lipsync animation film finished

for all of you who have been following the set construction and my progress, the lipsync film is finally finished.

Woolly Monster made the puppet and Don Carlson did the voice work.

It can be seen here

latest news

well…lately I have been working on my first lipsync film. It is simple and fairly short (about 30 seconds or so) but it is my first attempt at lipsync. Woolly monster in a deliberate effort to push me out of my comfort zone created a puppet for me with all the replacement mouths and eyes that I would need to animate lipsync. So, I had Don Carlson (prammaven) record a 30 second voice over for me, I sent him the script and he recorded it and sent it back to me within hours. Fine guy that one. So, I tried downloading jlipsync on woolly’s suggestion, but it required me to do a bunch of computer upgrades because my computer is not connected to the internet, so I had to upgrade a java machine, install service pack 2, download 2 years of window updates and finally got it working. Ran a test through it, and ran on a few problems, but it is a freeware program and looks pretty good. It shows you the mouth shape as it scrolls down the x sheet.

So, anyway, I finally ended up just putting the wav file into stopmopro (that i already have) and began scrubbing through the audio and writing down the mouth sound on a piece of paper with a pencil. Really hi tech I know.

Well, I figure I have a sound bite that is about 720 frames long. I have begun animating and have about 500 frames complete.  The puppet is huge so it makes the animating pretty easy as compared to my puppets. Some of the lipsync so far looks really good, some is not perfect. It is a real art to scrubbing through audio and figuring out what mouth shape to use, especially since I am not the one that spoke the words.

I only animate at night to prevent flicker but during the day I am still working on the new set and sculpting some skin textures out of plastilina clay. I had recently bought roma plastilina but it has a sulfur smell so I had to give it away and order online the upgrade Prima plastilina. It has a more earthy, natural smell. The sulfur based clay gave my wife a migraine.  So, a few days ago my prima showed up here and I am sculpting again. Pictures soon.

Go ahead, make a mess, leave your comfort zone, have some fun.

more of the garden set

remember this set is basically “a castle gardener has a secret spot that he takes the leftover plants from the formal castle grounds and has created his own little oasis”

ok…back to building…the styrofoam work is done, and all of that is covered is plaster of paris and thinset mortar…now to paint it all flat black to help tie it all together…any part is not covered up later will just show up as a black shadow, that is why we start with a black base…

This is the pool area with a rock wall on the front. The brown is sawdust I threw by the handfulls into the wet paint for a bit of texture.

Below is the first drybrushing with a dark gray over the black. Use a very dry brush for this and lightly brush across the surface, leaving some dark areas untouched.

This photo shows the work after 2 or 3 coats of progressively lighter shades of gray drybrushed on.

This is the close up texture. It really starts to look like real rock now.

Apply some grass/landscape mixture by applying some glue/water/detergent mix onto the flat surfaces and sprinkling the grass on, or by sprinkling the grass and then dribbling drops of glue on top of it. You can also put your glue mixture in a spray bottle and spray it on.  Again the glue mixture is 25% white glue, 75% water, and a couple of drops of dish detergent. The detergent breaks down the surface tension on the water so it soaks in and doesn’t run all over the place.

This closeup shows the rock face with some grass and gravel on it.

Try to put some glue/grass on all surfaces that it would really grow in nature.

Glue some tiny pieces of silk flowers from the hobby store/Walmart/fish store etc to match your style or desired look.

This is the pool area. I used two part casting resin and some blue paint (which did not mix well at all into the resin, I should have used an oil based paint maybe or a dye)….And in all of my excitement of making the pool, I didn’t notice it had some old tiedown holes in the bottom so half of my pool dripped out onto my table saw top while I wasn’t looking. Oooooppppsss.

The water fall looking thing is a “water effects” from the train hobby store, it will dry a lot clearer. It just spreads on like a thick cream and then dries to look like water.  My resin might have worked even better.

Keep adding bits of plants, and work out your path ways.

To reach the second level of the garden I built a set of wooden stairs. It is scrap pieces of wood, some dowel, and some hot melt glue. It goes up three steps and then forms a landing, and then goes up the last two steps. I actually built another one first but it was too narrow for my puppet. These photos show it unpainted. I have to distress it and age it before glueing into the set. These photos are taken inside on my other puppet set where Iam animating the woolly monster. It was already dark outside when I started painting them so I took them inside.

So, go ahead, make a mess (just watch where your resin lands), and have some fun.

even more set building

ok faithful readers….it is once again time to start building yet another set…I am currently making a very short lip sync film with the woolly monster puppet on the last set you guys watched me build…I will let you know when that is completed.. I have shot about 250 frames out of about 700 and it looks great…

but anyway during the day (since I only animate at night to help eliminate flicker) I am working on my next film and for that I need a new set…I was thinking something along this idea “a faithful castle gardener has a secret spot that he plants leftover plants and plants that just didn’t make into the official castle formal gardens… his private area has a small pool surrounded by rocky walls…it will have small garden areas, a pathway, a wooden set of stairs, and multiple levels that the puppets can interact on. “

ok,…that is what I have so far as ideas….first thing we need to do is tear down the old cave set from the “the third necessity” film…

the above photo shows some leftover pieces of styrofoam and some old glue marks from the set…the photo below shows most of the foam removed and the ugly walls that are left…these proved to have so much glue and other stuff on it that I just removed the walls and turned them around and re screwed them in place…the sides and back are 1/8″ plywood that I had screwed to the puppet stage to make the set taller for the cave film… so all of that glue and stuff is not on the stage walls but on the thin plywood… so I was able to just take them off and turn them around so the clean side is now facing us.

Once the set was pretty clean I took several pieces of new styrofoam from a ceiling fan install I did, and cut them to a rough rock like shape and hot glued them in the set. I kinda let the rocks find their own shape  and didn’t really force anything. Once I had a general idea of how it was going together I started applying strips of paper dipped in plaster of mache to cover up the seams and holes in the rocks. And of course I ran out of plaster of paris so I dug around my shop and found some thinset mortar used to apply ceramic tiles. I mixed this up just like I normally do with the plaster. I made it about the thickness of pancake batter and dipped my strips of paper in it. The paper came from an old sketchbook with notes and ideas from my very first film. I pulled out any sketches and took some of the scrap paper to use as my paper mache.

The white is styrofoam and the green is the thin set mortar. The photo below shows the set sitting atop my table saw in my shop so you can get a sense of scale.

This is one side of my shop, notice how everything is perfectly organized, neat, clean and put away…Hehehehehehehehe, that was a good one… Actually you can notice how one side of the workshop doesn’t even have a wall. Not too much inclement weather here so I haven’t bothered yet.

So, I am going back outside now and do some more paper mache work. Plenty of little gardens and pools and rocks to create.

Go ahead, make a mess, have some fun.