Stop Motion Animator, Illustrator, Painter, and Musician based in LA.
If you want work done, such as commissions, or you just wanna chat, feel free to shoot me an email at stop.rob.sassi@gmail.com or stay updated on new work with twitter @StopRobSassi.
DISCLAIMER (Copyright): None of the art on my blog can be used or reproduced without permission from me.
I am trying something new with these two puppets. I am going to be attempting to build replaceable jaw pieces to get a fuller sense of motion from the lip sync. I have never done something like this, so this is an experiment as well as a performance test.
The hands are covered in masking tape now, so I can get more of a curve out of the finger motion, without having one weak spot.
I plan to eventually make their clothes out of newspaper, so that's why the body isn't sculpted like the face, etc.
I completely forgot to add videos of three time lapses, of me animating on Dung, when I previously did my post on it's production! I don't have the original files so I am going to have to link you to my tumblr!
They're cool! It gives you a sense of what it takes to animate in stop motion. Check em out! :)
I decided to dedicate a post to the production of my latest stop motion film, Dung!
Enjoy!
These are some of the initial sketches I did for the character designs.
I wanted to keep the designs really simple and almost realistic.
Here is a small mock up I did of the dung beetle before I started to build the armature.
I decided I was going to build two puppets for the dung beetle, one for long shots, and one for close ups.
Below are some shots of the armature of the bigger dung beetle puppet.
Here is one with the sculpy applied. I build him so I could animate his wings (to get more express/emotion out of him).
Below is the smaller version of the dung beetle. I didn't give him animatable wings, because it wasn't necessary for what I needed him for.
And here I am showing you the puppets, before I applied some gloss, for a size comparison.
During the credits, you will noticed I had another dung beetle introduced... here is a screen of the secondary characters in the short (before I painted them). By this point, I was running low on supplies haha (these were the last characters/props I built).
Here I am holding up the first armature I was building for the first antelope puppet. It was pretty big, but it kinda had to be!
I built the first antelope puppet with aluminum foil and sculpy... but I decided for my second puppet, I was going to build it out with vinyl tape and masking tape... because I was going to hot glue cotton balls all over the puppets anyways, so why even waste time using sculpy... plus it was lighter.
I used the vinyl tape first, for stability reasons.
I then layered masking tape over it, so it wouldn't melt from the hot glue!
I ended up using an air spray gun, to do the color/detail.
End products below.
Some shots of my set, etc.
Me animating.
This was a fun project, and all the hard work payed off as I placed first in the Student Film Festival at Edinboro... which I mentioned in my first post...
So what are you waiting for! Check out my short Dung!
I wanted to upload a brief progress on my currently freelance job, that I am doing (in Flash/After Effects) for a cleaning company in Pittsburgh by the name of, Pittsburgh Green Clean.
These are some of the earlier storyboards I designed for the project.
Hey guys, on the side this summer, I've started to develop a new prehistoric world, that may eventually lead up to my next stop motion project.
I don't really have names for any of these creatures yet, but if you are familiar with my character Byrd, I am essentially creating the world his kind existed in (yet I haven't revealed his design yet! :]).
This was the first watercolor/concept art I did, which lead to the growth of more ideas. I wanted this creature to be an herbivore, and it's intelligence is that of a dodo bird. These creatures are currently over populated in this region.
Now this creature, is what I consider to be an humanoid type. They are pretty big to start off, and they are carnivores, hunters, gathers, and 'civilized'. They are intellectual enough to use basic tools, and they hunt in packs, similar to wolves.
These guys, use their muscular arms for majority of their movement, a lot how a gorilla would travel.
Also, the decorative piece that resides on their pelvic region are a status for the male hunter. They acquire these from a larger herbivore that they hunt, which is made of their bone. At a young age, the males go through a ritual where they are given one of these hip pieces, and they have to grow into them, and endure the weight/pain, or be banned from the tribe. It should also be noted that once the bone is broken (from years of hunting) you are retired, but if you are able to go years with still maintaining your piece, you are ascended as one of the elders of the tribe.
The bones are painted vibrant colors during a ceremony, which is to confuse and lure in dumber life forms.
Here you can see the beasts hunting down the previous, Flamingo-like creature, using their pelvic bone and tremendous weight to their advantage.
I tend to find it humorous that this flamingo-like bird has become one of the easiest prey in this world. The creature in the water, it actually in the middle of a metamorphosis state, similar to the stage between tadpole and frog. They start off as only water dwellers, but as it grows, the gills start to be replace by lungs, and become mainly land dwellers, that reside near bodies of water (like most amphibians).
I have a lot more planned mentally, but I'll update you with more work before the summer ends. Also, I should prob try to come up with names...
Hey guys, my name is Rob Sassi! This is my first post on my first blogger. I don't know why it's taken me so long to make one of these, but I'll start off by mentioning that I am a recent graduate of Edinboro University. I graduated with my BFA in Applied Arts Media Arts, and I am currently working on a freelance project... I'll post more about that later, but for now I wanted to mention my other blogs, and post a link to my film that I completed last semester.
