"Il Conto" - puppet animation

#1

Hi all,

Just wanted to share a small animated short, that I made with a friend for school. It was a open assignment and our first puppet animation (Just finished my first year of Animation at the Utrecht School of Arts, Netherlands). Production from concept-to-screen took one month.
I had a little trouble getting the colours to look right on a computer screen, because they were calibrated for television. I also got rid of the overscan, so it would come as close as possible to the way it looks on a TV. So, I hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think.

Cheers,

VoodooFactory

student-kmt.hku.nl/~gatze/IlContoWeb.avi
(DivX 5 codec, 31.6 Mb)

#2

Really cool short! I lOve the atmospere & lighting! :slight_smile: Also the animation is really cool… Sad that the framerate is not higher (because of deadline I think…?).

The fact such cool stuff is fabricated in the Netherlands (kikkerlandje :bounce: ) is also really cool…!

Congrats with completing it!

#3

Whuahaha, very funny. Who wrote the dialogues? It was in Italian right?
I also want to try animating with clay. What kind of clay did you use? And how did you make the characters walk? Did you pinned the feet down? Coz when you do a walkcycle the characters get out of balance when one foot is off the ground.

When I saw the intro I thought it was a science fiction movie. It’s a coincidence I also used Yesterday from Miles Davis for my last short. The sound quality of the dialogues wasn’t really good. It sounded like the character was talking in a hollow room. Or was it on purpose?

:thumbsup:

#4

Hi guys!

Thanks for the replies!

@ Dutchman: Yeah well, we use the normal 25 frames a second, but I think you’re refering to the 12 fases a second which we used to animate. Here at the HKU, we animate pretty much everything in 12 fases a second, except for CG. This mainly because of time constraint, but it’s still a great way to learn how to animate.

@Tortoro: Thanks! My classmate and I made the whole thing, including the script. I was the only one who knew a little Italian, but mine still sucks. But hey, it’s got subtitles and it does sound kinda Italian, also thanks to our great voice actors(also classmates).

  • We used normal modeling clay, the stuff the used to give you in kindergarden to play with. I certainly can’t recommend it, because it’s just way to soft, especially under the lights. What you want to use is plasticine; a sort of sculptable rubber. This is what they use in pro animations like Wallace and Grommit. Bit pricy though, but a dream to work with.
  • Ah, the walk cycle. For all the other shots we just pinned them down(little bolts under their feet). But for the walkcycle… well… it just plain sucked. It was the last thing we did, and we did in under 10 minutes, because the studio was to close for the summer. We used sticks, wires, whatever gets the job done. Later we just photoshoped it away. The problem with these puppets, was that they were a bit top heavy. And after about 1.30 minutes of footage, the armatures were on their last leg(litteraly).
  • The intro was just something we threw together to let the viewer get in that 50’s/60’s vibe. I admit it somewhat gears to a sci-fi flick. I made it because I couldn’t think of anything mafia-ish…
  • Lastly the dialogues. Especially the voice of boss sounds very metally and hollow. Can only blame faulty equipment here really… The voiceactors did a top job.
#5

More comments anyone?

#6

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