It was an utmost welcome change, to finish an animation project within just a couple of weeks!

Together with Daan and Jaron from StudioSpass and Tom van 't Hof, I worked on three stop motion animations introducing the newly launched Fontanel Jobs, an online job board for creative professionals in The Netherlands.

After working out the storyboards and some rough animatics, there we were: spraying, painting, cutting, and shooting more than 2.000 frames (more photos on Flickr). Despite some little hiccups due to a accident with the camera, the production went just well. While we were doing post on the images, Stefan Breuer started to get out his trumpet and flutes, putting together sound and music.

After hours of literally keeping our hands still – with due respect to Jaron for being patient like a clay puppet – here they are:

The character is almost completed and ready to go.

The final character design

DDA’09 show package compilation on Vimeo

DDA'09 show package production

Beside that, I had the joy to produce the show package for the Dutch Design Awards 2009 together with my old colleagues, Floris and Sacha, from Studio Dumbar. I’m looking forward to show you some of the videos and a few little insights on how they were made!

After getting stuck on creating highly complex metal objects, I had to figure out a way to get them inexpensively done. Just after a couple of prototypes, 3D printing was the obvious way to go.

Finding Its Way Into Stop Motion

This noteworthy process is mostly used in the field of industrial design. But also found its way into stop motion productions within the last years, including Henry Selick’s recent film Coraline.

For more information on rapid prototyping, have a look at Wikipedia. And don’t forget to check out your local Fab Lab. Which is a fantastic workshop program, initiated by the MIT, to enable everyone the possibility to create technology-enabled products.

That’s how it feels when I’m having a closer look at the production planning lately. Producing and financing a short film all by your own isn’t the quickest way to do a project which is known for being done as a team effort.

So what’s the current state?

Dallan Keelin is finally ready to be partially transformed into foam latex. The advantage of foam latex compared to plasticine is the lasting condition of the material while looking rather similar. It can be painted, doesn’t get dusty and is fairly flexible in terms of movement. You see, it’s primarily an advantage behind the camera.

For more information about foam latex puppet making I’d advice you to get the insightful Foam Latex 101 DVD from Kathi Zung (who made, amongst others, the puppets for MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch).

The lighthouse lamp had to be entirely redesigned after the first couple of mock-ups didn’t feel right. One or two more drafts and the construction will be modelled in 3D to be then 3D-printed. More on that as soon as I’d been to Protospace in Utrecht.

And last but not least, the weblog will be receiving a minor update to integrate a twitter feed and production shots to give you more frequent updates on the production.

After weeks of cutting, sawing, sanding, steaming, bending and painting part of the set is finished. The table, chair and floor are completely done and the stairway and the windows are currently under construction. It took me quite some time to achieve the characteristic of the materials I was looking for. But now they just can get any better with the lighting following up in a couple of weeks.
Until then, a lot of set items and props have to be made. And I can’t wait to show them to you...