Hooray! *parties*

Great to have you back, my friend. *bows*

 

Out of interest, i was wondering if you could give me a few tips for stop-motion films? Only i'm hoping to do one myself, and i've never really done it before.

I would have thought I would be the last person to ask, mine are pretty shoddy mostly. So I'm just going to tell you things I didn't do that you should do, or just some general things that are probably quite obvious.

• Depending on what you can work with, try and get some props and 'sets' (environments) that best represent the places you want them to happen in. Ie, since you're doing Bara Magna, obviously find something like sand, or some form of equivalent. This is stating the obvious, but yeah, you may not have good access to sand or something that could act as sand that wouldn't be as annoying for your sets. I guess what I'm saying is, don't just use the floor of your house or something. Unless it looks like sand.
• Think of the different angles that are used conventially, such as close up, wide shot, from above, etc. and work out what is appropriate for each. I'm sure the new movie will give a good idea of this.
• Don't take short cuts like I did. If you're not happy with how things are looking, fix it, ask for people to do lines again, redo things. This is up to you with how professional you want it to look. Which leads on to my next point...
• Decide on how much action you are going to have. The more action there is, the more you have to animate, ie the more photos needed to be taken. Decide whether you want characters to move when they are just speaking, how much movement when walking, etc. The more movement the more realistic it will be. Along with that, decide on a standard framerate for each photo, so you can work out how much movement you will have between each photo. The more movement, the more frames per second, the more animation and photography work you have to do. Ultimately, it really depends on how much time and effort you want to put in, and a weigh up of whether it is really necessery to go overboard with detail or just make something entertaining. I think I strayed to entertainment, mostly.
• Animating in sync with music and sound is hard, but it looks great when done well. Sometimes you can be quite lucky with the music syncing. Picking good tracks help, especially those without lyrics are good.
• Normally I would recommend to you a site I used to use called soundsnap.com for getting free sounds, but sadly that is no longer an option. Finding free sounds is quite hard on the internet, however, just looking right now I found this site called soundjay.com that looks like it has some good sounds on it. Browse through and see what you can find. Every sound tells a story. Probably.
• With regards to publishing, this may seem obvious, but host it on a site that you can stream video. People are not really willing to download a video generally, and would rather see it online. That being said, if people enjoy it so much, give them the option to download as well.
• Try and get as much support as you can, it's going to be long and at times tedious work. But if done well, the ends justify the means.

Wished I listened to my own advice, haha. So yeah, just some stuff there. Pretty general, but yeah, hope it helps. And speaking of helping, I'll be willing to do some voices if you want. I'll have a look at your audition page in a bit again to see.

TL;DR

 

Thank you, Phy, i'll copy that advice into MS word.

Hey, Phy's back! (I wonder where he's keeping Phrenzhii)

 

Cool. =D

To be frank, I didn't do anything to Phrenzhii. He thought the whole thing was pointless, so he left. But I'm sure he'll plot something later on, he's a devious character. So yeah, he just handed it back to me.

Yeah, I'm brutally honest. I don't raise myself.

 

Just who is Phrenzhii? Some "phyoohrii" from another universe?

Yaydedidillydoo, Phy's back. Phyrenzii was too verbose.

Phy is back! Yay and such !