FIRST LIFE!! Puppets begin to move in Halfland

Frog Test Editlo - Computer from Shelley Noble on Vimeo. (fyi; right clicking on the play button and selecting "turn loop ON" will playback on auto repeat.)

This is a very big deal here, gang. For the very first time, The real production filming has begun in Halfland last weekend. Here, a very brief 60 frame test, shows the Finished Time Frog puppet moving for the first time, the first life in 1/2L. Did I say this was a big deal?

It's taken 20 years to get from when I thought of this film to the point now where all the sets and props are fully built, aka pre-production, is done and that the choice of method for filming has been made and equipment kindly loaned or aquired within our means. The project has now moved into PRODUCTION.

And now, thanks to many of your long standing encouragement and help, the actual shooting has begun. I sent up the official Bat Signal to 1/2L Hero, Dick Kaneshiro last Saturday and even though he had just finished a long week of very long days at his pro animation gig, he went to all the trouble to bring over equipment he hasn't needed to let me try it out to see whether it worked for what I wanted. It does!

By the time Christine! Kuper came to help out on Tuesday, we were able to set things up enough (thanks to her brains) to actual forge into frame-by-framing together to make this little test.

Since then, I've been searching out ways I could get a bit of atmosphere and texture into the straight capture to get a bit more of a storybook magical visual style with software I already own. Mike Brent once again and ever helpful, suggested I try a little manual batch processing to see if that would get me closer. Later versions of Adobe software will do this kind of adjustment layer effects more easily as will other Adobe video editing applications but I don't have those right now and want to see what can be done with what I have.

What you see above is the result of my hand placing a texture layer over and hand-blurring around the focal point of each frame. This isn't how I'll be making the entire film, just a test to see if what I had in mind could get anywhere close. I didn't pay too much attention to the precise placement of the texture layer over the base image and as a result it shimmies a bit like antique nickelodeon celluloid, which is kind of interesting and may have a place in the effects here and there.

Rule #44: Nothing is ever completely complete. Even when it seems like something is fully done, there will still likely be revisions and adjustments to be made once the Latex hits the Papier Maché, as it were.