PlaymoFriends
Creative => How-To => Topic started by: happyhooks on December 14, 2011, 06:43:00
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Hi all!!!
After looking at the amazing works of Ployerus, I was wondering how on earth does one go about making a Clicky film?
I have no idea where to start as I would be a complete beginner.
What would I need in the way of equipment?
Any tips on where to begin would be greatly appreciated :-[
Best wishes
Issyx
http://hookytime.blogspot.com/
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First, get a camera that doesn't have automatic focus... :hissyfit:
Not really, automatic focus will probably help more then hinder,
but it can get really annoying if you are trying to get a shot with 2 Klickies in it
and it keeps focusing on the tree behind them. ::)
Next you want a smooth, hard surface (like you would usually use for setting up Playmobil),
It is best if it is all one color and usually a darker color.
Wood surfaces are ok, but the grains of the wood can be a little distracting.
Next the background for your scenes...
I like to use a big, all blue board. I don't put anything like clouds on it though.
Clouds add realism, but they distract from your scenes. (At least so far as I have found.)
Your background you want to be a light color. If you use blue, baby blue would work well.
Just remember that the photo will be small compared to the scene,
and darker colors backgrounds will make the shot seem very cramped.
For lighting, instead of pointing a light directly at your scene,
Try and get a big white surface in front of your setup
and bounce the light off the white surface and onto the scene.
It will create less of a "flash" effect.
After you are ready with your setup then have fun. :)
Stop-motion is very simple. Take as many photos as you want, and move the people as little as possible in each.
You can go through the photos later and get rid of a few so the characters go faster or slower.
You can also try filming with a video recorder.
I haven't used this technique before, but I can give you some advice from having seen it done.
First of all, never show their feet!
If we see what they are standing on then the movie wont have the same feeling of realism.
You will still have to use stop-motion to move their arms and heads, so when you do,
make sure you take tons of photos so we don't notice the change in pace.
Setup a scene and try to stick with that scene throughout the film.
The fewer time you have to change the scene, the better.
Also remember that by switching the angle of the camera
you can make it seem like we are in a totally different location than before.
For one of my films I simply switched to the back of my castle where I had another small setup.
One more thing, keep the camera at ground level.
Overhead shots are cool, but not throughout the movie.
We want to be down where the klickies are so we can see them better.
You already make incredible photos, so I doubt much of this is news to you...
But I hope it was helpful all the same.
And good luck! :wave:
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Thanks so much for taking the time to explain this so well, WOT. Sounds like excellent advice. :wave:
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Thanks for posting and thanks for the answering you both. You have to have a lot of patience to make a smooth movie. :(
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Thanks heaps warrior of toys!!!
That info is priceless:)))
Very detailed yet simply explained :)
I may just have a go at this during the festive break!!
Best wishes and many thanks
Issyx
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Happy to help. :xmascheer:
Remember to link your movie when it's done! :D
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How do they get clickies to jump and do other things in positions you can't place them in?
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Sometimes they use string - that's probably the easiest way to do it. Or, you could use an editing program. I normally leave that to the hardcore animators.
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It's important to get a good editing program for video. You can do lots of things with it like transitions between shots and so forth.
I like using live action or moving the camera rather than the klicky as much as possible. So much faster. A lot of still cameras can now take video as well and the quality is just fine for use sharing online.
To see some live action technique in action check out my bloopers reel from the Marketon joust video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb5_ZlLQEYU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb5_ZlLQEYU)
You can see how we controlled the jousting knights. Choosing good camera angles is important
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To make klickies jump you may just use a trick.
If you have a pretty fast sequence of pictures
and you show your klickies on a high place
then in the next frame he is down below
then we will automatically fill in the gap, aka, he jumped.
Provided the jump isnt too big
and there isn't too long a pause from where he was and where he appears. :)
If you have a small piece of the klickies off screen
you can hold onto them with your hand and take the photo too.
I used that on some of my early films.
(I have made more then I the ones I have uploaded to YouTube,
There it would seem I only made 2 or 3 stop motion videos,
but I actually have made 5 or 6 and all of them have been pretty long.)
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I know this is an older post but, as an animator, I just had to add to the conversation. :wave:
I'll give you a quick run-down of how I would accomplish a 10-30 second playmobil film:
Pre-production
Know your story, and plan your shots. What is the plot? How many times will you switch camera angles? Will there be voices for characters, or just some nice music? You'll want to make a storyboard -- a comic-book like sketch of your story, so that you can figure out what has to be in each picture for the movie to make sense. (Here's a short one I made http://www.draftindance.com/art/pierresosa_maa217_final-animatic1.mov (http://www.draftindance.com/art/pierresosa_maa217_final-animatic1.mov)). Use these sketches to figure out what you have to build, what you have to hide, and how many individual photos you have to dedicate to each camera change. For fun stop-action, you want to work at 6 or 12 photographs per 1 second of film. That means, if you are telling a 10 second story, you need to take 60 to 120 photos ** REMEMBER THIS**. This is why you need a good camera, as stated above.
Production
Small movements in between photos makes slow action. Big movements between photos makes fast action. You need both to make your story look good. If you spend 10 photos to raise an arm, it will look like a ballarina dancing. If you spend 2 photos to raise an arm, it will look like a baseball pitcher throwing a ball. Your storyboard will tell you if the action is fast or slow. Don't be afraid to have photos were almost nothing changes -- audiences like pauses to soak things in. Do wiggle the things in your background, though: flags and branches should wave in the wind. As to your background: 1) you could try a backdrop painted like a sky, or 2) depending on how awesome your post-production software is, you could just put up a solid bedsheet, preferably in a color not among the pieces -- like neon orange with pirates, or pink with the dragon castles -- then just erase that whole bedsheet with a trick called keying (green-screen).
Post-production
Good software. You are going to take all 60-120 images and save them to your computer. Theoretically, your camera already saved them as DSCM0001.jpg, DSCM0002.jpg, DSCM0003.jpg... and so on. Put them all in one folder, and call it something like "playmobil_movie01_frames". You can then open a video editing program, and import an "image sequence". An image sequence is a set of photos that will play back to back, in this case: 0001, 0002, 0003, 0004... and so on. In a good program, it will ask you for a "framerate" -- how fast the photos will play before the next one starts. ** DID YOU REMEMBER?** If you chose to do 6 photos per second, your framerate is 6 frames-per-second (fps). If you chose to do 12 photos per second, your framerate is 12 fps. A good program will also let you color-key (green-screen). You can tell the computer to erase 1 color from each photo, in this case the loud besheet that you hung up behind your scene. You can then paste a pretty picture behind your photo to replace the bedsheet. A good program will also let you add titles and audio (music, or digital recordings of people talking).
Here are some programs you can try:
http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects.html (http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects.html) -- the one I know best and really like.
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere.html (http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere.html) -- one I know, but not as well
http://djv.sourceforge.net/ (http://djv.sourceforge.net/) -- I don't know this one at all, but it is free and sounds good
You can run a preview (After Effects calls it a Ram Preview) to see if everything plays correctly. If you like it, "render" or "export" is a FLV, MOV, MPG4, or whatever movie type you like, and post it to Youtube! I hope you have a lot of fun creating film projects, and let me know if you need any specific help!
:wave: -P
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This is really, really helpful. Thank you so much for taking the time to point this all out.
I hope to use all of this info on a tiny Playmomovie of my own one day.
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Just wanted to add that a very easy way to get started with stop motion is to use an iPad app, so that you have everything in one interface so to speak, ie both camera and software. The quality will perhaps not be quite as good as using a proper camera and more advanced editing software, but it's a really good way to get a feeling for the basics of stop motion. My 8yo and I have had fun making Lego and Playmobil stop motion films with an app called Lego Movie Maker (there are many other stop motion apps out there obviously) which is very intuitive, and where you can add sounds/Music/filters etc. Easy for kids to navigate on their own as well!