Clay Animation
Here's a useful LJ meme, gakked from : Identify one goal that you've had, and that you've not been able to reach in the past. State why you don't think you've reached it.
Despite a lifetime of sculpting (in plasticine, a medium so fragile that I have almost nothing to show for it) I have not yet made a clay-animated short film. When I was a child and a teenager I had the talent and the time, but animation in any form was outside my price range by several orders of magnitude. I still have the talent and now I have a little disposable income which is not half-owned by another person with her own spending priorities, but find myself without time. As a beginner I'd be lucky to get two seconds of satisfactory footage -- that's sixty frames -- into the can in eight hours. I'd need a place to do the shooting that would be completely sealed off from daylight so I control the lighting conditions, that can go utterly undisturbed. If the tripod or set nudges out of alignment even slightly, I would have to start the shot over.
After I found The Clay Animation And Stop Motion How-To Page I realized that the goal is financially within my grasp. It answered questions I had been researching all my life, and also sold me the fine tools and equipment I've been looking for all my life. I've even started mixing custom clay colors in a melting pot.
If I ever got a Video LunchBox, I would no longer have any excuse at all. This is a standalone digital video appliance that requires nothing more than a camera, a TV, and a VCR. Press a button and it records a frame. It superimposes a view of the last frame over the realtime view of where the model is now, and provides instant playback of the motion so far. Too bad it costs as much as my car. I'll bet there exists a combination of camera / video capture card / software that's more affordable and can do the same.
Comments
Anonymous on Dec. 19, 2004 9:28 AM — webcam
You can get started with a webcam for under $100. I bought a logitech webcam and was pleasantly surprised that the software had a feature to make stop motion animations.
matt-arnold on Dec. 20, 2004 10:35 AM — Re: webcam
Thanks! I'll have to look into that. Who are you?
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