animation

I've been neglecting this blog for quite some time, so it's high time for an update! I'm just taking a break from wood carving to write this, before I sit down to a meal of okonomiyaki, currently in preparation by my wonderful boyfriend. Today has been a very relaxing day off from work with me finishing up another art project this morning, then a trip to Ikea this afternoon, and some Leo Kottke listening thrown in to accompany the evening activities.

This past week I was given a ticket through work to see the animated film Boxtrolls. I was in the mood for something lighthearted, so I went. In addition to the film viewing, there was a presentation by someone from the animation company. I had no idea what I was in for, but I came out of there amazed at the process. Boxtrolls is stop-motion animated, like what we usually associate with claymation, but for this film they used actual puppets!

Inside each puppet is an armature that is moved ever so slightly for each frame. We got to try out moving this puppet frame, made from metal and some sort of moldable material. It takes 24 frames for each second of film. To achieve that, 55,000 different puppet faces were used for filming to create the different expressions and these faces were all printed by 3D printer. In the first film this company created, Coraline, they had only a black & white printer (remember those days?), so they had to hand paint all the faces. Even with the color printer, it is a slow-going process. They actually have an employee in charge of cataloging all the faces. No wonder production time for this current film was 10 years!

(Yes, those are actually physical puppets, where I would have thought them to just be computer animated. )

After the presentation, and all during the showing of the film, I was constantly trying to figure out how they created the scenes and the character movements-- everything. What a fascinating experience.