Secret Agent Entry: Mike McCain

#1

Mike McCain is entered in the “Secret Agent” update: View Challenge Page

Latest Update: Finished Video: FINAL: Trailer + Making Of + Finished Film

#2

Hi everyone! We’re entering into this challenge a bit late… but better late than never right?

We think we’ve got a pretty cool idea for a short involving a spy, some dancing, and LASERS. Our plan is to film stop-motion for the character and greenscreen him into an environment influenced by the Erin Esurance commercials.

Here are some concepts of our spy character that Joon did, for starters. We’ll be posting more progress soon.

– Mike

#3

love the style!

good luck!!

#4

Thanks pierechod, hope we can finish in time : )

Our animator Ryan just finished sculpting our stopmo character’s body - here he is so far!

#5

This is a test scene we put together to figure out how our pipeline is gonna work. The ball character is just Ryan’s leftover model from his animation mentor days, so just a simple chroma key test with him.

Video link: http://vimeo.com/5904733

STORY:
Our story is about a 60’s era spy who’s really full of himself. He’s sneaking into the villain’s underground lair to retrieve the MacGuffin. Between him and the MacGuffin is a nasty network of deadly laser beams. However, this is child’s play for him - he switches on his trusty cassette player and proceeds to dance smugly through the lasers, to the tune of a classical waltz. Before long he’s even pulling tricks with the cassette player, like passing it behind his back and rolling it between his arms.

But oops - he fumbles the player, catapulting it into the air and changing the song to a disco beat. For the next few seconds, he frantically tries to recapture the player but it keeps flying out of his hands (and causes the song to change a couple more times.) Will he make it?

Anyway, hopefully this gives you a better idea of the style and story we’re aiming for with this short! Crits & comments appreciated.

#6

Hey,

This is looking pritty cool. Loving the style and that scuplture is awesome. Best of luck finishing on time. Should be an interesting month ahead. Looking foward to seeing this entry progress

#7

Interesting idea. You guys are starting pretty late… You’ll probably have to go full force all the way in order to get it finished. Good luck. Hope you get it done.

#8

Glad you guys are interested.

Yeah, we definitely have our work cut out for us. At least with After Effects environments we don’t have much render time to worry about : )

#9

(It’s a spy, not a cake! :))

Ryan is busy making a mould of our character now… this is all voodoo magic to me but it looks pretty crazy huh? Excited to see him in action.

#10

WOW, cool! Hope you can get some great shots out!

#11

Really cool ! I hope you will finish in time. It will be very cool to see a stop motion entry.
So, good luck. I can’t wait to see more.

#12

Here are some boards Joon did for the intro sequence, to a groovy spy theme Danny put together.

Video link: http://vimeo.com/5979664

Anyway this is still really rough as far as timing goes, and only covers the first third or so of our short. All subject to change still…

#13

The music definitely fits the theme perfectly. Are you guys going to be making multiple heads and exchanging them for expressions? Thats really hard to get consistant appearance between models in detail unless you spend a lot of time on it or partially mold the back of the head and just sculpt the faces on. Anyway, looks good so far.

#14

We’ll be using one head with replacement mouths, eyelids, and eyebrows that will slide around on the brow.

#15

Ryan finished our character mould last night, turned out well!

#16

Cool. I always wanted to do one of my own… Nice one. I look forward to the final one. How do you know how to make characters like that?

#17

Our guy is ready! Well almost. Just needs paint and a head now.

He’s made of foam - Ryan builds the armature first like shown, then adds the foam and bakes the guy 'till it sets right.

Thanks pierzak - only Ryan knows the secret & mysterious ways of stop motion puppet building… it’s a pretty crazy process though huh?

#18

Thanks Pierzak! If you, or anyone else is interested in making a foam latex puppet I highly recommend Kathi Zung’s DVD “Do It Yourself! Foam Latex Puppetmaking 101”.

I’m doing this all for the first time so it’s a lot of trial and error and getting a feel for it as I go, but Kathi lays it out very clearly with everything you need to know. I really don’t think I could do this without her DVD. Stopmotionanimation.com is also a good resource. There’s a ton of good information there, but it can sometimes be tough to find what you’re looking for.

#19

A new (much better) animatic of our intro shots.

Video link: http://vimeo.com/6066014

We are going to be (fingers crossed) starting these shots this weekend!

#20

By the way. “Laser Waltz” is definitely the WORST TITLE EVER - that’s not the title of our short it’s just placeholder till we come up with something that doesn’t suck.

(Open to ideas)