I'm trying to achieve a puppet like quality in the flea film but using CGI.
French director Stéphane Berla manages this very well in the music video Tais Toi Mon Coeur (Shut up, My Heart) but also takes advantage of the computer world to add some effects such as smoke and sequences such as the cogs below which could have been very difficult due to the physicality of working in stop motion.
Watch the film
Stop Motion Animation in a bottle...
Thinking that could have a short animation of a man in a bottle tapping on the glass and then sitting down giving up.
Normally when I can't play a particular video, I just give up and don't watch it. However I found a little windows utility that might be of use to help diagnose issues.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/installed_codec.html
On a related note, one of my pet peeves is the need to use a different video player for different video files. Surely that's why we have codecs... This problem is made worse by these players installing lots of other functionality along with them, Real and QuickTime (installs Itunes) are particularly bad. I've looked into QuickTime Alternative and QT Lite but so far not had too much luck with them...
http://www.codecguide.com/qt_lite.htm
Test file: http://vodcast.imagineanimation.net/SF_Title_Sequence_WATERMARK_5-6-07.mov
Stop Press: I've checked Apple's Quicktime site again and it does seem that it's now possible to download QT without ITunes. We'll have to see if it's decided to install any bonus items for "my benifit"...
Dave Burgess has done an ECritique for the 11 Second club and provides some interesting insight into the good and not so good bits of Philip Hall's short clip.
One of the ideas I picked up as having use for the flea circus film is that of "Opposing Motion". Loosely based on Newton's 3rd law (To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) the idea here is that actions look more natural and are clearer if there is an opposing motion to complement them. For example as the character raises their head they also lower their hand. The Flea Circus RingMaster makes these kind of movements with his magnifying glass and tweezers. This is not the same as overlapping action which would be something like hair or floppy ears following a head movement by a few frames and follow through which would be those items keeping moving once the head had stopped.
Dave also has some good points to make about arcs and follow through so I recomend watching the whole of his critique.
There's a new book out by stop motion animation expert Barry Purves. Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance
