A few old school stop motion animation projects in the works. We shot this short clip for the purpose of becoming acquainted with some unfamiliar animation software, although, not the software we'll ultimately be using:
Test - 'Rock Monster vs Giant Crab'
To save time and effort building test models, we picked up two figures on-line:
A "Rock Monster" and a "Giant Crab" to battle it out. Both pretty cool. The Rock Monster has articulating ball and socket shoulder joints, rotating waist and movable jaw. Too bad his hip and knee joints are fixed - we could have assigned 'em a role beyond "stand-in" duty. Still might - we like 'em a lot. The "giant" (swimming) crab is pretty much fully articulating - hinged at each crawling and swimming appendage joint and pincers. He's got star written all over 'em - we've already pegged 'em for a feature role. His OEM pinned plastic crawling appendage joints were a bit loose to hold a pose for animation so we retro-fitted 'em with a custom wire armature "endoskeleton" - we guess he now classifies as a "partially vertebrated invertebrate". We had yet to complete the re-fit so the armature wire is exposed in the above clip. Didn't mess with any studio lighting as well - photographed out back in the garage using ambient daylight. Was an overcast day with floating cloud cover - the reason for the shifting lighting and color. We could have corrected it all in post but f*k that too - we only had the one afternoon available.
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We constructed this main feature "Antarctic Cyclopean Ice Beast" over a period of a few weeks:
Probably 95% complete with minor finish and detail work awaiting. Un-happy with the look of his exposed "ice-pick" feet - we're gonna' extend the leg fur down another 4/5 length. Built 1:1 scale per sketched
Constructed a fully articulating metal ball and socket armature which was some fun. Added some 1/8" poly foam and self adhering wrap bandage for attaching the outer fur. The entire prop can be easily disassembled and the joints are all easily accessible for any needed re-tightening. A bit more model building in the works (e.g., Nazi Type VII C subs and Haunebu II saucers).
'Das Antarktis Brute' in its environment.
Pre-planning and development stages - a few months of work proceeding ahead.
