I CLAY

pan-modo_pictures · Post by **pan-modo_pictures** » Tue May 11, 2004 7:20 pm

I just finished an 8 miniute clay animation about a hitman, and needless to say It sucked. I used a lot of blue screen for the backgrounds, and it looked pretty ty. Editing sucked, because there was a lot wrong with it. Overall the film looks alright, but there were long hours of editing to fix stupid problems, and clay does not look that good.

foxwood · Post by **foxwood** » Tue May 11, 2004 8:15 pm

well that still sounds interesting, would be interested to see it whenever it gets done.

nileo6 · Post by **nileo6** » Wed May 12, 2004 5:38 am

I have expiremented with a lot of clay animation too. Ive made a few that turned out pretty good, but the rest i just got sick of. my suggestion to you is to start out simple and stay away from complicated special fx like bluescreen. If you want to find some nice info on claymation check out this page. It has everything
www.animateclay.com

pan-modo_pictures · Post by **pan-modo_pictures** » Wed May 12, 2004 2:07 pm

I did all the backgrounds blue screen, which was not a good idea, since it does not work the best with clay. Also I did a lot of dialogue which really sucked. It's done right now, so I could possibly get it online sometime soon.

nileo6 · Post by **nileo6** » Wed May 12, 2004 10:05 pm

ya that explains why you dont think your movie to be all that great. Just a few extra tips though...

-make your animation short and avoid complicated stuff that will make you frustrated. if you want your film to turn out then have fun with it. leave all the other stuff to professional clay animators

-don't spend time making armatures, or else, keep them simple until your ready

-if you want to work on dialog then go but some Sculpey clay (the hardening kind) and make every mouth shape you can think of. then cook them and paint them. when your doing dialoge you can just switch the mouth shapes so you dont have to animate every sound.

just have fun with it. claymation can be really fun... although i prefer live action because it doesn't take so freakin long

Ornsack · Post by **Ornsack** » Wed May 12, 2004 10:11 pm

My dad works in claymation as a living. He always says keep it simple... And often bad animation is more charming as long as you understand what the characters are actually supposed to be doing

nileo6 · Post by **nileo6** » Thu May 13, 2004 12:24 am

Wow your dad does clay animation for a living? thats so cool. Claymation is getting way outdated and oldfashioned because of CGI. its really hard to find a job because there are very few studios that work with it. you can practically count the number of studios that do claymation on one hand

pan-modo_pictures · Post by **pan-modo_pictures** » Thu May 13, 2004 2:15 pm

I was not really expecting it to be all that great. I don't even really like clay, I would rather do live action any day, but for this project it had to be animation. This was my first time so I really didn't know what to expect. I actually thought about that mouth idea, I saw it somewhere but forgot about it.

ssj3gohan · Post by **ssj3gohan** » Thu May 13, 2004 2:25 pm

I think it would be more rewarding for you to do animation with drawing (on the computer) frame-by-frame. Manga is easy to learn and of course everything is possible. It won't even take much longer than clay animation

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pan-modo_pictures · Post by **pan-modo_pictures** » Thu May 13, 2004 6:19 pm

What is Magna, Ive never heard of it before?

ssj3gohan · Post by **ssj3gohan** » Thu May 13, 2004 8:07 pm

Manga is the drawing technique used in the famous japanese cartoons (dragonball z is probably most famous, but also beyblade, pokemon, yu-gi-oh!, rurouni kenshin, etc. etc.). The cartoon-like images are a derivivant called Anime (soft animation), this involves simplified characters (that can still look, in comparison with most modern cartoons, very good) and non-blood-and-gore topics like love and happy things. Nowadays it's also common to count dragonball-z like things into manga, we say this is 'general manga' because it still incorporates the same drawing techniques as anima, but the theme is mostly competition and fighting, and it is always epic/heroic. Then there is the base form from which this all derived, Hentai. Hentai is mostly associated with sex, but actually the topics at hand are love crimes, fighting and sometimes explicit scenes. Why people love hentai? The drawing techniques are PERFECT; where a good artist would only need 30 seconds per frame to draw manga, he can spend several minutes per frame on hentai and the result is magnificent.

So far the glossary on manga; If you've ever seen manga (must have, it's all over!) you must notice how easy it seems to be to draw it; and it is. With a little practice and some experience as you go over your first production (1000-frame perhaps) you should master the drawing techniques quite well; then the world of drawn animation is yours! Don't think it's easy though (i'm overdoing the 'easy' part here), your first production will probably look like cr**; you should look at the 'filming techniques' that are generally used in manga, like the all-known feet-to-head scroll and background blur. However, this will always look better than your average clay animation.

I3lade203 · Post by **I3lade203** » Fri May 14, 2004 12:13 am

eh clay

nileo6 · Post by **nileo6** » Fri May 14, 2004 2:27 am

I hate manga animation its really choppy and boring to watch. 3D animation is a ton more interesting. but thats just me

I3lade203 · Post by **I3lade203** » Fri May 14, 2004 2:46 am

for some reason i just dont find clay interesting