archived-videos Friday The 13th Claymation

M

mad_hatter

Hi all.

I've very recently taken up stop-motion animation, and I'd like to get some opinions on my first scene. It's taken from a Friday The 13th parody trailer I'm working on. There's no sound as of yet and a few elements still need to be composited in.

Take a look and let me know what you think. Any suggestions as to how I can improve my animations would be greatly appreciated!

Anyway, here it is (WARNING: This is a Friday The 13th parody, so it does contain some adult material!):


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8OD8vOwpME


(((For anybody that's interested, the dialogue will be "Whoa. That's some good s#!t." and "Dude. You are so stoned.")))


Thanks for watching! I await your thoughts/comment/opinions/questions.

Cheers!
 
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Pffff. I loved it already. It had me laughing almost immediately, even without sound. Great job so far!

I don't really have any suggestions from this short, unfinished bit.

Well, I'm sure the lighting is just fine. At least you can see everything clearly and easily. But I suppose you could try lighting it in a little more of a mood-inducing way, rather than just more-or-less flood lighting it. I haven't seen Friday the 13th in since forever, so for all I know that's how they lit it. I'm just thinking a horror movie, or any live action movie, would probably be lit a little more subtly and suggestively than this. Like, where are the shadows, the dark corners, something most horror films have plenty of, etc? Just thinking it might add a sense of a little more authenticity or something. But maybe lighting in a more nuanced way isn't possible or practical for you with stop-motion.

I look forward to seeing more!
 
Thanks for watching Richy. I appreciate the feedback.

You're absolutely right on the lighting. There's no colour correction been applied to this. Hopefully I'll be able to bring the shadows down and create a bit more mood that way. But yes, lighting is something I need to work on with this. Perhaps I've lit this too brightly; I need to somehow scale the lighting down to match the scale of the characters.

Thanks again for the comments!
 
I too was laughing within seconds AND also had no sound. Looks good, but you could definitely use some grading/grain overlay or something.
 
Hadn't seen this but it looks like you've done a really good job, especially for someone fairly new to claymation. I'd maybe suggested speeding up the playback fractionally in the middle (but I don't know to what extent that's actually possible with claymation...).

I assume you're a Lee Hardcastle fan?
 
Hahahaha that was hilarious! :D

I would agree with Richy where the lighting could be a little brighter to help get rid of some of the shadows. But overall I like it.

I can't wait to hear the audio: at first I was like, "is my audio off?"
Then I realized you had not put audio in.
 
Thanks Opus. I'll definitely be looking at the grading once the whole thing is complete.


NickClapper said:
I assume you're a Lee Hardcastle fan?
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I'm a huge Lee Hardcastle fan. I find his work very inspirational!

As for speeding it up; are you referring to the actual attack, with the bong breaking through his head? If so, I agree that needs speeding up. I shall try and do so by dropping frames, then overlaying hose dropped frames to create a fake motion blur. I've already done this for Jason's downward arm movement. I think it may improve the following few shots too.

Thanks for watching!
 
I really enjoyed it!! Can't wait to see more. I'm a huge Friday the 13th fan. I also agree with the color grading comments. I think that will go a long ways in helping set the mood/tone.
 
richy said:
Could you tell us what program you're using for your stop-motion? I looked into it recently and wasn't sure what to make of the choices. I got the impression Dragonframe is the cat's meow. Is that what you use?
Click to expand...

Don't forget, I'm very new to this myself! To that end, I'm currently not the best resource for the ins-and-outs of stop-motion.

But through my own research, it would appear that you're right; Dragonframe is the most cited as being used by professionals. StopMotionPro also gets mentioned, as does iStopMotion for Mac. It's hard to find any definitive information on these programs though! I'm not sure which really is the best, or why.

For now, I'm shooting these frames in camera, then dropping them in to my NLE (Sony Vegas). You can set it so each image only plays for 1 frame. It seems to work fine for me!

But, if I really get in to this, I probably would invest in something like Dragonframe.
 
Awesome. Thanks for explaining how you do it and your thoughts on the available software, Mad Hatter. :)

Looking forward to more!
 
Thanks for the comments, guys!

As a bit of an update, I’ve actually decided to set this one aside for now, as, being so new to stop motion, I’ve come to the realisation that I’m actually trying to run before I can walk with this! The scene above is pretty simple; there’s not much movement there at all. The next couple of scenes that I tried to shoot required more complicated movements, which, it turns out, is actually really difficult. What I shot ended up being pretty dreadful. I will come back to it, but I’ve decided to move on to some of the simpler shorts I want to make, and continue to learn from them.

I’ll continue to post my work so I can track my progression and get some feedback.

Thanks again!
 
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