Clay Animation Tutorials

Majed Elass over at his site, Clay Animation Tutorials, has some nice video tutorials to learn from. So far he has three done: "How To Make Replacement Mouths", "How To Make A 6 Inch Armature Tutorial", and "How To Keep Your Puppets Standing With Out a Tie down Tutorial!" (These link directly to their video page and not to the site). They're pretty well done and are a good way to learn something new. The site also has a blog, photos, store, and a featured video page. They are updated from time to time, depending on how busy he is. I've linked to both the site and his Stop Motion Magic page below.

Clay Animation Tutorials
Stop Motion Magic Page

Wire Removal

Well, my post on wire removal for Stop Motion Animation is finally here. If you've been reading my blog, you probably knew that I was working on a tutorial on how to do wire removal for free, which I will have in this post, but I'm also going to have a number of other links to places that you can learn more about the topic. Let's get started.

Intro
Gravity. The source of all the trouble that pops up in stop motion animation that causes the need of rigs and wires to support different objects and puppets. Without the rigging, your puppet may fall over or your ball will not be fly through the air when it is thrown. On camera however, rigging is very ugly and obvious so there is a need to remove it to deceive the audience of what was being done. Some people hide the rigging simply because they don't know how to remove it, but hopefully the links and things that I have in this post will help clear things up with you. Let's start with a few links that introduce you to the topic and how rigging is removed in live action films(the same basic process is used for stop motion)

Wire Removal in General
Fxguide has a very nice article called "The Art of Wire Removal" that tells some of the basic techniques used during the process and some of the programs that are used. This was the place where I learned the idea of how to do it in order to adapt it to Blender 3d(I use a clean plate method in my tutorial, I'll explain more later). It is probably one of the best starting places to get a grasp on things so I highly recommend checking it out. Another article I have a link to below is called "Wire Removal" by Michael Smith that talks some about the topic.

The Art of Wire Removal
Wire Removal

Cloning
One of the main ways that I started to remove wire was to clone the wire out using an image editing program. Basically you take each from in the animation and take some of the pixels around the wire and put them on top of the wire to hide it. It works sometimes, but the results aren't always the best. If the editing job is not done very well, or because of slight variations in tone and color, the area where you edited the wire out can still be visible due to flickering of color. You can do this process with any program with the right tool. Sometimes it's called a cloning tool or the rubber stamp tool. View this article on Wikipedia to learn more about the cloning tool. If you need a free program to do it, check out the Gimp. Another program that works specifically for removing wire is called Wire Pilot and works around the same lines, but is probably more suited to individual images. Both are linked to below as well as a tutorial on cloning using the Gimp.

Gimp Download Site
Wire Pilot
Gimp Cloning Tutorial

The Clean Plate Method
The second method I've experimented with and found good results with is by using a clean plate. (I actually first discovered this method watching a behind the scenes video of Narnia: The Lion the Witch...) Basically you use two images; one with your wire in it, and one of just your background(the clean plate). Each image or layer I guess would be considered a plate, and since the background one doesn't have anything on it, it's considered "clean". You take the background image and cut out a little piece of it to cover the wire with. I'm not going to explain too much more since I have two tutorials that you can look at. One is my video tutorial that I made and the other is an article done by Kyle Prohaska.

Wire Removal by Kyle Prohaska

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Before you watch my video, I want to apologize for the many flaws and mistakes in it. It's not professional by any means, but I did try my best to get the point across. Sorry for any poor pronunciation and audio problems as well. The audio is a bit off of sync and there were some issues with recording so some parts are weird. Anyways, during the tutorial I used Blender 3D to edit wire out of my animation. One thing that I did in the tutorial was save my mask, something that you need to do if you don't want to paint over the wire again. I don't remember the exact version of blender that I used, but it should work on the newest versions as well. I don't remember if there's anything else I should note. Enjoy!



Get Blender 3D Here

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That's it for my rather long blog post on wire and rig removal. I hope that you learned a lot about it and that you can use what you learned for your own films and animations. My next post that teaches something will probably be about little things that you can do to make your animation better by using a program called Virtual Dub as well as Blender 3D.

Ron Cole Mold Making Tutorial

Ron Cole over at Wobbly Tripod, his blog, made up a nice three part tutorial on mold making. They're videos that teach the technique used for casting a sculpture for foam latex. I haven't done it yet, but I found the whole mold making process interesting. Maybe, someday, I'll try foam latex.

Here's the link.

Concept Sketching and Tutorial

Today and yesterday I've done a number of concept sketches for "The Hole". The things that I'm sketching may not even be used, but whatever, it's part of the movie making process. I still need to come up with a pretty solid script sometime so that I can storyboard it. That'll let me then do the CG animatic and all the pre-visualization will be done. After that I can start making final props, get the set made, light it, and shoot away. I'll probably have to throw in some animation practices in there so that I can actually animate somewhat decently. A lot of pre-planning will also have to be done for timing and where I'll be using wire to hold things up and stuff. Lots of work, but lots of fun.

For the tutorial, I finished it yesterday, only to learn later that the audio wasn't synced up correctly. It's not too big of a problem, but makes the tutorial look strange in some spots. Hopefully I can figure out how to fix it. Once that's done, I can figure out a release date or something.

Sorry for not posting any learning or interesting stop motion material recently. I'll have to do that soon so that the blog doesn't focus just on my updates.

Tutorial Almost Ready

Today I worked and am currently working on the tutorial. It's almost finished. I'm just rendering out a larger version of the intro right now. Once I put that in, it'll be ready to render for the final thing. The blur thing never really worked out very good, even though I changed codecs, but I didn't want to mess with it anymore so I just left it how it was.

After it's rendered, there will be a couple more things to do and it will be finished. Man...using free stuff really does take a lot longer than it would buying something better. Part of what took so much time was me not knowing what I was doing, but rendering and switching from program to program also took lots of time. At least it's possible to do if you don't got the money to buy something better.

After it's finished, I have to figure out where to upload it to. Will I want to try to make some money or go for quality? Youtube won't allow the length I have so I may have to cut it in half if I want to put it there.

Still lots to do.

Cutting Back and Tutorial

I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to do this yet or not, but I've been thinking about cutting back how much I post on here. This would simply make it easier for me to try to save blog posts for when I am gone. I haven't decided yet, but I'm probably going to either start this week or next week. Instead of seeing a post everyday, you'll start seeing maybe 3-5 a week.

For the tutorial, I closed the file and forgot about it so I didn't do anything more. If I remember, tonight I'll try to give the render another go(it takes a long time to render so I can't do it all that quick). Hopefully it will work this time... I'm anxious to get this finished and out of the way. I don't know if I'll be making any more video tutorials like this in the future. This one was almost too much trouble. It depends though. If this video gets me a lot of exposure, I'll probably go ahead and do a few more. I might drop the series name, Editing Free, since it's not really going to be a series anymore.

Style Tutorial and First Book Arrival

Finished writing up a tutorial about style yesterday. It wasn't too hard to do since I wasn't explaining how to do it, but rather trying to get the reader to think about style for themselves and try to develop their own. That makes around 15 in total now, I'm starting to run out of ideas for more.

I also got my first book in the mail today - Chicken Run: Hatching the Movie. I'll have to read through it some and get ready to give it a little review sometime in the next few weeks, so get ready to see that.

New Books and Tutorial Update

Yesterday I ordered two books from Amazon.com. I've read or flipped through both before because I've checked them out at the library, but they were nice and cheap and they're the kind of books you like to go back and look at from time to time. The books I got were Creating 3-D Animation and Chicken Run: Hatching the Movie. If I were to get only one, I'd definitely get the first one, but Chicken Run: Hatching the Movie has some good information in it as well. The books were both under $2 used, the main cost was shipping, but since I got a free $10 gift card from doing a survey online, I only paid about 46 cents for both books. It was a pretty good deal, especially since they're both hard cover. I'll be reviewing these books later on the blog.

As for the video tutorial, I haven't done any more work on it. I really should start thinking about trying to work on it again sometime, but we'll see how things go.

Until next time.

The Clay Animation Station

Here's one of the first clay animation websites I ever found, being that it is near the top of Google. Aside from it being outdated and the not so good design of the site, there's some nice information on it. You can view a nice animation created by the makers of the site and see a little bit of how they created it. There are also short guides on basic ways of how to start animating and creating your own claymation as well as some history and more. The link to the site is below.

The Clay Animation Station

Also be sure to check out their "About This Site" page to learn more about it.

Making an Army of Gromits

Keeping with the theme of Wallace and Gromit, here's a tutorial type thing that you can find on Instructables.com on how to make an army of Gromits using molds. It's a good place to learn how to make replicas of your own puppets by following step by step instructions how how to do it. A nice list of resources are also given for materials and other things. So check it out by clicking on the link below.

Making an Army of Gromits

How to Build a Bunny

Ever wanted to know how to make one of those bunnies that appear on the Wallace and Gromit movie? Well, now you can learn how to. Watch the video below to let Harriet Thomas from Aardaman teach you.

Web, and Tutorial Updates and a Video

Today I worked a little bit more on the video tutorial, blurring the spots that need to be blurred. It's taking a while, but it should be done soon. Hopefully not more than a week. I also worked a little bit on figuring out the new photo gallery system. It seems really easy to use and looks nice, so you can see a little bit of how that will work in the image above.

Also, here's a video for you since I've been posting a lot of personal updates lately. It's a neat animation using clay on glass.

More Editing

Today I spent some more time editing the video tutorial I created. I'm working on the intro to the tutorial right now. It's taking a lot longer than I thought it would to complete it. I guess Blender and Virtual Dub are not the most efficient tools to use to edit video (or I'm not skilled enough), but at least it's free. The most annoying thing is compression. I have to make sure I keep my file size down and since I've never dealt with compressors much, I don't really know much of what I'm doing. The last things I have to do are combine a bunch of clips together into one and blur a few areas. The trick is getting my audio to line up with the video. Once that's done, it should almost be ready to put up on the web. I'll have to think about the show intro some more as well. Thanks for waiting.

How to Build a Set Tutorial

Here's a tutorial I found online about how to build an animation set at cjandbuster.com. It's not the most complex set, but it looks pretty nice nonetheless. On the page he gives a brief rundown on how he built the set as well as giving some pictures for us to see along the way.

Click here to go to it.


On another note, I've been busier than I though I was going to be for the last few days so I'm not sure when the tutorial is going to get out. I also have to figure out how to edit it. I've been having problems with some stuff.

Recorded: Wire Removal

Well, I recorded some today using a free program, keeping with the show theme, "Editing Free"(I'll probably try to create the show using all free programs). Now I have some editing to do, but I think I'll let that wait a while. How would I say my first video tutorial recording came out? I think it was decent. I didn't really go into depth as much as I wanted to and there were a number of flaws, but I think it will work. As always if people need help, I'll let them email me to ask questions. One bad thing I already noticed is that my headphones kept creaking so the audio in the video will have these little noises. It was also harder than I expected it to be. I kept messing up and had to really think through what I was going to say before I started recording. The computer lagging because of the screen recorder also didn't help much. Some things to do next time are:

- Write out an print a more specific script.
- Try to figure out some way to make the earphones not creak.
- Enunciate my speech better and speak slower.

My estimated time that this will be ready for online viewing is probably within 2 weeks. I still have to finish the intro animation, edit, and upload. I have a break from school this next week so it could come out much sooner. Hopefully people like it and want more.

Now I have to come up with some more video tutorial ideas...

Editing Free

I still haven't yet created a video tutorial yet, but when I do,I decided to make it part of a series called "Editing Free". I decided to call it Editing Free because I'll probably be using free programs in the video tutorials so that anyone using them can do what I'll be explaining. I don't know how often I'll be able to make tutorials because of different issues and that I'm not that proficient in the programs I'll be using so it takes a while to get it down before I can teach it. Also, based on the poll I took, it seems that people are eager to learn how to edit in Blender so that's good. If you haven't been keeping up with past blog posts, my first tutorial will probably be about wire removal. I might not be the best at teaching in the beginning, but hopefully I'll be able to learn to do things better over time through suggestions. Right now I'm working on an intro animation for the thing, it might take another week or so to polish up and get sound to.

More Video Tutorial Planning

Just to let you know, I've still been planning for the video tutorial. Today I planned out the "script" or lesson plan, just a basic outline to follow when I'm doing it. I also did some testing with the recording program to get used to it and to make sure I know how to work it. Yesterday I worked a little on an intro animation, I still have yet to come up with a name however before it can be further worked on.

Wire Removal Test Video

Yesterday I finally figured out how to finish up the wire removal stuff. It's not perfect because of some poor masking, but other than that, it looks pretty good. I'm probably going to try to make up a video tutorial, but I can't promise when it'll be on the web. Some planning will have to go into it as well as some other factors before it will be ready. If you want to see the results I got, view the video at the bottom of this post.

To get the results I went through a few different steps:
1. Combine captured frames into an avi movie clip (Virtualdub doesn't take QuickTime files) using Blender 3d.
2. Use Virtualdub and a filter to de-flicker the video. This made it so that there would be a constant lighting. If I hadn't done this you would notice where the wire once was.
3. Change the compressor in Virtualdub to one that is compatible with Blender, then save it.
4. Use Blender to draw over the wires and unwanted objects to create a mask. Save the mask as a movie or image sequence in case needed later for further use.
5. Use Blender's node system to mask out the wires and show the clean plate instead. Do a few color corrections on the clean plate and modify the mask a little.
6. Export from Blender as QuickTime File.

If you don't understand some of that, don't worry, I plan to go over it later. I just wanted to give a rough overview of what I did to get the results. I'll probably talk about the reasons why you would want to erase wire later. Note that this is just one way to remove wire. There are others, but I found that this is pretty effective as long as your camera is not moving.

Here's the video:

Video Tutorial Ideas

Here are some ideas I have for video tutorials. At first I was thinking about doing them all together and selling them as a group, but I really don't know the software well enough to teach how things work, just how to do some things, so I'm not so sure about charging for them right now. I haven't really tried making a video tutorial yet either, so my first one may tell me whether I should do more or if I shouldn't. Hopefully I'd improve in technique wise as I'd more as well. There are quite a few things that go into it that may need fixing. Anyways, here's a list I made up a while ago, not all are Blender related. These are just ideas if I really get into it or something.

Credits/titles
color manipulation
overlaying
green screen
erasing wire
compositing digital effects
particles
-fire
-smoke
Sequence editor
Nodes
Virtual Dub
-deshaker
-deflicker
-other filters
Gimpshop