[edit - 2009-01-31: youtube embeds of Peter and the Wolf Removed, due to them no longer existing on YouTube]

By some strange circumstance, I also came across the short film Sweet Salt by Katerina Athanasopoulou, which Suzie Templeton did set design on. It was constructed primarily in After Effects, and the screenshots of it look relatively amazing. ( also available on google photos ).

“It’s midnight. A smattering of moonlight falls upon the forest floor. Two mechanical snails move slowly through the darkness. They confront one another and briefly take the measure each other’s powers before uniting in love play. With mounting ecstasy, their transparent bodies begin to glow, but just before climax a dark shadow looms over them…” (from the twitchfilm.net review).

458nm can be viewed on the No Fat Clips blog.
[flv:http://nofatclips.com/02007/05/23/458nm/458nm_640_polynoid.mp4 http://nofatclips.com/02007/05/23/458nm/458click.jpg 640 292]

The Cags is a short 3D film from Russia, available as a DivX download, and quite amazing to watch.

The Movers and Shakers of 3D animation of 2005 also has some other interesting works, including the previously mentioned 90 degrees.

Here is the YouTube version for streaming.

If you wish a higher quality copy to experience, here is a Quicktime version.
Rabbit

The Owl is a music video for the somewhat post-rock band I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness, by the excellent Emmanuel Ho. The interesting thing about this music video is that it was created entirely in After Effects, using primarily the Pen tool.

Doll Face
A slightly interesting and notable example of a simple conceptual 3D animation by Andy Huang. ( There is also an interesting interview with him about the creation of Doll Face ). Evidence of the importance of conceptual intention in the creation of meaning. Animation is heralded for its ability to convey in a compressed time-space a matching complexity of meaning to long-form narrative works, is it not? Download the Original, or watch the Youtube embed below.

Dog
Shown this 3D stop-motion animation short by Suzie Templeton a long time ago by my associate Brad Hutchinson, and I was blown away by the beauty and intensity of this animation, and would enjoy sharing that with you now. There are a couple other films by Templeton watchable on Youtube, including her new 30 minute epic Peter and the Wolf.

90 Degrees
Shown this animation by my friend Fred Blasdel, I was amazed and inspired by how polished and flawless the work of students could be. Created by students at the excellent Gobelins school of animation in France, this 3D generated short possesses a very interesting element of the synchresis of the sound-design reinforcing the visual aspect and enhancing the conveyance of the narrative / meaning. This walks the line between music video and experimental short film; a delicious line of intrigue. A higher definition quicktime version of this can be watched here.

The constraint of “no cuts longer than 4 seconds” led me to explore a style of jump-cutting 1 subject with so little change in the jump as to produce the illusion of movement between frames. This in itself is a type of animation, if less manual of a process than creating each frame independently, as is traditional to animation techniques.

The red substance oozing from the mouth of the subject is Oobleck, a non-Newtonian solid.

[flv:/media/video/cycpuncrec.mp4 /media/video/poster/cycpuncrec.jpg 700 466]

Also present in the following video is a very rough composite of some of that gross mud with worms crawling around in it warped with a cheesy liquify effect (I would do this better if this were a serious composite), and some TV static generated with the Bad TV plugin from the excellent Tinderbox plugin collection. This just a very short clip, so don’t spend too much time waching it…

[flv:http://ia310131.us.archive.org/1/items/LumbarLauracompositetest/lumbarlauragetsdowncomposit.mov 640 480]

I was thinking about the more not so perfect footage, and in the context of my approach and the style of this crazy music video, nothing is beyond usefulness. Thus, I will use and manipulate pretty much any footage I capture, even if it doesn’t look perfect, as long as I can exploit its imperfections towards a useful and legitamate goal.

As you can see, the chroma screens are underexposed, as are the subjects, and as a result the image is somewhat noisy, which doesn’t help matters with the already artifacted DV source. Also, there are lighting inconsistencies in the chroma screen. Also, like an idiot, I decided it would be a good idea to backlight the subjects with a blue-gel; I thought this would make my planned key more believable. I thought that because the blue light was from a source other than spill from the bluescreen, it would be okay. It’s not okay. Blue is blue! That must be kept in mind in the future.

Anyway, using the magic of the Keylight plugin for After Effects (read this awesome tutorial, anyone who might be interested in seeing how it can function), and some creative masking, I was able to pull a decent key.

Pixels should not be this large or this blocky!

This is slightly better… I achieved this by tweaking the settings of keylight and adding a subtle matte-choker.

This is the key without the mask on the circuit board. As you can see, the blue spilled onto the board from my backlight (arr!) is causing the keying plugin to make the board transparent, something that we don’t want to happen.

Since the board is stationary within the shot for a large period of time, I duplicated the layer and applied a mask to the board, effectively making the key only affect areas outside of the circuit board area. The results look alright, but I will be tweaking it more, possibly using the technique of blurring an adjustment layer and applying a transfer mode of “color”, in order to blur the chroma slightly without blurring the luminance, and thus counteract the DV artifacts somewhat, as outlined in the keylight tutorial.

Today I enthusiastically enjoyed the DVX100A proficiency with Ben, Alex, Dre, and the almighty Dave Cramton. Tomorrow, I will pick up my work order for it, and break open that pack of 5 new Panasonic Master Quality DV tapes, leaving the solitary Sony DVCAM tape that I bought solitary… and unused. (take that, DVCAM!). I will be doing tests on Friday to see if the 24p advanced mode can deliver the realistic progressive psuedo-filmlike motion and blur that I’m looking for, as well as doing a test pulldown, edit, reverse pulldown, and author to progressive-scan DVD. I will of course post the results here.

In other news, I have been drooling all over my monitor, reading about the Panasonic AG-HVX200, the HD successer to the DVX100, which records in 4:2:2 DVCPRO on P2 cards at a data rate of 100MB/s, and is capable of recording real variable framerates, much like the Varicam, except about $60,000 cheaper at $6,000. I’m excited by the fact that, in 6 or 7 years, this technology will be somewhat outdated, and I will probably be able to buy one for under 2 thousand dollars.

Bio-Circuit Social Network

This took a rediculous amount of time to set up lighting for. Two mini-moles for the rear bluescreen, a light pointing straight down for the floor bluescreen, two lights on stands for fill/key, and a snooted tiny mole for a blue-tinted backlight.

The backlight is to make my planned chroma key more convincing. There will be the solder-side of the circuit board layered in the background, to create a box-like environment. Behind the two puppets and their interconnecting wire, there will be what looks like static of a television screen nested in a square between solder pins green etched circuit board channels. Hopefully this will be hinting at the subservient and entrapped positions of those who watch popular media without question, as well as the inescapable interconnection that comes with technology.

[flv:http://www.archive.org/download/JedSmithmeatbackmeatbackmov_1/meat_back.mov 640 480]

This clip relates to the death and decay aspect of the evolution of corporeality component of my video. The mud was really gross.

On the agenda for the next few days, in opposition to my schedule, is further experimentation with Kontakt 2, Absynth, Reaktor, Live, and Max/MSP/Jitter (which I now have a working demo of), and the rough comletion of my soundtrack. I am playing with the idea of sampling portions of pop-songs and making them sound all dark and disturbing, like Alex did in his soundtrack, and so kindly explained on his blog. Anyway, I need to stop playing with ideas and learning software, and actually start creating the thing. I suppose those first two are necessary though, at least for my ignorant self.

On Thursday, there is the proficiency for the DVX100A, and on Friday, I hopefully will be able to pick it up and use it this weekend to capture at least half of the live-footage component of my psuedo-film. Thus: no more animation, at least for a little while. I’m looking forward to using the automated method of capturing frames.

I would very much appreciated any scathing comments on the stupidity, fallaciousness, or downright foul-heartedness of the footage I have posted so far. (With the realization that these are unedited). Thanks.

The process of animation is going well, and with experience, I get better at making good lighting, and better at making good motion (at least it seems like I’m getting better). In approximately 24 hours of solid animating, I have shot ~1725 frames, not including the tests done in my home lab (which I may still use for some things), which comes out to about 2 minutes and 24 seconds. There is a long way to go, but at least progress is being made.

Following are some production stills, for your consideration. The purpose of these photos is for you all to get a visual sense for what is going on, as well as some of the problems I have faced, and solutions I have eximated. Therefore, apologies for the briefness of the text.

“Lumbar Laura” construction:
This is the nickname I have given the newest armature-puppet I have been constructing. She is quite advanced compared to the previous model. Thanks to the wonderful technology of the drill, she has limbs which bend in all directions, connected and reinforced with twisted wire. The drill was for making holes in the limbs to shove wire into and then glue. This is the best way I have found to make a strong and sturdy bond between two limb-components.

Her previously useless floppy unsupportive feet are now gone, replaced with a newer better metal model! This allows for much better support while standing, and a good flat wide structure to hot-glue to things.

Surgury was performed on her spinal column, to allow friction against free movement, in order that she might pose in any position!

This was made possible through the magic of corn syrup! (unfortunatly, the only corn syrup I had was in the form of stage blood…)

The older model’s hip-joints were also reinforced This unfortunately meant that she had to suffer through an assuredly uncomfortable experience with hot melted pine resin being melted onto the connexions between her joints.

The pine resin tends to dry and form a locked connection between the joints. Corn syrup remains at least somewhat viscous over a period of time. When combined, these two sticky things look pretty good!

This inhibition of the leg-hip joints allowed the puppet to walk in 12 poses per second!

The ability to walk was made possible through industrious use of the magical substance Hot Glue!

This shot was very difficult. I had never animated a puppet walking before. The ground was covered in leaves, which had a malicious tendency to move a great deal whenever I approached with the glue-gun or screwdriver..

For the first few steps, I put a litlte bit too much hot-glue on her feet, and had difficulty moving them for each step.

Pleasantly, carressing of a fern was had.

Here, you can see the green-screen in action. This required careful lighting, but will hopefully result in flexibility on, with the composited addition of… sky, and the various exciting expressive possibilities innate in that idea.

Ken’s feet were also reinforced with injections of wire into joints.

Ken is now a manly Man. Just look at his junk… wow.

Tomorrow is the user group meeting for various glorious equipment, and I am ripe with fear that I will not be able to express myself well (having done a great deal more animating than talking in the last few days), and will be despised and denied access to said glorious equipment.

After that ordeal is over, I will proceed to schedule more time in the 3d animation lab for this weekend, and work on my soundtrack, which is in need of attention… focused and dedicated attention. That is all for now.

::placeholder for all animation footage shot so far, edited in a narrative linear fashion::

As you can see, this presented somewhat of a dilemma, which I did not solve until today, with the help of my roommate’s hatchet. After a good 20 minutes of pounding on the floor of N-308, which probably did not make our vertically inferior neighbors like us any more, I was able to destroy it enough to get the wire out.

This resulted in a large coil of what I think is aluminum wire (with a copper coating), with some remnants of epoxy.

As well as a coil of very much smaller guage wire, which could easily be made to writhe and envelope puppets.

Ah, glorious technology….