Chewing chewing chewing

Hi all you stop motion fans! I made a new mation this week.

Here are the deets:

-30 fps (WHAT!? Yeah, absolutely no frames are longer than 1/30 of a second. Even the pauses in animation are continuous frames)
-35 seconds of PURE ANIMATION!
-It took me approximately 30 hours to animate
-I had to draw all the shadows when the guys jump by hand, which took me a whole day!

Anyways, I'm REALLY trying to improve on my mationing and coordinating different movements at the same time (hence three characters, with talking) and I think I'm learning!

Here are some behind the scenes photos. The characters are actually pretty small, which made them really difficult to work with, especially changing the replacement eyes for when they blink. Is anyone even reading all this boring text anyways!?

*click on images for HIGHER resolution, yo.

The complete set, just on top of my dresser

Sooooo many replacement mouths! (ain't even all of them, some got too squished)

UPDATE!

Here is the final product:

And here is the unedited version:

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I finally figured out how to stop the flickering!

After too many hours and too many redo-shots (nearly 20!), I finally figured out the right exposure settings to put flickering to a minimal!

Here is the result of the final redo-shots. Almost no flickering!

Platypus 2 Shot 1 & 2

Well, I learned a lesson with my new camera and Dragon stop motion software today. After I capture a frame on Dragon, the camera then takes its own picture and uploads it to a high-res file; there's about a 3 second delay between the two.

So, after I thought everything was all fine and dandy with the two shots I just made, I exported the high-res image sequence and, well, just look at what happened:

Although, I think that the firefeets turned out pretty swell! Anyways, it's back to reshooting them again!

I've been using a free trial of Dragon Stop Motion software (http://www.dragonstopmotion.com/), and have found it to be pretty good. Here's my review:

Pros:

-you can onionskin your live feed with frames you just shot

-you can easily playback the frames you just shot including your live feed

-you can easily delete frames

-you can draw on your screen to help with markers and measurements

-all the functions have hotkeys on your numbpad

Cons:

-you cannot link (at least I haven't discovered how yet) different takes together to see how it flows. You need to do this in an external program, like AfterEffects

-it always takes a few seconds of waiting after you capture a shot for the program to catch up (could just be my computer??)

-the program creates about 5 folders for each frame you take: 2 low res file folders, each with a slightly higher res folder inside and finally a very high res folder. IT'S VERY CONFUSING!

Also, if you download the free trial, it only lets you take 50 frames at a time, so be careful!

UPDATE:

Here are the two shots redone:

Platypus 1 Shot 2

After I made my last post, I went right back to animating, and here's the second shot. It's 75 frames and it took me 1 hour and 1 minute (I timed myself)!

I will cut out the little hair swoosh at the end. That is all.

Platypus 1 Shot 1

Here's my first shot. After about 3 attempts, I am most happy with the result of this one, even though it's a bit jerky when he picks up the tea. It took me about 2 hours to do all 160 frames (that's nearly 3 frames a minute!). Also, there's no way I could reduce the flickering, I believe it's just the variation in voltage to my lamp :(

Steaming, it's about 24fps; I originally shot it to be 30fps, but he was moving too fast. I'm also going to cut it right before he stops pouring the tea.

NEW MATION

Long time, no mations! Well, I just got a SWEET camera (check it out!) courtesy of my fine older brother (check him out!) and I have been dying to put into into use!

As I was thinking of an idea, I was also throwing out my old school notebooks and stumbled upon a page from my third year Human Resources class that had a little animation story on it (don't pay any attention to the notes, haha).

Here's the plot: Platypus 1 (P1) is the reception guy at some store. He makes some tea and drinks it too. Platypus 2 (P2) comes sliding in from the right. Sparks fly from his feet. P 2 stops and asks P 1 "Do you sell boots?" P 1 says "We have no boots left!" P 1 then overturns the reception table and reveals that he was secretly wearing a pair of boots. P 2's eyes turn into lazers and he melts P 1. As P 2 stands there satisfied, the boots float to the top of P 1's meltedness.

Here is a picture of all the replacement parts and stuff that I made yesterday

(click on the images to make them GIGANTIC, thanks to my amazing camera from my amazing brother)

Here are some tests of the firefeet and lazereyes

And here are the two Platypi in all their glory

P1: P2: