A New Idea

So I made a silly little stop-motion film with my friend Michael a few years back. At the same time that happened he and I also had a little writing club called Company of Creative Works. The basic premise was to meet once per week and share what we had written. I think we were as interested in creating the club as we were in doing the writing. I remember we spent hours coming up with activities and 'rules' and all of the different types of writing assignments we could give to help spark our creativity as well as encourage growth through challenge.

Well, it is enough to say that the club mostly flopped for a variety of boring reasons, but some of the work that came out of our few meetings is worth at least a glance.

Out of those two things (stop-motion and writing) comes this latest idea.

I plan to adapt some of these things I have written into stop-motion films. There are a few challenges, apart from needing creative vision and skills to implement that vision.

The largest challenge for me is the need for:

a) software, and

b) hardware that has the features I need. One feature that is almost a must is a live-preview mode. This will allow me to see on the computer screen what I am doing on the set, and at the same time show my last frame captured.

On the software end it is really a matter of money. There are some nice cheap (iStopMotion, iKitMovie) and even free (MonkeyJam, VirtualDub, AnimatorDV Simple+) solutions out there, but the one that has really caught my eye is Stop Motion Pro 7.

Stop Motion Pro is so much more powerful than the other options that I can't see why anyone would want to use anything else (cost excluded). It has too many features to list here in this discussion. Perhaps in the future I'll break it down. For now, visit their website for more info.

Regarding hardware, I own a Canon 30D DSLR which I used to make my 'Space Ball' film and it worked quite well for the captures. The issue now is that I doesn't have any sort of live view capability. Having live view is something I think is a must for me to get anything accomplished toward making a film. It is such a time saver to be able to see what you are doing while you are doing it and see your previous frame or frames overlayed (called onion skin), enabling you to make calculated and precise movements from frame to frame. A step up to a Canon 40D or above or the Canon Rebel T1i would allow me the benefit of live view. For now I'll likely have to buy a semi-decent webcam just to make due. Microsoft and Logitech make some pretty sweet webcams that would work well for making stop-motion films. Some of them are even HD!

Well, not to bore you anymore with tech talk I will move on to sharing some excerpts from one of the short pieces I would like to adapt to animation.

The following are taken from a series of short character sketches, called The Months of Personality: March.

"Spring began with a flourish of boredom. There just wasn’t really that much to tell about, except the weather, of course. The temperatures would begin to rise just a little bit each day for the length of a week, and then they would plummet straight back to the frigidity of January for a day or two more. Winter just wouldn’t give up. And not only were we allowed to enjoy the playfulness of the thermometer but were also graced with the merriment of the cold, spring rain. Being playful and cold, how absolutely rude. How unequivocally like March to taunt you outside with the sun and then freeze you half to death with the invisible glacial wind."

"...it most definitely would rain if you were doing anything at all outdoors, until you gave it all up and went irrevocably indoors."