Mid-Metamorphosis

More concept art for my prehistoric world idea.
You may remember this guy from my first post.

I was craving to do more environment based work, so I sketched this up, scanned it in my computer and voilà!

Sorry for such a short post, but I'm not planning on doing more concept art for the project in the near future and I wanted to post this before I move onto the my main priority. I am starting to nail down some storyboards for my Outlaw project. I am hoping that I will stay more consistent and get that project on the road as soon as possible!

A Successful Day

Just some more concept art for my "prehistoric" world.

A few females and a pup rest by the lakeside as the males cook the result of a hard days work.

Byrd VS Worm (A Stop motion short by Rob Sassi)

 Everyone starts somewhere, and my somewhere was a walking skeleton named Byrd.

I initially made this character as a joke in MSPaint, while sitting in computer animation class, waiting for the rest of the class to catch up.
My neighbor thought it was hilarious, and at the time I was looking for a character to work with for my animation 2's walk cycle... and if you know me, I enjoy taking advantage on an open assignment.

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT, THE DEAD NAIVE WALKING BYRD WAS CREATED...

But he wasn't perfect.

This was my first turn around I did with my initial design, but I needed to add more appeal.

 Of course, I was pursuing a more stop motion approach at the time so I pushed the sculptural feel of Byrd... and this is what I came to before I started to build him. Somehow, everything I do turns out cute... oh well...

I wasn't as keen to documenting my process as much as I am now, so I am sorry to inform that I don't have much to show of the armature I used for Byrd, etc...

Also, this was my first "real" short that I invested time into, and I literally had no storyboards! I pretty much just had the general idea, and went with it... There were a lot of little things I added on the spot... But I really enjoyed how this turned out under the pressure... but wouldn't recommend it.

I was still pretty new to animating with a puppet, so experiencing first hand what I could get away with and such, was a very exciting time!

I made a simple story, a character with a goal, and it was reasonable for one person to handle. I honestly never thought Byrd would become such a big deal (or develop as much as he is at this point in my head!), but apparently people are still talking about him at Edinboro, even now that I am gone.
I did end up producing a sequel named Byrd vs Gravity, but I shall do a seperate post talking about that project.

Thanks for the read, and below is the link to my animated short, Byrd VS Worm!
(Filmed Fall 2010 @ Edinboro University)

PS. I composed the music in this!

Dung - From Beginning to End

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!