StopMotion

Strictly for adults ,robot chicken is one of the funniest examples of irreverent stop motion animation on the planet. I watched a very informative interview by Kevin Rose of G4TV with Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root, Head Writers for Robot Chicken, a stop-motion show from Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. I have transcribed some of the interview here for your reference.

Interview Copyright of G4TV

“Kevin: Now stay tuned because when we come back we’ll have an exclusive look at Robot Chicken with the head writers Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. Robot Chicken is the newest member of the Cartoon Network’s adult swim cult series. It uses stop motion animation and well, as you can see toys. It’s full of random pop culture digs and is one of the funniest things that we’ve all seen in a while. In the studio today we are proud to have the head writers of Robot Chicken; Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. Hey guys!

Tom: Hey

Douglas: Hey

Kevin: Thanks for coming on the show, I have to say I’ve watched all the clips and they were hilarious! Awesome stuff, where did you guys come up with the idea? Take me from the beginning, how did you put this all together?

Douglas: Well, a long time ago, Tom and I worked for a magazine company that produced many general entertainment things about toys and comics and Seth Green was a huge fan and he asked all of us, Tom and I and executive producer Matt Seritch if we wanted to do a stop motion skit of him and Conan O’Brien hanging out for when he was going to go on Conan O’Brien

Kevin: Oh Nice

Douglas: That eventually got around that we were doing that so when he said ‘hey produce some episodes for an upcoming website’ we did that, next thing you know, we’re on adult swim.

Kevin: Cool, so how did you guys come up with the name Robot Chicken, it’s kind of an obscure name.

Tom: Well, originally the name we came up with was ‘Junk in the Trunk’ which we thought was pretty appropriate but it turned out to belong to a series of porno films. So we had to come up with something else, so we went through hundreds of show titles and we were eating every day that we were brain storming ideas. We were eating at a Chinese restaurant up in the valley and they had a dish called Robot Chicken.

Kevin: Nice! So you’re like ‘if I can’t come up with any more names I’m going to call it Robot Chicken!’

Tom: Right and it ended up being called Robot Chicken.

Douglas: Always have a Chinese menu around when you’re trying to brain storm.

Kevin: Nice! No Seth got involved, is he actually producing the show with you or does he actually come in and help you brain storm ideas?

Douglas: He’s running his self ragged, he’s doing everything on the show, we’re all chipping in doing directing, producing, looking over the toys and he’s so passionate about the show that he’s working longer than anyone else. Every once in a while he’s like ‘I would like a nap’.

Tom: Seth’s killing himself.

Kevin: When you guys put this together you guys kind of all get together and is it like… what are some of the limitations with the toys, do you just get off the shelf type toys, do you buy them off eBay, old collectables that you’re using?

Tom: A lot of our action figures are right out the package you can find in the toy stores now or on eBay or you know just old stuff you have in your closet and sometimes that has to be modified so it’s more articulatable. But a lot of what we call the puppets because the animators prefer to call them puppets, see there’s a puppet right now, getting his nuts squashed!

Douglas: And a lot of the times, like the toys you see there are really foam bodies with wires inside and we just use the heads and the arms of the toys because action figures can’t do anything and it needs to hold in place for the people to take the photos for the stop motion animation and off the shelf toys can rarely hold that well.

Kevin: Now this isn’t stuff that you guys are doing, obviously the sets look very professional do you have a team or crew of guys that puts these things together?

Douglas: Yeah, there’s about a dozen set builders, 10 or so puppet makers and these are the guys that have worked on everything from PJ’s to…

Tom: Some of our set guys worked on the Star Wars prequels making miniatures.

Kevin: Oh nice!

Tom: So it’s really quality stuff.

Kevin: That’s awesome, so you get the sets all built, you’re doing the stop motion, what about the actors who did you bring on to do some of the voice acting for you?

Tom: Well, because Seth has worked on so many big projects he knows a lot of big names so he’s brought in everybody from Burt Reynolds and Dom Dewyze to Scarlett Johansson to Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jnr. And he’s got them in our booth and they’ve done voices.

Kevin: That must have been a lot of fun to meet all those guys.

Douglas: I think our best experience wasn’t any named famous actor but we did a parody of the movie Seven using the smurfs because they’re all like gluttony smurf and they already exist so the original actor that played brainy smurf came in and did brainy smurf.

Kevin: So you actually got brainy smurf on your show that’s cool! So now we also have a clip of Rachael Leigh Cook actually came on, you want to set this one up?

Tom: Sure, Rachael Leigh Cook started her career an anti heroin PSA and it was all over the place 4 or 5 years ago, 6 years ago and so she came into our studio and a voice sort of poking fun at that commercial.

Kevin: Alright…

(Watch the clip here )

Kevin: That’s awesome that she came on the show and was cool enough to make fun of herself at the same time. So there has to be some limitations that you guys run into though. I mean is there anything that you really wanted to do but the network was like ‘no, no can’t push it that far’?

Douglas: Well the only two areas that they have comments on really is A) if they think it’s too obscure or really it’s not to their personal sense of humour they ask us to change it or not do it but that rarely happens. But they have standards and practices that we have to obey, we can’t get too violent, we can get pretty violent because they’re toys not people there’s a certain line we can’t cross. And we can’t be too sexual, we do a parody take off of the whole Paris Hilton sex tape using Beastman and Tila from the He-Man Universe and they said ‘you know what, when you record this we’ll let you do little grunts like ‘uh, uh’ but it can’t be like..’ (thrusting) it’s really just got to be a suggestion of that you can’t make toys…

Kevin: You could still shoot that though and put it on the DVD though right, later on?

Tom: We’re going to have a killer DVD because we’ve got tons of stuff that’s been cut for content and cut for length; it’s going to be something once it’s out.

Kevin: Awesome! Well thanks guys for coming on the show we really appreciate it. No Robot Chicken the show that everyone’s talking about, it’s going to premiere on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim on February 20^th. Be sure to check out the Adult Swim website for more information on Robot Chicken, you can find that of course on adultswim.com. Now stick around because Douglas and Tom are going to be taking your calls a little bit later in the show.

Kevin: That’s so awesome. I’m back with Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root, the head writers for Cartoon Network’s brand new series Robot Chicken, and we’re going to be taking some of your live calls. So we have some, are you guys ready?

Both: Sure!

Kevin: Alright, Philip joins us on the phone from Auburn California. Hey Philip!

Philip: Hey how you guys doing?

Kevin: Doing pretty great.

Tom: Not bad

Philip: I’ve been a big fan of the show since the San Francisco days.

Kevin: Oh excellent.

Philip: Yeah, so I’ve got a couple of questions.

Kevin: Shoot

Philip: I’m wondering, how long it takes to make a 5 minute show, and also how many times do they have to move the characters to make that happen.

Kevin: Ah, so from the second you guys get started and you come up with an idea and you’re like ‘ok let’s do this’ how long are we talking?

Douglas: We’re producing most of the episodes in the same times as a 20 episode season and we started writing it in May and we literally just finished doing the sound for episode 1 the other week. So if I had to say that we’re doing one episode and that’s it, how long would it take all I can say is one animator can do 12 seconds of animation in a day?

Tom: As far as shots go there’s 30 frames per second so that’s how many times they have to move the toys.

Kevin: So it’s only 12 second though?

Tom: Per day, per animator.

Kevin: Wow!

Douglas: It’s a very patient line of work.

Kevin: Do you guys ever consider taking this thing digital and moving it into something where….

Douglas: It loses a lot of its charm that way

Kevin: I like those little stick guys

Douglas: Yeah.

Kevin: Cool, ok so we got one more call for you guys. Jason joins us on the phone from St Louis, Missouri. Hey Jason.

Jason: Hey how you doing?

Kevin: Doing pretty good. You have a question for us?

Jason: Yeah I sure do, my question was more or less related to the technology side. Once you get your characters together and you get your sets all set up, you start taking pictures with a camera and then you put it in the computer, how exactly does the process work?

Kevin: I had a feeling someone was going to ask this because the second they see this they’re like ‘I can do this at home too’.

Tom: It has a very homemade feel to it, the whole show. We use digital camera and we shoot frame by frame and sort of capture them as JPEG and sew them all together.

Kevin: These are computer controlled digital cameras though you can look at the previous frame and the next frame right?

Tom: Right, there a device called the lunchbox

Kevin: Right I’ve heard of the lunchbox

Tom: Each animator has their lunchbox and they take the digital imagine onto the lunch box and they can sort of toggle back and forth and make sure they’ve got the right increments of motion.

Kevin: Yeah I was checking out those lunchboxes, there pretty affordable, they’re not that expensive.

Tom: I would have no idea.

Douglas: We get paid to write.

Kevin: Yeah like we don’t animate that stuff! It’s cool though it’s very cool. So you could do this at home potentially if you wanted to?

Tom: You definitely could and the computers we use to edit on are just Macintosh G4’s most of the time.

Kevin: Nice, Mac guys, like to hear that, well thanks for coming on the show guys, appreciate it , thanks for your calls, do not miss Robot Chicken it is a.. I can’t even say enough good things about it, it’s an awesome show, it’s going to premiere February 20^th at 11.30pm eastern on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim

I found a very interesting computer game under development called “Cletus Cay” that uses our favorite form of animation - stop motion.

It’s a very unique approach to gaming using stop motion in this way. The lead artist and designer of Cletus Clay gives some excellent insight in to how this stop motion method was designed in to the game using clay ( Claymation) characters and set props.

I have reproduced his interview below from YouTube.

The InterView - Behind the Scenes - The Making of Cletus Clay

Hi, I am Anthony Flack. I am the lead artist and designer of Cletus Clay.

Why are you making a game out of clay?

I started out making regular stop motion, animation for TV video. When I started making games, it seemed a good way to make sprite games. It was a good method that I had for making 2D sprites. But what we’re doing now is quite lot more complicated than that. And it has become more about the challenge of how close can we get to create a convincing illusion of the stop motion animation, as opposed to using conventional CG methods. I think the in building the models by hand and photographing them in a way that captures the little idiosyncrasies of the model. It gives the whole look of the thing, an intimacy I guess, that people respond to like they respond to a handmade thing.

Claymation-Wagon-Copyright - Anthony Flack

What is the process?

So, this is the process that we go through in order to create our models and composite them together in scenes in the game. Everything starts out as preliminary sketches that I scrawled out at the start of designing the game, which allows us to go through and see all the different elements that we need to build. And, then each one of the models is built individually either by myself in New Zealand or Sarah in the UK. And then the models are photographed, cut out, cleaned up in photoshop. And then we take that image and we sort of extrude it into 3-D by mapping it onto a massive triangle and just sort of pulling out the parts of that shape to create a relief sculpture which looks 3-D from the front. Although we make an essentially a 2-D side scrolling game, we’re using 3-D models to represent everything. So if we going to composed them all together in a way that doesn’t look like a bunch of flair photographs stuck together, then we going to need to account the parallax. We’re not dealing with full 3-D shapes, but as long as the camera keeps pointing forward, then the allusion is maintained.

This is one of my models here, is a little stop motion footage of me actually building a model of barn. It is one of the larger models in the game. Even though we’re assembling everything from pieces, I still wanted to use larger freestanding models as much as I could and really try to make sure that the computer didn’t end up dominating the process too much. But there were still plenty of old professional model ants being used. Okay, so that’s being basically how we take a real models and translate it into Cletus’ virtual world.

Refreshingly we have a studio that is bold enough to make a super villain the lead character in a film, especially an animation for children. Let me introduce you the the very excellent new animation in 3D of course  “Despicable Me”. This is a ploy that plays on the notion that children are more fascinated with the villain in a film than they are a goody two shoes superhero.

“Despicable Me” is the first but will not even be the last animated film this year to place a super villain in the lead. Later this year Will Ferrell will voice headline another evil-doer story, “Megamind.” But to call these characters really is a farce when you get down to it.

In “Despicable Me” Steve Carrell voices Gru who has the physicality of a James Bond villain from the Sean Connery era but seems to be as threatening as a kitten when it comes to personality. To further humanize Gru three orphan girls are placed in his care as part of an evil scheme. The interaction between Gru Margot, Edith and Agnes achieves this in terms of character and is also satisfying in terms of entertainment.

That being said, however, Gru’s minions are what every kid, and even most of the parents, will be talking about after they see this film. I would say that they are what everyone will be quoting but they speak their own sped up minion language that is difficult to understand, let alone translate.

But you do not have to understand the minions to get the full effect. Think three stooges, only there are hundreds of them, they’re the size of a two year old and are the color of yellow plastic kitchen gloves.

Probably 95 percent of the film’s humor comes from the minions as the rest of the story lacks anything else worthy of quoting. Gru’s rival Vector, voiced by Jason Segel, occasionally draws laughs but not as much as an important character like that should. The bland comic nature of the film really does not matter because the minions truly are funny enough to carry the movie.

Turning “Despicable Me’ into a franchise may be difficult, because of a lackluster story to start off with, but studios have turned much worse into long-running franchises before.

And the 3D only really comes into play during one scene where Gru and the girls visit an amusement park. Other than that it is an excuse for the filmmakers to think up different spear-like objects that they can have stick out at the audience.

But does the 3D add to the story, make the minions even funnier or the interaction between Gru and the girls more heart-warming? Yes it does…it brings the characters to life even more than they are in 2D in my opinion. Making them more appealing and full of life!

For younger readers of this blog why not try the Despicable Me Minions site!

The Twilight (Eclipse) blockbuster movie released this weekend will provide the backdrop to an educational cartoon from Cumbria in the UK , urging learners in school to overcome obstacles.

Twilight: Eclipse, the multi-million dollar vampire franchise, hits Cinemas.

And its first appearance in Carlisle, Cumbria will be accompanied by another premiere – Vampy’s Choice, the latest animation from Cumbrian multi-media artist Louise Kneath and screenwriter partner Ian Gilbertson.

Louise, 24, created a series of ghoulish characters called The Creeps to urge learners to overcome obstacles on their way to getting a valuable higher education.

“We’re really excited about this new short film as it takes the Vampy character in another direction,” said Louise.

“It pokes fun at the rivalry in Twilight: Eclipse between Jacob the werewolf and Edward the vampire for the hand of a girl called Bella.

“I’ve given it an unexpected twist which is a bit of a shock for Vampy who is the ‘Bella’ of my film.”

The film – and a second one by Ian parodying the horror hit film  ”Paranormal Activity” – were commissioned by Cumbria Higher Learning after the the success of five shorter cartoons which Louise created in 2009.

Louise, a local graduate in multimedia design and digital animation, created five 30-second animations that will be on YouTube from October 31. Vampy’s Choice adds a new addition to the series.

Louise added: “After launching them on the internet at Halloween the feedback was incredible.”

“A school’s drama students even used the characters in a live play for their exams.”

Helen Gudgeon, of Cumbria Higher Learning, said Louise and Ian’s animations have breathed new life into higher education campaigns.

“So much traditional marketing materials can be very dated and off-putting,” she said.

“These animations are fun, lively, quirky and likely to appeal to a young audience.”

Laika, the makers of Stop Motion animation movie Coraline have decided to move away from CGi animation techniques in favor of stop motion going forward. As a result they have laid off 63 staff from their computer animation department in Portland Oregon. They will continue to use some CGI as part of their advertising work and to supplement their future stop motion movies releases.  Phil Knight, (founder of NIKE -one of the rishest men in the world) and Laika’s Owner, while still celebrating the 120 million dollar success with Coraline in the US and overseas has always favored stop motion. He promoted his son Travis ( a stop motion animator) to CEO of Laika in March.

Phil and Travis Knight

Travis started his animating career in Will Vinton Studios in Portland in 2003. The studio was renamed Laika (pronounced LIKE-uh) in 2007.

These recent layoffs reduce Laika’s work force from 243 to 180. Last December, the company laid off 65 after scrapping a computer-generated feature called “Jack and Ben’s Animated Adventure”

The music is written by Daniel Larsson and the animation was done by Tomas Redigh of the Swedish techno group Rymdreglage, the below stop motion video took over 1,500 hours to complete. It is awe inspiring. When it was picked up online it went viral those shutting their website down because of heavy traffic. It just goes to show originality, creativity and sheer hard work pay off (most of the time).

The video reflects on the era of 8 bit computing and the games of that age. They are showing their age (and mine) if they can remember playing those !

While not a techo fan I appreciate the music. They have 44 other songs on their channel which they are encouraging people to listen to. I wonder will it be a case that Rymdreglage end up being called the 8 Bit lego guys and renowned only for that work going forward rather than for their music.

Simon Gesrel and Xavier Ehretsmann created and directed a mini epic stop motion movie for techno duo  Etienne Jaumet and Cosmic Neman and their song Zombie Zombie back in April 2008. It is a unique piece of stop motion with GI Joe characters ( a favourite toy of the Directors ).

While I realise this may not be breaking news for those who have already seen it, I am mentioning it because it I believe has not got enough recognition…(263K views on Youtube). I have seen absolute crap get ten times as many views. So give it a viewing here.

Zombie - GI Joes

According to the directors the mini movie pays homage to John Carpenters movie “The Thing”. Is homage another word for “knock off” , not sure.

The stop motion is excellent. The sets are really well done. I like it when action man, GI Joes figures are used in stop motion. It evokes memories As for the music of the french techno duo..I had to mute the sounds after a minute..it was getting in to my head..too repetitive.

Hmm..don't think he's Dead!

Pay $9.99 and this booklet will tell you!

$9.99 The Meaning of Life

A stop motion movie recently released by “Regent Releasing” across North America called $9.99 is an adaptation of the short stories by Etgar Keret. The story explores the meaning of life through a booklet costing just $9.99. The booklet grabs the attention of the main character Dave Peck , a 28 year old unemployed guy still living at home. The story centers around a group of individuals in an apartment block who themselves are searching for happiness who are cynical about the booklet that Dave promotes.

There is a real mix of characters in this stop motion movie. A retired guy “Albert” has a guardian angel (wings and all) living with him. Albert is basically unhappy with life and looks for a way out to anywhere but here.

Albert and His Guardian Angel

Ron “the underachiever” has a group of 2 inch tall hard drinking students. Zack, a young boy bribed by his father in to drinking his milk for 50c / glass in order to buy the latest toy ( a soccer kicking wind up toy ). But changes his mind about saving the money to saving the piggy bank “pig” instead as time passes.

The movie is directed by Tatia Rosenthal (born 1971 in Tel Aviv, Israel), employed 9 stop motion animators (Daniel Alderson, Yonatan Bereskin, Darren Burgess, Steven Cox, Anthony Elworthy, Jan-Erik Maas, Sharon Parker, Andrew Spilsted and Norman Yeend.) The shoot took 40 weeks.

The animation was done at 24 fps with 2 frames per position. 24 fps in order to fit in with the Digital format of cinema today.

Wonder Sets and Characters

The Director Tatia Rosenthal went for a realistic look and feel for the characters. She deliberately sought out stop motion animators who had a realistic (less cartoonish) feel to their animation work.

A quote from Norman Yeend reflects their approach

“The biggest challenge with this stop motion was making the characters perform in a believable way. Despite a degree of stylization it needed to be quite realistic - the characters have their quirks and traits and so on. It;s tricky to convey that. You make the puppet move, but it’s another thing to make live. There are certain wacky looks and movements that your might give a “cartoony” character, which we certainly don’t in $9.99. It’s a matter of observing people around you, even your own actions at times. You’ll mimic an action, time it, break it down into frames and try and replicate that with your puppets. So, it’s quite different from cartoon action, whihc will be quite exaggerated; this is more naturislistic.”

The stop motion puppets were 1/6 scale. The look of the characters by Leslie Osborne is drawn from the paintings of Lucian Freud.

Lucian Freud paintings influenced the Puppets look

They certainly do have an “oil painting” type look about them.

The movie was shot using Canon  EOS 30D SLR digital still cameras at Sydney’s Carnival studios.

The movie is directed at adults. There is no wallace and gromit here guys. Some might find this movie a bit “arty”. As one Youtube genius (PvtGermanWagz) commented..

Oh no, it happened….. really shitty artsy retarded film festivals movies are? now coming out in claymation!! God help us all…..

Classic Youtube art critic there. But I think it’s too harsh. Yes the movie is as far as you can get from GI Jones blockbusters but it is intolerant and lazy to dismiss it is such a way. I would encourage everyone to take the time to appreciate the work involved in creating such a detailed stop motion piece of art.

StopMotion Magazine Launched

John Ikuma - Culver City, California has just launched a free online stop motion magazine called Stop Motion. It’s free.

Who is John Ikuma?

John is a lifelong stop motion enthusiast. By his own admission he favors old school animation. John worked as an intern on American stop motion animated television series “Robot Chicken”. John has also worked on visual effects for the movie “Hired Gun”

John got the inspiration from a 1979 special effects (including stop motion) magazine called “Starlog Cinemagics” . It featured photo illustrated “how to” articles on make-up, miniatures, set building, stop-motion animation and optical effects for the 8mm and 16mm amature fantasy film maker, with step by step instructions on building stop-motion armatures, mold making and prosthetics, creating traveling matts and much more. It only ran for 11 issues by the way beginning 1979 before it was sold to Starlog Press who ran it for a further 37 issues until 1987.

Starlog Cinemagics (1979)

So after some deliberation John launched his magazine this month. We want to give John a plug here for his efforts in launching his Magazine. It has a range of interviews and a number of very good tutorials. Simple Wire rig constuction for example for the beginner on a budget.

Contratulations John and I hope many people subscribe and download the magazine.

Get your copy here now.. Click to Download