I love the idea of stop motion. The look and feel of it, the hands-on approach. But I've found it rather tricky to do as a team of one person without the space for a set that could stay up for an indefinite period of time. And trying to fit things around my work schedule -- well, if you've ever worked retail you know it isn't exactly a 9-5 gig, so getting the same lighting each day would be an issue all its own.
But I still wanted to try, and so I've been figuring out a way to combine the look of stop motion with the ease and convenience of After Effects. I found a lip sync tutorial online (Thank you again, Creative Cow), and used it to create a custom rig that would allow me to animate my stop motion images inside of After Effects.
The following videos show my tests animating a moving head -- its vertical rotation (nodding), horizontal rotation, and ear movement. I'm finally able to combine my love of crochet with my love of animation!
There are several visual issues with the tests, that being that the lighting is inconsistent and the 'set' itself is very primitive (yes, that is a bottle of body spray holding up the head) but seeing as though my main focus was to test out the effectiveness of the rig and not create a finished piece, I'd say it was a great success!
I've posted below two versions of each test: One showing the rig and how it functions during the animation process, and the second to show the 'finished' product, without the rig.
head nod test with visible rig from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.
The great thing about the rig is that it greatly simplifies the timeline in After Effects, so that instead of working with picture after picture, you have one controller that effects them all. And if you turn the components of the rig into Guide Layers, you won't see them when you render.
head nod test no rig from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.
head turn and ears test with visible rig from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.
head turn and ears test no rig from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.
(In case you were wondering, the "L,S,R" of the top rig stands for "Left, Straight, Right," while the "O,M,I" of the bottom rig stands for "Out, Middle, In.")
My next step is to create a hand and do some tests with that. My goal is to create all the various body parts of a character and animate everything in After Effects. Wish me luck!
