Piecing it all Together

After a couple of months of sickness, I'm finally making significant progress towards completing the first episode of City KREW. About 75% of the animations are complete and 25% of the final compositions are complete, visually at least.

Compositing the scenes can be quite tricky, so here's a run down of how I'm tackling it. The Lego stop motion animations will be superimposed over real life backgrounds. The first step was to record the backgrounds, then I need to set up the stop motion shot to match the scale and perspective as closely as possible. Depending on the shot, this can be very difficult. The screenshots below show a relatively simple shot.

The real life background looks fine on its own, but when I think about having characters in the foreground, the depth of field is too great.

Luckily this is a simple fix. I simply copied the background and created a feathered mask that shows the trees that would appear behind the characters. Adding a Fast Blur gives the desired effect.

Next comes the stop motion. Using the real life background, I set up a grid on the computer that matches the camera's viewfinder grid. This allows me to match the position and scale I need for the stop motion to fit into the live background. Shooting against a green screen allows me to quickly extract the characters using a key and insert them into the background.

Unfortunately, it's not a completely smooth process. Since the characters are walking on the baseplate, the studs create enough  reflection and variation in colour that the key cannot effectively remove them. This means manually masking them out of every frame which is very tedious and time-consuming. Fortunately, because the Lego figures have all straight edges, the masks do not need to be complex. I would not want to be doing this with real actors!

Once the key is applied, the final shot looks like this. There are a few other adjustments I make depending on the background. For this, the contrast is reduced and the brightness increased for the Lego characters to try and match the lighting of the woods.

After doing about twelve of these scenes, I've really perfected my technique. Once the other animations are complete, I think I will be able to blow through the comps. When they are complete, all that remains is adding the voiceovers and other audio.

Back on Track

After a couple of weeks of illness in the family and a couple of weeks missing the motivation to get creative, I finally found the impetus to make some significant progress.

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.

Never Underestimate Your Kids' Creativity

Many of the character names in City KREW were invented by my son, Kieran, in a moment of creativity. As I've been thinking about storylines, I've used bedtime as a forum for developing those ideas. He's always got questions and ideas about what happens. And while he was playing today he offered another gem for the prime location of a future episode. I won't reveal more, as it will spoil the surprise.

City KREW Episode 001, Progress Report

Halfway through September, I expected to have shot all the backgrounds shot and be wrapping up the voice overs. I'd hoped to finish Episode 001 by the end of the month. Unfortunately, things are far behind schedule.

With the family sick all week, I've made no progress at all. The loss of the original equipment I'd planned to use, forced a rethink on that front. That actually worked out in my favour as I used that and my birthday as an excuse to invest in a new HD camera. Ordering that and waiting for shipping also set back the schedule, but now I'm very pleased to have a brand new Canon HG20. And for the deal B&H Photo was offering, I got myself a slick new mic and wide angle lens as well, all for less price than Best Buy's price for the camera.

I've had the camera for most of the week, but with the family sick and a hectic week at work (whose idea was that?), I barely had chance to use it.

Luckily, not everything has drawn to a halt. The first voice over was completed by Shanti and now Winny's lines are ready for editing. The results were excellent and motivate me to get going on mine (once I get the frog out of my throat). If the weather cooperates this weekend, I'll be shooting the backgrounds.

Here's hoping next week is a productive one...

Birth of The Project

Unfortunately, I missed out on this year's 48 hour film contest, but hearing how things went gave me the bug to get creative again. The idea had been fermenting for a year or so, and it seemed like the time was right. This was reinforced by Kieran inventing some fantastic names that will now be characters in the story.

While out for a walk at Hamlin Park, I had trouble keeping up with Kieran as he darted in and out of the trees and up and down the hills. I had a sudden moment of clarity and the City KREW was born! Four everyday heroes working together to help the community.

By the time we left the park, I had the first episode running through my head. The KREW would meet while trying to rescue someone who had fallen in a remote park. Now, the script is written and cast, and production is imminent.