Stop Motion Stuff

I spotted this morning that I've been neglecting the animation ramblings blog so here's a quick post with a selection of Stop Motion Links that I've found over the years.

Modellers / filmakers
Jan-Eric Nyström
Marc Spess
Interview with Jim Rohn
Jeremy Spake
Scarlet star studios
Larry Loc
Menagerie Productions

Materials
Sculpey
Trylon

Armatures
Armaverse
Gryphyn
Animation toolkit
Textbook Industries
Animation Supplies
King Kong Armature

How to make models
Tom Brierton on Foam Puppets
Scarlet Star Studios - stop-motion puppet construction
Stop Motion Works

Miscellaneous
Using an armature as a input device
Animatronics

King Kong Auction

Frank Grimshaw reports in the Imagine Animation Blog of an auction of a 22-inch armature made by Willis O’Brien for the 1933 film of King Kong, it was used in the final scene on top of the Empire State Building.



This and other Vintage Film Posters and Entertainment Memorabilia will be on sale at Christies South Kensington Offices at 2pm on November 24th 2009.

Stop Motion Armatures

I was looking at the armatures in the Stop Motion Animation Shop this morning and wondered if there was anything like that in the uk. A quick search on google came up with the following:

Some links for UK suppliers of stop motion armatures, in no particular order.

Gryphyn
Hugh's Armatures
Mark Reeve Animation Engineering
Animation Toolkit
Animation Supplies

UK Stop Motion Supplier

There are several suppliers of stop motion armatures in the USA but that requires any components to be shipped over here, savings made on the exchange rate could be lost on the P&P. However there is now Animation Supplies, a UK supplier of armatures and other stop motion bits. It's run by an animator called "Andrew Simmons" who studied at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design.
http://www.animationsupplies.net/



Animation supplies are biased towards the stop motion animator and can supply Armatures, Acrylic eyes, Magnets as well as kits with all of these. For those who want to make their own armatures the individual parts such as Ball Joints, Universal Joints, Feet, Threaded Rod and Stainless Steel Rod are available. Aluminium wire can also be purchased. Feedback and ideas shared at the Animation Supplies Forum and Guestbook.

Stop Motion Armatures Survey

A quick survey for all those people who are animating with armature based stop motion puppets. Please feel free to respond as comments or email me at andy at aceanim dot com.

1. What do you like about the armatures you currently work with?
2. Do you outsource your armature making, machine your own armatures or build from kits?
3. What is the typical lifetime of an armature before it needs replacing/scrapping?
4. What scale do you use?
5. Is rust a problem, do the covering materials corrode the metal?
6. Which bits break most often?
7. What does not work (joints, materials, shapes)?
8. Which process takes the longest; designing your armature, machining the armature, covering/dressing the puppet.

The reason for the survey is to help me (and the animation ramblings) readers to make better armatures. Although primarily targeted at stop motion animators, I'd also be interested to hear what maquette makers and other model makers are upto in this area.

Stikfas

Whilst searching for information on digital camera suitable for stop motion filming, I stumbled across Stop Motion Pro's website. Stop Motion Pro (SMP) has a very clever bit of software but that's not what I'm going to mention today.

SMP are selling Stikfas figures with their software. Stikfas are an excellent idea from SMP as they are ideal for stop motion beginners. The basic figures click together and can be posed in various ways. The range of figures available as you can see above is quite extensive, however the figures are designed to be customised with paints or stickers so you can have something quite unique.

Stikfas are available in the UK from http://www.theintoy.co.uk