Mark Sawicki
AMSTERDAM • BOSTON • HEIDELBERG • LONDON
NEW YORK • OXFORD • PARIS • SAN DIEGO
SAN FRANCISCO • SINGAPORE • SYDNEY • TOKYO
Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier
NEW YORK • OXFORD • PARIS • SAN DIEGO
SAN FRANCISCO • SINGAPORE • SYDNEY • TOKYO
Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier
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| Animating with Stop Motion Pro™ |
I am extremely grateful to Elinor Actipis and Kathryn Spencer of Focal Press, along with Paul Howell, Ross
Garner, and Diane Cook of Stop Motion Pro without whose faith and contributions this book would not
have been possible. I also want to thank Joe Clokey and Premavision.com for sharing Gumby and Will Vinton for sharing his wonderful Claymation stills from willvinton.net. The richness of the illustrations would have fallen far short without the much appreciated contributions of publisher Ernest Farino and his fabulous book Ray Harryhausen Master of Majicks by Mike Hankin from archive-editions.com. Another well-deserved nod goes to Harry Walton, who lived and practiced the history of the art and shared stills of his journey from vfxmasters.com. I’d also like to extend thanks to the following supportive individuals:
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America for the fabulous Davey and Goliath still
Rick Goldschmidt and Rankin Bass for sharing the Rudolph still (www.enchantedworldofrankinbass.blogspot.com)
Jason Rau of Cameracontrol.com Susannah Shaw for sharing some great illustrations from her book: Stop Motion Craft Skills for Model Animation. Kathi Zung for sharing her terrific DVD available at www.angelfire.com/anime4/zungstudio Dave of Dave’s camera in Camarillo, who let me shoot one of his cameras on the sidewalk outside of his store Mr. and Mrs. Aldo Balarezo for letting me photograph their daughter Francheska in her debut as a clay animator My former student Lucy Xi Xing, who graciously let me turn her into an animated character Reynier Molenaar for photographing me (reyniermolenaar.com) My wife, Juniko, whose tremendous support gave me the ability to write this book in the middle of the worst recession in recent memory Lastly, I want to acknowledge a man who had no direct involvement in this book but provided a great deal of inspiration to me as a youth and shared many marvelous tips and tricks with me. The late David Allen was a kind and gentle man who was one of the great stop motion animators of his day. He continues to be missed, and I remember him fondly.
Introduction
Devices You’ll Need and Teacher Ideas
This book is designed to explore the history and technique of stop motion animation.
The software is secondary and is in fact so easy to use and ingenious that it allows you to concentrate on the art instead of the technology. You will need to use a computer, a camera, and connectors, so let’s get these issues out of the way so we can start having some fun. Computer
Stop Motion Pro is designed to run on the Windows operating systems XP, Vista (32 bit, 64 bit), or Windows 7 (32 bit, 64 bit). It is recommended that you have at least a 1.8+ GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM for Windows XP and 2 GB for Vista or Windows 7. The faster the machine, the better! For hard drive space, you should have more than 10 GB to store your projects. If you are an Intel MAC user, you can run Stop Motion Pro if you install Apple boot camp, Parralells, or VMfusion and a version of Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7.
If you are using a web cam, keep in mind that it will have system requirements as well so you will need to
add those to the Stop Motion Pro recommendations. For Chapter 1 I use a Microsoft LifeCam VX 6000 web cam. Its system requirements are as follows:
● Processor
● Windows Vista
● Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (Pentium Dual Core 2.0 GHz or higher recommended), 1 GB of RAM (2 GB recommended), 200- to 600-MB hard drive
● Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (P2) or later
● Intel Pentium 4 1.8 GHz (Pentium Dual Core 1.8 GHz or higher recommended) 256 MB of RAM
(500 MB recommended) 400- to 1250-MB hard drive
As with all things digital, the faster the CPU and the more RAM and disc space you have, the better off you will be, especially if you embark on large projects.
Where to Get Stop Motion Pro
The software is available in the United States directly from Amazon, or go to www.filmingthefantastic.com, click on the product page, and select Software. Both the Action! and Action! Plus editions are available as well as the video adapter. You can also download a free trial version from www.stopmotionpro.com.
For educational sales, a list of resellers can be found at www.stopmotionpro.com.
Versions and Editions
All of the exercises in this book can be done with the Stop Motion Pro Version 7 Action Plus edition.
Features of higher-end editions are also examined. Here is a breakdown of the new editions as compared to version 6.5:
● SMP Action—An enhanced version of the 6.5 junior
● SMP Action! Plus—Enhanced SMP v6.5 Education
● SMP Action! HD—Replaces SMP SD, offering high-definition capture for home use
● SMP Studio—Enhanced SMP v6.5 HD
● SMP Studio Plus—Enhanced SMP v6.5 HD Studio
You can find a list of the features in each edition at stopmotionpro.com.
Screenshot
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Product details
Price
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|---|---|
File Size
| 16,540 KB |
Pages
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224 p |
File Type
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PDF format |
ISBN
| 978-0-240-812199-9 |
Copyright
| 2010 Mark Sawicki. Published by Elsevier, Inc |
About the Author
Cameraman, artist, and actor Mark Sawicki began his career as a stop motion hobbyist in Jackson, Michigan. His early work as a teenager led Sawicki to enroll in the USC Cinema program in Los Angeles, where he and his friends struggled to find ways of breaking into the film industry. An early effort of Sawicki and his classmates was the independent feature film The Strangeness (featured in the book Nightmare USA by Stephen Thrower, 2007, Fab Press, and rereleased by codereddvd.com) for which Sawicki was co-producer, visual effects artist, and actor. This film was a terrific introduction into the field and opened the door for Sawicki to work at Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. While at Corman’s, Sawicki experienced the roughand- tumble world of low budget effects that recreated the spectacles of much larger pictures using very limited resources. After working on several 1980s genre pictures such as Galaxy of Terror and Saturday the 14th, Sawicki was invited to set up the optical department at CMI and was introduced to the world of commercials where
he won a Clio for his camera work. During this period Sawicki went on to become an independent stop
motion and clay animator for several MTV rock videos such as Nu Shooz, Judas Priest, Muppet Babies, and an assortment of educational programs for primary schools.
In 1986, Sawicki became a matte cameraman for Illusion Arts where he had the fabulous opportunity of
working under Albert Whitlock in the last years before the great matte painter’s retirement. Sawicki worked as a cameraman and animator under the mentorship of Bill Taylor ASC and matte painter Syd Dutton where he photographed and helped embellish over 1000 matte paintings used in major motion pictures. For his efforts Sawicki shared in an Emmy win for the Star Trek television series. Sawicki also appeared as a matte cameraman in an episode of Movie Magic.
In 1996, Sawicki was offered the position at Area 51 of co-supervisor along with Tim McHugh on Tom
Hanks’s From the Earth to the Moon. After the miniseries, Sawicki became head cameraman, animator, digital colorist, and effects supervisor for Custom Film Effects, founded by former Disney effects supervisor Mark Dornfeld. Sawicki contributed to pictures such as Tropic Thunder, Underdog, Premonition, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Starting in 2001, Sawicki produced and hosted a series of instructional videos on the art of clay animation. After the programs were picked up by firstlightvideo.com, Sawicki was invited by the Weller Grossman Company to display his clay animation talents on HGTV as a product endorsement artist for the Sculpey Corporation. Since that time Sawicki has become a U.S. representative for Stop Motion Pro and teaches at UCLA Extension and the New York Film Academy at Universal Studios. In his spare time Sawicki performs as an actor for up and coming independent filmmakers and also creates fine cartoon art for collectors.
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