Stoking the Fires of Post-Production

Hello! Just a quick update to let you know that we are still busy in post-production, hammering away at The Grave of St Oran, slowly but surely forging it into a finished film for you all to enjoy.

As suspected, figuring out a solid workflow ended up being trickier than it seemed, requiring a lot of tedious research into hot pixel removal, gamma inconsistencies, png vs tiff sequences, and other such technical fun. If any of you are working on a stopmotion film and are facing similar questions, feel free to shoot us a message – I’m more than happy to share the process we settled on.

But as tedious as the technical groundwork can be, doing the actual clean up on the shots is very satisfying. Taking the lovely images that we sweated over during shooting, and polishing them up until they shine is quite a rewarding process.

(all very boring, so here’s a sneaky video from our last days on set to liven things up!)

While all the visual side of things continues to steadily move forward, we’ve also started thinking about the sound design and score. Adding sound to the shots really brings the animation to life in a whole new way. We’ve just been doing a few quick tests at this stage, but I can’t wait to see what a skilled sound designer can bring to table!

Augmented Reality

In other news, we were invited to contribute a piece to an Augmented Reality exhibition showcasing the work of a variety of animators. Curated by the talented Julie Gratz of Kaleida Studios, the show was a series of prints that come to life when viewed through the Artivive app on your phone. We framed up the crow shot from the film, using the actual puppet from the shoot, which worked out really well.

(here’s a video of us testing out the framed print before hanging it.)

You can read more about Artivive here. If your curious, download the app and point it at the image below and you should be able see how it works!

The exhibition opening was good fun, lots of people came along, and it was a great chance to meet up with fellow animators and check out their work (and drink until the early hours of the morning).

Team Update

In the meantime, with the St Oran shoot finished, our stalwart animator Josh has started working on his own sci-fi short animation again! You can get a peek at his progress over on his instagram account. It’s looking damn fine.

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Talk to you all again soon!

– Jim