Animate Clay

Animate Clay is one of the most well known sites out there about clay animation, probably being that it's at the top of Google, but also because it has some good information. The site was created and is run by a man by the name of Marc Spess. It was one of the fist sites I ever visited and the articles there are a good place to learn. On the site is a blog where he shares different stop motion news from time to time, a forum, a store, links, a gallery, and more. One of the best resources on the site is the forum which I've been a part of since April 6, 2006. The message boards have helped me greatly in my journey of learning claymation in that I could ask questions, get feed back, and read about what others were doing. The links are also a nice resource as well as the articles.

In the store he runs, different materials are available as well as some video tutorials. I suggest purchasing the videos if you are serious about clay animation as they are a good way to learn about sculpting, animating, and other topics. Showing, as is done in the tutorials, is an easier way to learn than reading a book or online.

Anyways, go check out the site yourself if you haven't already seen it (you may have come to this blog from that site), and if you have, go reread and look through the forums to learn more about clay animation.

Animate Clay

Pingu

Pingu is one of the main animated productions that I watched when I was little. It was on T.V. a lot, I watched it at school sometimes in a Chinese Class I had, and we had a couple videos of it. I guess it may have influenced me into knowing what claymation was and when I actually started making my own, I realized how it was made. Later on, I found out that they actually used a lot of replacement animation in it. Below is a video from You Tube of an episode of Pingu and if you would like to read up more on the subject, here's a Wikipedia article on it. I quoted a little bit of the article below as well and added a couple more links to the bottom of this post for you to view.

Pingu is a Swiss animated children's television series created by Otmar Gutman about a family of penguins who live at the South Pole. The main character is the son, Pingu, though some episodes feature Pingu's parents and (after her hatching) his baby sister Pinga, his friend Robby the Seal, and other minor characters.^[1]

One reason for Pingu's international success was its lack of dialogue per se. All dialogue was in a honking "penguin language,"(called Penguinese) performed (without script) by Carlo Bonomi similarly to La Linea (also dubbed by Bonomi).

The Pingu Youtube Channel
The Pingu Official Website

Reference Sites

Need reference? I've listed a few of the different sites I've found or discovered over time that have images or textures of different things. They're good places to look if you're designing a prop or set and need to look at something to make sure you're doing it right.

CG Textures
Mainly meant for finding textures for computer generated stuff, but can still be studied for claymation stuff.

Morgue File
This is a site that has a lot of free reference images for artists. The site says, "The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits. "

Google Images
Google images is always a good place to look if you're just searching for reference. Make sure you don't print something off for a prop(like an image of a map or ad) unless you know the copyright information about it.

Facial Expressions: A Visual Reference for Artists
If you need some reference for character animation or sculpture, you may want to consider getting this book. It has lots of images of different people giving different expressions for reference.

The Blueprints.com
This site has nice blueprints of different things like cars, weapons, ships, humans, and other things. If you need to build a prop or anything in one of those categories, it may be a good idea to see if it's on that site so that you can build one to more exact measurements.

Those are just a few of the many resources you can find for reference on the internet(or in a book). If you need more, I'm sure there is much more out there.

Some Quick News

Well, I've finally been able to get to a computer with internet to write up a post on what's been happening recently. I'm now in the land of Taiwan, hence the flag above, and things are going pretty smoothly. It's going to take a while before I have everything set up again for claymation stuff and animation(which I'm hoping to do). A shipment still has to arrive and I'll have to get settled into my house a little first. I haven't had much access to the internet lately, but I have had access to a computer, so I've still been able to be productive with "The Hole". I've been working on the CG animatic using Blender 3D. The animatic is probably not necessary for the animation, but I'm making it for fun, to practice my CG skills, and for the timing help it will give me. So far, the file and all the props are pretty much created in it, so the next thing that comes will be animation. I've done a couple tests and realized how poor my animation is with Blender. I'm almost a complete noob animation-wise(I don't think I've really ever animated anything before), but do know some basic ideas on how to do it, so hopefully that will get me through. This thing is also going to take a lot longer than I thought it was going to take to finish. Animation takes a while, with all it's tweaking, then there will be render times, and then after that, editing and sound effects. It might take a month or two before I have this finished. Once the animatic is done, I'll start working on creating props, animation practice and timing, as well as starting to think about building a set. After that comes the real thing. One everything is finished (hopefully, I'll be able to), I'm going to throw together a sub domain or some kind of small web page for it, and then present it to the world. Right now I'm also thinking about making an option to pay(only a few bucks or so) to download some extra behind-the-scenes stuff, like more images, a higher resolution file of the animation, the blender files for the animatic, and possibly a few other things, maybe a short PDF book about the whole thing, I haven't thought too much about it. There will be other stuff to view for free, just nothing that high quality since it will take longer to load and stuff on the web. Anyways, those are just some of the ideas and dreams I have for it, it seems strange that I'm making a big deal out of short animation, but whatever, at least I'm having fun.

Blog: Ceri's Adventures in Stop-Motion

Here's a blog called "Ceri's Adventures in Stop-Motion". The author describes it as, "I'm a 26 year old artist trying to teach myself stop-motion animation from scratch to a professional level within one year. Laugh at my over ambition!" That pretty much sums up what's on the blog and what is about, different things she is trying out with stop motion animation. Look at it to view some of the work in progress shots and things she has created by clicking on the link below.

Ceri's Adventures in Stop-Motion

More: An Animated Short-Film

This is an interesting short animation that I saw a long time ago and was reminded of recently by a friend. I suggest you check it out. Here's the description of the short, called More, found on the video's page.

The Academy-Award® nominated animated short-film tells the story of a lonely inventor, whose colorless existence is brightened only by dreams of the carefree bliss of his youth.

By day, he is trapped in a dehumanizing job in a joyless world. But by night, he tinkers away on a visionary invention, desperate to translate his inspiration into something meaningful.

When his invention is complete, it will change the way people see the world. But he will find that success comes at a high price, as it changes himself, as well.

If you would like to see it, view the links below. I've also added a link to see a little bit of the making of it.

More Video Page
The Making of More

Zombie Pirates

Zombie Pirates is probably one of the nicest clay animation blogs out there. It's done by Marc Spess, owner of Stop Motion Magic and Animate Clay, and is his project to make a quality series done in clay animation about Zombie Pirates. I believe he started the project in 2004. On the blog, he gives updates time to time as he has time to work on the project. There are also pages talking about the project, as well as lots of pictures and stuff. It's a good place to learn just by viewing images. While you're there, also make sure you check some of the older posts to see how the project has come over the years. I'll let you check out the rest yourself.

Zombie Pirates