The Vaults
May 22nd, 2007 by oblong picturesI’ve always been a big fan of stop-motion animation, from Ray Harryhausen to Nick Park, but it never occurred to me that it was something I could do myself.
I was inspired to start when a work colleague brought a cheap l’Espion digital camera into the office. In the course of playing about with it, he made a very short and slightly ropy film of a toy Mike Wazowski (from Monsters Inc) eating a Post-It note.
I was amazed that it could be so simple to produce a film, and I went straight out and had a good old google for more information. The next thing I knew, I had a camera, some free software and my old childhood LEGO collection and I was away.
The films below were all done under poor lighting conditions with a l’Espion camera, so bear with me. They’re mostly tests that I did to get the hang of animation and/or effects. They’re all encoded with DivX 5.0.2 (you can download the latest DivX codec from www.divx.com). Apologies to Mac users and anyone else with an irrational dislike of DivX - I don’t intend to convert these to any other format because life really is too short.
I don’t think any of these are over 10 seconds long. Enjoy.
- My very first animation - Riverdance
- My first walk cycle
- My first run cycle
- A Mexican wave - works best if you loop it
- Busting the phat beats
- An attempt at animating 4 characters at once
- Fun with chairs
- My first fx shot
- The obligatory light sabre fight
- My first drunken stagger cycle
- Zombie rising from the grave
- A ghostly skeleton menaces an unsuspecting victim
Posted in Uncategorized | 
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:23 am
Dammint, i cant watch them on my Vista. What can I do to watch them?
July 29th, 2008 at 1:50 am
I actually liked those. You were big on classic space, weren’t you?
August 6th, 2008 at 1:07 am
Your films are well carried out, you have really original ideas, the animation of your characters is very expressive, I learns much looking your work.
edit : sorry for my english :S
August 8th, 2008 at 7:04 am
haha great i love the Fun With Chairs one i might have to make it!
August 30th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Hey, you mentioned a free stop motion program, could you send me the link to it? I’ve been making stop motion Lego movies for two years now, and besides picture quality, mine aren’t nearly as good as these tests animation wise. Right now I’m using just windows movie maker, which makes the animation pretty choppy. Any help would be great, Thanks!
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:20 am
I would like to say that i reckon these Videos r actually quite good.
Your newer films are great! I am a subscriber on You Tube.
keep making Animations, Havn’t seen One for a while.
Thanks.