It took a little bit of trial and error, but I've finally got my system down. First, load the background up onto the computer with a 3 x 3 grid overlay on top. This mimics the grid on the camera screen and has been essential to get the scale and perspective correct on the animations. Then, set up the beginning and end of the shot to ensure the flow is correct. Lastly, get animating!
I'd originally planned to shoot at 18 or 24 frames per second, but after watching a behind-the-scenes of Wallace and Gromit, I saw they were only shooting 12 fps. If it's good enough for those Oscar winners, it's good enough for me. I'm capturing at full HD resolution (1920x1080) and after completing each scene, I run a batch process on them to reduce them to 1/4 size. This allows me to quickly generate "rushes" where I can scrutinize the animation and that I can check against the backgrounds.
After about 6 hours of work, I completed about 700 frames of animation. That's about 1/7th of the entire episode, but there;s much more work involved than just the animation. I've still got to do the keying, mouth movements, final compositing, and audio syncing. Now that I'm in the flow of it, I'm hopeful to move things forward at a good rate.
The primitive animation studio: Green screen attached to a mic stand, two table lamps, a Lego base plate, and the camera.
No comments:
Post a Comment