years later....)Anyway, been wanting to experiment with wax for awhile, ever since reading an article by Marc Spess over at Animateclay.com...I have never cast or sculpted in wax, just another material to experiment with :P...this here is basic candle wax, not ideal but its what I've got, so....here's my little Dadaist test clip....melting faces and pamcakes, two great tastes that taste great together! Enjoy....

Maybe its a little early to take a look back, but I couldn't resist. Here are all of my test clips from the first four months of Jenny...all of these frames and bits are about to be stored to disk, to make room for the next four months ;)...thrilled with my progress...Major side note: I've finally had an epiphany regarding the little girl's name...seemed a little obvious at first, especially regarding the Katrina metaphor, but it snagged a little piece of my brain and won't let go, so here it is......Nola.

OK...superglue and sculpey make good crutches when in a jam :)  Here's a few walking tests...I really like what I'm seeing so far, the little girl is coming alive slowly, and the tests are starting to look more and more like real footage...i'm lovin' the tie-downs, though my aching index finger & thumb aren't...

This is mostly me being curious and experimental, trying to get a watery-surface-reflective-light-thing going on, as if she's staring off the end of the pier into the lake...I don't think I'm going to need a shot as drastic as this, because the story takes place in daylight...gloomy stormy wintery daylight, but still daylight...and since most of the story is set near water's edge, I wouldn't want to have to do this for every other shot or anything...but you never know......basically I wrapped a large piece of foil around my tripod just under the camera, crinkled it up, and aimed a light at it...moved it around each frame, but tried to keep the light bouncing up onto her from below...its a little jerky, but with an orange light this could make a great 'campfire' kind of lighting setup...

After crawling up onto the pier, Jenny lets loose a hiss/scream...there are a lot of visual elements going into the hiss scene, one of which is tested here in the final few frames...considering again the physics of an undead water witch, the hiss is going to be a major stress reliever for Jenny physically, basically forcing all of the water out of her big empty skull and whatever's left of her lungs, causing her to ooze and vomit (black lake water, nothing graphic ;)...

This is the first time I've rigged anything, the first time I've had to photoshop each frame...took longer than I would've liked, and could look better if I had spent more time with it, but since this is only a test...the quick shot of the fish is something that I may incorporate into the story...its an idea that I have that may end up on the cutting room floor because it kind of cuts right into a main action sequence...almost like the coin purse bit during the dogfight in Were-Rabbit...I'll know more after scripting, storyboarding, etc...

Here's an experiment/test vid for another shot that will be in the final flic: the first time the little girl really sees Jenny, peeking at her through a missing board on the pier...I wasn't too happy with the lighting here, and the phony pier 'set' wasn't very sturdy, so I abandonned it and moved on to another test...we'll definitely be seeing more developments with this scene in the future, as it was one of the first that came to me...

...a quick short little clip, a snapshot if you will, moodier lighting than in previous tests, actually shot for use in a new banner, which is posted above but not the size it should be (working on issues), and also for a new avatar, cause (Dark)Strider's is just too cool...

....WOO_HOO!  Finally a new Jenny post, seems like I've been away for ages...I still have plenty of updating to do on my Pandora blog, am working on a commissioned drawing, and editing a wedding video, but I decided to take a day to capture some live-action lake footage from Lake Pontchartrain, near my home...it was windier than I expected, so the surface of the lake was a lot rougher than I would want for the finished product, but all-in-all I like the look of the test footage...It is going to need a little something extra though, to help the two worlds blend a little better, the live-action and the stop-motion...the clip in here of Jenny rising just below the surface is actually going to be one of the few shots of Jenny underwater that will be in the finished film, but it will be a bit more complex (I want to be able to see the pier and the little girl in frame, a more overhead angle)...going out to the lake was nice, got me thinking more about Katrina and her backlash...the water was so brown...the city has had a "Save Our Lake" campaign going since '89, to clean up the water and make it swimmable like in days of yore, and it was actually beginning to look blue again...anyway, I think I may devote some time to a blog of my experiences through the storm, since I find most of my creative thoughts these days are touched by those months...the more I examine the Jenny story, the more I notice the subtlety of Katrina's tendrils...a child lost in new surroundings, an unstoppable evil with a spinning eye, the murky depths of a black lake...seems worth discussing :)

Buffy and the Big Bads, season 1-5:Prince's "Lets Go Crazy"

Xena/Army of Darkness:Adam Ant's Goody Two Shoes

Lord of the Rings:Eowyn/Aragorn:Poe's "Wild"

Xena/Gabrielle:Concrete Blonde's "The Beast"

...a few tests using the Jenny puppet, and one using Jenny and her victim, tried animating a little character interaction...I thought at the start of this project that animating Jenny would be easy, while animating the human character would be more challenging, because we interact with ourselves and eachother every day, we have a frame of reference for the human character's behavior ...now I find that animating the little girl is much easier...probably because I have a clear vision of how I want Jenny to look when she moves, because I am basically creating her behavior instead of referencing...as far as the tests go, still not focusing so much on technical details, but hopefully that will change soon...I'm eager now to build a more professional setup (better lighting, etc.), I think because I poured so much time and energy into the Jenny puppet that it seems like an injustice to have such shoddy animating conditions :)...the music here is Elfman's Catwoman, then Tom Waits' Little Drop of Poison (Shrek2)...

...another quick little vid...pleased with the way the hand animates...very easy to manipulate...for the running part, the puppet is stationary and the backgraound is moved frame by frame...