UMASS Boston Claymation Tests & 3D Printing 2017

Shot on a SIGMA Lens on CANON 70D
Shot in DragonFrame
Shot on a vintage Camera Overhead Mount for a Traditional Animation Pencil Test Machine.
UMASS Boston Spring 2017

Altho' Stop motion Animation can be pretty easy, there's levels of it that go way beyond what I'm capable of, and require so much patience. I know from experience that to keep Claymation on the easy end, to JUST DO WORMS. Worms are very easy to work with and can still be rather expressive.

At UMASS Boston we were required to use a 3D Printed item in a project so I made a Roman Coliseum... but it's so small, and I didn't understand how the 3D printing worked at all. I'm also not the one who handled the printing. So when I picked it up it was dinky.

I still managed to get my weird Space Worms to dual & wrestle.

I shot SEVERAL tests over the course of a week. I hadn't realized that the color keying wouldn't work with GREEN CLAY on GREEN PAPER, which meant I had to reshoot on BLUE PAPER. But, this clay has oil in it which messed with the blue paper.

Regardless, the weird look & feel of the project even after its composited gives it a unique character and vibe only achieved by Claymation & Stop Motion Animation even with the digital elements. My original Animation Studio Internship was a studio that focused heavily on Stop Motion, Claymation, and Puppet Animation and created much content for NOGIN, Nick Jr., PBS Kids, and the BIG ONE was HBO Family. So I learned ALL of these compositing techniques from that studio in Spring 2001 in Philadelphia as Animation Stew.

I basically did whatever work they dumped on me in piles, back then. I did clean-up, scanning, shooting, green or blue screen, cleaned the children students' work from their classes' backlogs (and other children events or camps), and whatever else they made me do. I learned every kind of corner cutting trick they had. And, not everything on TV that's "Claymation" is actually clay... it could also be latex on an armature wire frame or various other materials, of which not all are safe to use. Mine, however, is CLAY. FOR REAL.

I was taught to use Clay at the UARTS in Philadelphia in the 90s. (But I graduated from AIPH in Philadelphia)