I have watched the special effects on all the stop motion animation movies I have, such as Corpse Bride and Nightmare Before Christmas and I would like to rent more very soon. I have done a lot of research already on what I want the zombies in the orchestra to look like. I took your advice about looking into lighting the film like Hurrell. I would love to do that and i think it could turn out very cool. In researching I found these two videos in which I thought the lighting could be similar. I may want to do something in lighting that falls in between these two videos. The first is Vincent by Tim Burton. It is one of his first short stop motion movies which I am sure many know about. The other is Madam Tutli-putli which is an award wining film that took over 4 years of work for only 17 minutes of film. It was created by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski and I absolutely adore it. I think it is an impeccable piece of work.
My biggest issue with this project will be my limited funds. So most of my research that I have been doing is finding the cheapest ways to do. What you need first is the armature. In the size I want, purchasing this item would cost around $150. Luckily I found a website with the heading poor man’s armature and It showed me step by step and to make a moveable one that will be perfect.
I found an easy way to do the armature, but I am having a hard time finding a cheaper way of making the actual puppet. I want to be able to paint on it and have it be mveable at the same time and sculpey can on;y be painted on if its baked and then you cant move it. I am going to ask around to see if there is any cheaper way to do it, other than making a mold of the figure and casting it in foam latex. If i did that I may only be able to make on of the figures in the orchestra. I have done the mold and casting process before so that wont be difficult for. But if anyone knows a cheaper, possibly a more simple way to do this let me know. I found a step by step process that shows molding and casting with foam latex.
I would like the overall color scheme to be very low key. I want a lot of greys and blues and blacks. Really the only chroma will be red and I feel that will be a great accent for the piece. Each figure, if I get to do more than one, will be very long and slender but they will each have a distinct characteristic about them. For example, the conductor will be tall and skinny, but he will be an old man with slicked back greasy grey hair, and his outfit will stand out against the rest of the orchestra. Each instrument will be pulled or torn out of the zombie figure’s body. The violinist will tear his tendons out of his throat and use those as the violin. The cello player will pull tendons out of his knee and the upright bass player will pull them out of his foot. But that is just the strings. The percussion will play on the rib cages and skulls etc. It sounds gruesome, I know, but it won’t be too disturbing. However, I do not want it too look cartoon, like a Tim Burton movie, I would like it be pretty erie.
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February 26, 2010 at 2:43 am
cbelland
Very glad to see your research about costs and production. Yes, that is the challenge with stop-motion–cost. The cheapest way (that your peers have used) is to create multiple interchangeable faces on an armature. They build the costumes to “hide” the seams on the neck and arms… etc.
Don’t worry about quantity… you might want to consider this as a puppet-comic book. You can then focus on creating more than one model, but you don’t have to animate anything (or maybe you animate one scene and take stills of the others).
Whichever you choose, I am more interested in seeing you enjoying sculpting and taking beautifully lit photographs!