Stage Set Up & Animation Experiments

Now that I have all my models (character, trees, ground, etc...) ready, I moved all the of them to my stop motion shooting stage. I have also ordered online an armature rig, which supports positioning the puppet.

Stop motion experiment

I experimented with the rig to find the optimal way for supporting the puppet while having flexible movements. It turned out that the rig is a bit too weak to support the puppet still in position without shaking. Thus, I need to include magnets on the bottom of the puppet's feet.

Puppet supported by rig

I got some help from an animation technician to set up the stage, and that includes the camera and the software that I'll be using, Dragonframe. I chose blue screen as it's observed that my puppet has green elements in it.

Stage set up

I conducted several tests on how flexible the puppet is via trying different poses and animations. I noticed that some joints on the puppets are fairly loose and need to be tightened more to easily give a more natural look when animating.

Here are a few animations I managed to do:

Animation experiments