Coming Soon...

I will post 'To The Heart of The Matter' as soon as I can...

Radical Rig Removal

After finishing my shoot. I had loads of ugly rigs holding up various puppets and props and so I used After Effects and Photoshop to take them out.

Before brining in my animation to tale out the rig I exported a single frame of my animation without the rig. I then brought both my animation and picture into After Effects with the picture on top and animation below.

At the point in the animation where the rig is seen I made a mask on the picture layer around the rig. This meant that rig is covered by the section of the rig I masked off. I then needed to do this for each frame that the rig is seen.

Then when I export the animation the rig is no longer seen.

I also used After Effects to add shakes and glows to my animation. These helped to tell the story and add special effects to enhance my Stop-Motion animation.

More Machine and Set Photos

Here are some more Machine and Set photos before I rip the set down for good...

Here is a close up of the Rivets and Rust finish I put on the Machine. The rust toned in well with the orange and yellow set and the turquoise contrasted nicely.

Here is the chair in situ and you can see the world and star maps on the walls. I feel like I should have showed them more in the film but I hope that even just having them in the background gives the set more history.

Here you can see the fairy lights I used to light up the set behind The Machine. They were really useful as I was able to move them around depending on the shot.

Here you can see the red and yellow filters I used on the lights to give the cave set an other worldly feel. The effect worked really well. Coloured filters really help to set the mood and tone of the lighting.

The Beginning of The End

This was my last week filming. Here are just a few photos that sum up the week...

To shoot some close ups of the machine I moved the machine forward which allowed me to re-shot some of the shots that looked far away.

Just as I was shooting the last shot with The Man, his wrist broke! I got the shot but it felt like perfect trimming. If it had broken sooner I did have a spare set but they were not as nice as this pair. 

My puppet rests after a long six weeks shooting.

I noticed that The Mechanic's ear had cracked as I was filming his last shots, but thankfully this was not noticeable on camera.

Once I finished I tidied up to keep all my tools together. Now I just have to edit the film and use After Effects to take out rigs and add some special effects.

More Shooting Fun On Set

I have continued shooting more shots in the cave set. Here are some pictures from my time in the booth...

It was brilliant being able to remove sections of the cave walls when I needed to shoot different angles.

The fairy lights came in handy to brighten up some shots. I had to make sure they were not in shot and I hope that in the context of the film the viewer will not notice the difference in light from shot to shot.

Here is how I shot the point of view shot of The Mechanic looking into the 'Spare Coins' box.

To shoot the shot of The Man getting up I rigged up another LED light to simulate the blue light from the well behind him. It worked very well.

I also used it for the reaction shots of The Mechanic when The Man is cowering on the ground. The blue light created nice detail in the shots.

I turned the main lights off to see what the blue light looked like on its own. Looks quite spooky.

Here is The Man running from The Mechanic with The Ring in hand. The Man is a great character to get great silhouettes with his thin, tall body.

I find it amusing the faces the the puppets end up making when you don't need to see their faces on shot.

Here is The Mechanic 'in rehearsals' under the animation desk. The Mechanic is a fun character to animate. As he does no have any visible legs you can concentrate on the action in the upper half of his body.

Will the world turn again....?