Category: Video

Set-building "completed"!

Taking advantage of the beautiful weather, Steve and I ventured onto the deck outside the Vienna House in order to carve out some foam and then hot glue textured paper and colored fabric onto it.

We started by seeing shapes in the raw foam, in order to make as little work for us as possible.  It didn’t take us long to realize that the slantier the edges of an object, the more futuristic they become, as evidenced by this crude sketch:

If angle a is greater than 90 degrees, the couch is from the future...

 

It also works for refrigerators.

As with most things for this project, even though many of these objects began life as tests for one thing or another, the end results proved to be “good enough” to include in the filming.  Speaking of which, our next step is to choose the audio takes we like the best and begin filming the first scene.  We’ll be delayed a week due to vacationing, but the building phase of SpaceBase: Infinity is nearly complete!

-Mike

Nat Meets Rufus…

It’s both surprising and satisfying when months of planning and experimentation pay off in the form of a successful 13 second animation.  After learning from countless mistakes, we may finally have a production process that will work for the final episode.  Amazingly, it’s easier to list the things that went right this time around, rather than what we need to learn from.  It’s in widescreen 1080p, the lighting looks good, the animations are relatively interesting and believable, the mouths match the words and head movements, and the picture quality and camera work have a relatively professional feel.  Life is good at the Vienna House.

Vegas has some great tools for animating mouths using keyframes and matching the waveform of the audio track.  We don’t, however, have the computing horsepower to preview our animations at full 1080p, so we’ll need to solve some technical issues there.

Next week, we’ll attempt to make some lounge furnishings (sink, refrigerator, sofa) and some mounting rigs for the (Christmas) lights.  Until then, you can also check out this flythrough of the set for the filming of “Meet Rufus.”

-Mike

Attempting twelve seconds of dialogue and completing four…

After taking some time off, the production of SB:I resumed with a whimper today.  After two hours of computer hassle, we learned ourselves some lessons and have barely anything to show for it…

  • Do not use 8MP stills, they each take up 8 megs and my laptop is like 7 years old.
  • Do not bother acting out the scenes, or at least, not like we attempted – it produced very little actual animation.
  • Do not move the heads while they are speaking, the computer animated mouths will either look silly or take 10x as long to produce.

Also on our to do list:

  • Remember to bring the prop miniatures to the “studio” next time, Cliff needs his tools!
  • Figure out a new way to mount the camera.
  • LED lights!  Christmas lights!  The one overhead position-able lamp is functional, but not producing the shadows and colors we want.
  • Make the mouths.

Enjoy the video, but don’t blink!

Finally, The Name is penning a fourth original tune.  The live show will have to be delayed, but maybe it’s time for a second EP…

-Mike

Enter the DSLR

So we (Steve) have finally gotten serious about photographing Spacebase.  “How serious?” you ask.

After fiddling with some options, we were controlling focus and avoiding automatic white balance with ease and precision.  Cue proof video…

 For additional content, follow this link to see why Steve chose the camera he did.

Only a week or two left until filming of the episode will begin.  We’re making some adjustment to the body construction after melting the Melting Man in the video above (weights in the feet?) and finishing up wall decoration.  Mmmmm… progress.

-Mike

We're still making SB:I, and here's the proof!

We’ve had to take a few weeks off from Spacebase: Infinity for a variety of reasons, but progress is still being made.

We made some decisions on how to create bodies for the characters. After some testing, I think we’ll be modelling a torso out of clay and baking it before adding twisted wire for the arms and legs. In testing, this should give us stability and control without making their movements overly stiff.

We tried making the bodies completely of wire, but found them to be a little too deformable (as evidenced by the Cliff’s Doppleganger murder scene.) We also tried modifying a wooden model we found at Michaels, but the proportions weren’t right.

Next week we’ll hopefully finish the final set and at least a few character bodies. From there it should only be another week or so until we can begin filming the show. Exciting!

In other news, The Name has written and mostly recorded a new track. Add in one more cover in the next month or two, and the set is up to six songs. Time for an open mic?

Until then, mind the heavy drops…


Murderer's Identity Revealed…

The following video evidence, Moon Log #432:21, shows the killer to be a no-handed man.  Also, he has a wire loop head.

Cliff’s Doppelganger was murdered outside of his miniature wood cabin near the forest.  The only eyewitness, a gigantic deer, has yet to be found for questioning.  More as it develops.

Vocal sessions begin… and end!

Steve's happy with our progress!

UPDATE: There’s even a remix to bump in the car.

For about three and a half hours on Saturday, we got all of the voice actors in my dining room to lay down the vocals for SpaceBase: Infinity’s pilot episode.  After filling our stomachs with golabki and pierogies from Cracovia, we went through a table read of the script.  Looks like the final running time will be between 15 and 20 minutes.  Clips below…

Act 3, Scene 4

Act 2, Scene 2

 


Next, we’ll hopefully bring Josh on board (voice of Nat) to help push the project forward.  More sets, maybe some bodies for the characters, and hundreds of hours of small movements and photographs.

Until next time,
-Mike

The Name Invades SpaceBase: Infinity's Communications Satellite, I Guess!

There was craziness this weekend as rock/funk/ridiculous duo The Name hijacked SpaceBase: Infinity’s communications system and rocked the house… or the base, as the case may be.  Watch as Stack Dump and Cliff’s doppleganger grapple with a terrifying barrage of self-sampled mayhem!

As you can see, there are tons of mistakes in all areas – planning, photography, sequencing, editing, rendering… you name it, we messed it up.  Things on our to do / remember list:

  • Make sure when starting a new stop motion project, set the camera recording settings to an HD picture quality and aspect ratio.
  • If characters are going to be talking with their backs to the camera, make them move when they are talking rather than jittering randomly.
  • Adjust any sampled (aka YouTubed) footage to the same aspect ratio as the stop motion stills.
  • Try normalizing (?) the color balance and contrast on all stills before constructing the final scene.
  • Find a render setting that won’t screw up the 3d transformations.

That’s it for now!

-Mike