There are two additions to my stopmotion studio. A camera dolly and a turntable, both hand-driven and hand-made. I am going to start shooting the other film I am making with my sister soon. So, I needed these equipment now.

I will have 2 set tables for Chronos. One is going to be the main set table with tree, clock, etc.. And the other will be this turntable where I will shoot Adem away from “time” It will be a lot of fun shooting scenes over this turntable. I did a test shot yesterday for The Invasion and it works like a charm. Here how it looks:

TURNTABLE:

First of all I do not know if this thing is called as turntable in english. It is a set table which I can turn gradually. Anyways, turntable is in 71×104 cm dimentions. There was a rotary breakfast tray in our house we bought many years ago. We have never used that strange thing for breakfast. Things like turning a tray instead of saying -hey can you please hand me the olive- always seemed silly to me. Anyways this thing was in my studio for a long time helping a lot while painting props etc and finally it has found its real place. I mounted this thing to the hardboard piece and then mounted all to my set table. A needle pointer in front and a ruler over the table. That was it!

CAMERA DOLLY:

We (Hakan, me, Zeynep and Zeytin) assembled 2 curtain rods to an hardboard in 112×47 cm dimentions. Another 38×50 cm board goes on top of curtain rods for tripod table. We placed 2 nut washers and 2 nuts in between tripod table and curtain rods while keeping the top of the bolts inside rod rails. Another nut going on top of tripod table finished the installation. We adjusted the top of bolts to not to touch rail base. So, the tripod table can easily be moved by hand. Gradual movement is achived by a paper ruler I glued over the base board and a needle pointer on tripod table. There are small wood blocks mounted over tripod table to keep the tripod in place.

Before making this camera dolly I knew that there were other stop motionists using some wonderful camera dollies. These all gave me a lot of ideas about how to build a camera dolly. I wanted to make something very simple, hand-driven. If you like to check out some other ideas here are some URLs:

- Shelley’s Smoomoo

- Darkstrider’s camera equipment page

- Nick Hilligoss’s motor driven camera dolly

- Castlegardener’s camera dolly tutorial

- Tony’s camera dolly

After posting pictures of Adem and his jacket, a friend wanted me to give him some instructions about how to sew the jacket. So, I have prepared a tutorial for people who does not have any idea about how to sew a jacket and want to make a basic one like this:

First print out the pattern, cut pieces and modify paper patterns by putting it on your puppet, measuring different parts such as arms, neck, etc.. The patterns you download here is in the size of Adem. I suggest you to make a basic paper jacket (without the collar part) and put on your puppet to make sure the correct size.

Pictures below self explanatory. You can click any step to enlarge.

Pattern	Step 1	Step 2	Step 3
Step 4	Step 5	Step 6	Step 7

Useful Resources About Puppet Costuming:

http://www.puppetpub.com/costumes.html
There is a wonderful puppet costuming book here which can help you dress up your puppets. You can download the entire costuming book in pdf. I recommend you to download right away and save it to your hard drive. There are not fancy costumes described. But there is basic information about everything you would need for making costumes of a stop motion puppet.

http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/60051
Nick Hilligoss’s puppet clothing patterns and tutorial. Scroll down the page to see puppet clothing thumbnail on the left side.

http://www.leenas.com/English/sew_men.html
Very detailed sewing tutorial.

Software to create patterns:
http://www.cochenille.com/garm.html
You can download the demo of Garment Designer for free here. You can experiment different patterns here to get an idea about how to prepare patterns.

Finally, I am posting about how I made Adem. Although I have posted other things separately, this post is going to be a very long one. Ok, here Adem again;

Other pictures I posted previously are located here. And a walk cycle test is here to post everything all together about Adem.

I had a ball&socket armature made for this guy last year. I do not have much space for the set so, I wanted to make Adem as small as possible. But, as I was working on the puppet, I was not able to make him look like the way I wanted. I am glad I also ordered some additional parts in the first place. So, eventually I replaced his legs with the longer ones. You may notice in the following pictures; first he is short and then he gets taller as seen with the additions to his pants. Actually, making of Adem was such a long process because I tried many different things for everthing of him like the way I cover the armature, clothing, head,… I was both trying different designs and also getting used to working with this armature. Ok, let me start:

The Head and Covering Body with Foam

There was a double ball joint on his neck. This is the way it should be for a proper movement. But, as I was trying to make him short, I saw that he was going to have a very long neck. After couple of tries, I decided to cancel one of the joints on the neck. His head is made out of super sculpey. I covered the part of joint at the top with epoxy putty after cooking some sculpey. Then covered all with sculpey and cooked again. So, there is epoxy putty inside sculpey. It seems totally working fine. They cooked well together in the oven. There is one drawback so far, I can not change the tightness of that joint.

I covered some parts of the body with foam as it is shown on the pictures. I sewn the foam instead of gluing.

And neck.. that was another problem. Because there is a sculpey head, I was not able to use latex for the neck. Sculpey and liquid latex should not touch. I have learnt this recently after having a problem with the hands and claws which I posted about it yesterday. So, I just painted foam with acrylic to make the neck. He now has a short neck and it is looking okey. Also, I was not trying to make a total human like puppet and it was fine making the neck that way for me.

Clothing

Adem in my film represents human being. Nobody special, no hero,.. So, I wanted to make ordinary things for him.

The first pic on the left top shows my cat having fun with a box full of fabric Old clothes of ours and friends I collected over the years. The other pictures are self explanatory. when I was a child my mother used to sew clothes for us. She had a sewing machine. It was a lot of fun for me to watch her sew. By helping her out and watching her I learnt to sew some basic stuff. So, that was good for Adem. The vest and pants were easy but making of the jacket was kind of tricky. I googled for some mens jacket patterns. Then I created patterns for Adem’s by combining the ones I found. Just drop me a line in the comments section if you want me to send you patterns. I would be happy to do that.

Weathering

Although Adem did not like it, I had to weather his clothes to match the atmosphere. No place for brand new things in Chronos. Here is the part I most enjoyed doing:

The whole technic and the materials are from Shelley Noble! She sent me so many great materials for my film. Here I used two of those; walnut ink crystals and matte medium as she described in emails.

I first bleached the parts like the collar of the jacket, cuff,… Not much, just enough to give some shading. Mixed well acrylic matte medium, walnut ink cyrstals and a little water in a plate. Dipped the jacket. And then left it hanged overnight. As Shelley said it changes color as it dries. I applied same mixture to his shoes and vest. Just some with a brush and left for drying. I love the effect here. There is a closeup pic to his jacket at the bottom right. Thank you Shelley!!!!

Hands

Since I had problem with the hands I previously made, I am not going to post details about making of these hands here. There are temporary hands.

I painted with PAX here. You can find details here in my previous post. Even if this paint works fine (which I think so) I will make the hands again beacuse I am not totally happy with the design. I dont want the hands to be totally realistic but I want little detailed and thinner than these ones.

Mask

Adem has a real face like we all have. In the film you will see him both with and without a mask. But, he wants to hide his real face until the film is completed. I wanted him to wear a mask on some parts of the film like every human being does in her/his life. Dont we all have many masks… How many of us have seen our own face?…

I made 3 different masks and decided to go with this one. Actually this was the first one I created. The other 2 you see on the left bottom were based on real shaman masks. Design of this one was totally came out of my mind. I took a piece of super sculpey and started making. No sketch, no reference pictures… I did not want the mask to have any expression. Not happy, not sad, not angry,.. So, in a way something holding all different expressions of a human face in one mask. Not a man, not a woman.. just a human.

This is how I made the mask: First cooked the sculpey mask and then painted couple times with acrylic. When you paint acrylic directly onto the sculpey with a brush you may get some scratches. To get rid of those scratches after one or two layers of acrylic paint, I applied one coat of acrylic primer and left it to dry. Then couple more acrylic layers. When I was satisfied with the acrylic base I painted with a mixture of acrylic relief paste and wax. This was where I adjusted the color of the mask by adding some brown acrylic to that mixture. I put a lot of talcum powder before it was totally dry. Left it alone for about 15 minutes and then wiped off the talcum powder with a piece of soft cloth. So, there was some powder left around the eyes, mouth,.. giving the mask an old look.

And one more thing before I end this post. While I was working on the masks, I kept singing an old wonderful song of a friend Murat Hasarı. Name of the song is Insan Icin (For Human) Here some of the words both in Turkish and English(translated by me.. sorry..)

For Human – Insan Icin

Sky is fallen apart – Gökyüzü parça parça
Clouds are silent – Bulutlar sessiz
Whole world is a stage – Bir sahnedir bütün dünya
World is helpless – Dünya çaresiz
Players on the one hand, – Bir yanda oyuncular
Audience on the other – Bir yanda seyirciler
Mirrors are under the sky – Aynalar göğün altında
Masks are being painted – Boyanıyor maskeler
…

There is a side project I do with my sister Asuman. A stop motion film “The Invasion” I posted about this film here before. Asuman finished all and has sent me. I received a box full of effort, full of love… I have seen closely how detailed Asuman worked on this set. Each piece was created very detailed, carefully. Now, it is my turn. I need to remunerate for her great effort here while shooting this film. I am going to be getting ready this week. And I will probably start shooting by the end of the week. I will keep you posted. There were 2 gifts inside that box too. You see at the bottom right of the picture. Owls at the top is for Hakan and me. The duck family is for Zeynep. As you might guess Zeynep loved what her aunty created for her. Thank you sooooo much Asuman!

Anyone interested can check out the animation process here at The Invasion I will post as I proceed.

I had a problem with the hands of Adem and claws of Kush I previously made in June 2009.  Those were both fine when I first built up but after couple of months those started to get sticky. Hands became like the ones of a zombie puppet and it is not possible to hold claws because of those being too sticky. This is how I made these:

Hands: I mixed liquid latex, acrylic paint and pros-aide all together… Dipped yarn covered fingers (also there was epoxy putty on the fingers and palm) into that mixture several times to make the skin.

Claws: Yarn covered fingers and acrylic painted cartboard claws dipped into liquid latex several times.

I posted about the problem on stopmotionanimation.com Here is the link of that thread: http://www.stopmotionanimation.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=20&topic_id=6978&mesg_id=6978&page=
The problem with the hands seems like is me mixing pros-aide and latex. Liquid latex is a great material to create skin for the puppets. But there are some importants things to remember when working with latex. Please check out the above URL for more.

I have remade the hands. Used PAX paint. Many thanks to Darkstrider who wrote me about that on that post. If you are interested you can check out the forum URL above and also here is a good tutorial about PAX paint on Stop Motion Magazine’s 2. issue: http://www.stopmotionmagazine.com/stopmotionwebsite/Issues_files/Stop%20Motion%20Magazine%20October%202009.pdf

Claws of Kush are still waiting for me to be fixed. I only used latex on the claws so I am not sure what was the problem. I am going to make a test part by using only latex. There are the PAX painted hands I have aready made. So, I will be able to see what happens to these parts in a couple of months before I start animation.

I have been having a lot of fun animating and making a video. Walk cycle test… Hmm.. you will see the result below. And post production with my old friend After Effects to make a full HD video for youtube. After all is completed and I uploaded video to youtube, I have found out that youtube pics up the frame in the middle of the video as a video still automatically and there is no way to change it.. So, next time I make a video to upload youtube, I will put the film title right in the middle of the video !?…

Edit: Just published the post and tried viewing video. If you have hard time viewing video here, you can click here to view in my youtube account.

Adem… My next post will be about the Creation Of Adem. There is a lot to post so I think a separate one for the pictures could be better. Here some pictures I have just taken. You can click to enlarge.

I have been working on lighting for a while now. First of all I would like to thank Darkstrider who has been huge help about lighting and using Lumix FZ50. When I first started, I did not know much about lighting a stop motion set. Now, I have some ideas about which lights I would need, how to setup those lights and which other materials I may need to achive a good lighting. Next comes using the camera to “take” that shot correct. So, a lifelong homework… experiment different lighting setups and try the best camera settings.

Let me start with the short animation test I made:

As much frames as possible I coud get with a tripod. What do you think?

Lighting:

To get this sunset like lighting the idea was: orange as key light, blue as fill light, red and blue as back light. I did not want to get an exact sunset look. Some time maybe right at the end of sunset.. little more darker and I wanted to add another light from the top right maybe as a moon light. That time of the day is too early for a moonlight but wanted to have that light there… Here is a picture of tree as a whole. You can click picture to enlarge.

And almost forget to write; I painted another background. This time a black and white sky. I will not use this in the actual film either; just for testing.

The most amateur lighting setup I have here. There are 5 lights. One regular house light on the right side as a key light. First covered with baking paper and then yellow, red (to get orange) transparent kite paper and then black crepe paper at the top to adjust the light intensity. A blue pin spot on the left as a fill light with baking paper as a diffuser and hanged on an umbrella stand. Between background painting and the tree, at the bottom; there are 2 back lights: one red pin spot with a baking paper diffuser and one regular small house light covered with baking paper and yellow kite paper. On top of these 2, there is a black crepe paper again. There is another transparent pin spot on the right back with kind of a gobo made with a black tape. I used a broken tripod to make a stand for this spot. This kind of setup can not be used to shoot the actual film for sure but worked very well for me to test some lighting ideas.

So, this is what I would do for my film set in terms of lighting: I will buy some better lights. Nothing like fancy expensive ones.. Maybe a spotlight and then make some barndoors etc,.. There are some great ideas both Mike Brent gave me also I read on stopmotionanimation.com I might use these pin spots; only need to make someflicker tests. I will definetely buy color gels and also ND filters. I tried to make substitues for these but no way to adjust light as the way I need and also using materials like kite papers are dangerous.. you know those can burn easily and should never be left for long times while the lights on.

This film is going to be dark. I want a very dramatic look. I have been thinking about even shooting black&white. There are some tests below here:

See the black and white one on the second row. Here I tried to get a “Dore Lighting” (another great information from Darkstrider) Picture quality is not very good but I like the dramatic light change on different parts of this picture. Again, you can click picture to enlarge.

Using Lumix FZ50

This has been the first time I have really tried Lumix on animation. It works pretty well. Even though I had those funky lights I almost did not get any flicker. Just a little and I think it is beacuse of the regular house lights I use. It took me for a while to really understand how this camera response different ligthing setups. I heard people saying that Lumix does not work well under low light conditions… Nonsense!! As long as you adjust the shutter speed and F stop correct; allowing long exposure times; camera works great. The only problem I could not get over was the noisy picture quality in full size. FZ50 can shoot 10mp at 4:3 aspect ratio and 7mp in HD. When I view the 10mp picture in full size, I see the noise. But, I never need to use that 10mp one in full size. When I make the picture smaller I get a full high quality picture for my film.

The most impressing thing for me to see how “focus lock” feature works great. You know, you need to use everything manual when you shoot stop motion. I was curious to see how Lumix stays in focus in manual focus mode. You first manually adjust the focus and then hit focus luck button. Then voila.. you have a focused camera even if you turn it upside down.. kind of like what i did here to shoot.

Here are the settings of my camera during this shooting:

ISO 100
F stop 10
Shutter speed 5sn
White Balance: Tungsten

So, again thank you Darkstrider for helping me out for the right settings! Also my friend Mert here showed me how to adjust some settigns and was very helpful.

Animator HD Personal:

This is the software I am using to shoot stop motion. My previous tests was without live view (with Canon) and I am suprised to see how much a frame grabber makes things easier. Lumix connected to PC with a converter sending live feed to Animator HD. Taking 2 pictures for one frame; one from AnimatorHD and another with a wired remote from camera for full resolution picture to be stored inside the card.

Camera Movement:

I shot these frames using my new tripod with a 3-way adjustable head. I knew this was not going to be smooth enough but wanted to use before I make a slider for the camera. I am not after a very smooth animation but definetely want to achive something better than this. I also tried ease in/out but no way with this tripod. Hey I am also learning how to animate Stop motion… a complete challenge for me; learning, learning, learning… how nice!!

So, I need to plan scenes carefully and make a camera slider.. maybe couple sliders for different parts.

——————–

And as always, here is my little bunny woke up around 4 in the morning while I was working on lighting. Came to my room with her “kuzu” (means sheep in Turkish) in her hand and said that she wanted to make a film too Then suddenly she decided to be an actress and here is the result…

The Invasion. This is a film I am making with my sister Asuman. She has been working hard to get things together on the set. It looks like I am going to be shooting in a couple of months. This is going to be an interesting small film showing the human invasion… Asuman is a graphic artsist who likes to experiment different things in art. She has been doing some beautiful “ebru” and her idea of making a stop motion film using her ebru sounded very interested to me. So, we are getting there… She has one or two months work before sending me all the pieces. I am so excited to shoot soon.

Someone on stopmotionanimation.com message board posted the URL of a music video by Bowerbirds a while ago. There is an amazing crow puppet here. He said that he made the armature for the wings. I asked him if he could send me some photos of the puppet before it was foamed and feathered -which he offered in the first place- but he could never get back to me. I love the  puppets, animation, effects, music… just everything here.

Thanks to that person who showed me this video and kudos to him & every other people who worked on this music video!