Sunday, March 03, 2013
The Stop-Motion Puppets of Frankenweenie
Tested: Tim Burton's Frankenweenie is the director's second movie to receive an Academy Award nomination (after 2005's Corpse Bride), and both are notable because they're works of stop-motion animation. This short featurette from Disney tours the puppet shop where Frankenweeie's characters are built and brought to life
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11 comments:
This is incredible. I am so enthralled! Stop motion is such an insane amount of work and precession but it certainly seems worth it with the quality of work you can get out of it. The design and construction team on this kind of project much just be so diverse, it would be so amazing to collaborate with so many different types of artists. As intimidating of a profession as it sounds, with making very small and intricate things and filming them to be very close up and large, I would love to try working on something like this. Or even just watching and talking with someone else who is doing it, it would be such a great learning experience and seems to have many qualities that would help else where in design, especially in problem solving.
This is so fantastic! I have never really gotten to see puppets that small. I have loved to see the rigging used to puppeteer the dog around. almost every type of puppetry I have experience had stronger elements of human interaction and did not use small rigs to control body movement. I also loved to see the group of people working on the small individual puppets, it gave the chance to see the finer elements of the art. It was almost like seeing the artist taking care of real people. I would love a chance to do something close to this.
This is fantastic. I watched this twice and I still don't understand how they make these things. the understanding they must have of the workings of the human body and then to creativity distort it just enough to make it recognizable but some how whimsically magical is unbelievable. There is such an artistry to stop motion film, people should do it more often. I wish they would also do a video about how the artists craft the form around to armatures.
This is perfect. I am more than astounded by the stop motion puppetry in this film. I don't know if I will every truly understand how to make this work in the film business, but I would love to work on this style of art one day. I would love to see this style of filmmaking used more often! I absolutely love stop-motion. It is so magical. I can see why this doesn't happen often. It is a TON of work to make it seamless, but I really love this style and would love to sit in this kind of studio for hours on end watching them sculpt!
Oh my god, how cool is this! I played a little with stop animation stuff (and frankly ran out of patience after a few hours of it). The amount of time and perfect that has to go into making these movies is amazing. The tall guy with the removable face I think is incredibly genius, it makes filming easier and it's just a good idea! Puppets have really been trending, which I think is cool, because puppets seem to me to be an old-school thing, but the technology in new-age puppets is so advanced, it's a great mix of old and new!
I would have never thought that that's what the inside of a stop-motion puppet looked like- I thought they were just straight clay that got manipulated for every shot. It's amazing to me how the level of attention to details makes the biggest difference in the final product. The other thing I though was incredibly smart and innovative was the different magnetic facial expressions. That's definitely efficient and a big time-saver.
Uh. WOW!!!!! It's amazing how we've gone from Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer stop-motion to this. From commercials, I thought this was all computer animated. I was amazed at how fluid the dog moved. And the teacher puppet, whose mouth was replaceable with other positions, reminded me a lot of Sean Grove's mask for The Tempest. It is a very quick and efficient way to change the puppet, and the same techniques can be used onstage. If a character needs to make a quick costume change or change a mask, use magnets or something, and replace it with another piece. But the thing I'm most impressed by was the fluidity of the characters in motion. I also wonder, how many photo frames did they use?
I can't imagine how to go about designing something like that. It is so amazing how they can make something like that so complex. I honestly don't think I would have the patience to construct one of those. I can't imagine going through and cutting their hair and styling it. If you messed up it isn't something where you could just replace it easily. They mentioned 3D printers but didn't show where/how they were using them...
Truly wonderful work. I always make sure to catch any stop motion flick I can get my hands on (Fantastic Mr Fox is definitely top ten), as this form of story telling has always fascinated me. What's most magical about this process is that it takes all of the ingenuity and high level of craftsmanship that is tied to puppetry and, by digitally removing the puppeteer, it injects wonder and mystery into how these creatures could be moving. It fuels the mind to resolve the mechanics of the characters.
I love Tim Burton and I love stop motion. I really want to learn more about these puppets and how they work. They are so complex inside and so organic when we see them on stage. This is really interesting to me. I think that what they said about taking a really tiny thing and making it giant is really important. In theatre we tend to go the other way around and thus our art is super forgiving compared to stop motion. The number of clip on faces that they used was really impressive. Keeping track of that many small parts that look almost identical is crazy. The cost of all that must be outrageous. I can understand why stop motion isn't done very much anymore, but at the same time it's just so cool that I can't say goodbye to my love of it.
Absolutely incredible on the detail and the ability to manipulate such small mechanics. I am just astounded on the ability of the puppet hospital. The comment in the article about no 3-d printing is slightly ironic to me. Because it is true 3-d printing could possible give the hospital a run for it money. More importantly though is the ability those people have. The dog and to watch the dog move attached to the arm was breath taking machinery and ability to manipulate such machinery. Just an incredible ability and incredible skill in those people.
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