An unimaginative title I know. The video below is an “experiment” I carried out over the weekend. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at stop-motion animation (or claymation.. I don’t really know the correct term), but until recently I’ve never really had the right “tools”.
It’s a fairly short clip bulked out a little by credits and stuff to help bring site traffic and turn off potential media thieves. The animation sequence is about 6-8 seconds which required over 70 separate photographs and took about 30 minutes to make. The software used to create the final result was Windows Movie Maker (bundled with Windows Vista).
For my next claymation video I will be looking at adding more fluid animation, adding sound, and experimenting with Stop Motion Pro to see if it offers much in the way to justify it’s hefty price tag. I have several story and character ideas for when I get a little bit better at this, so be sure to check back at the site often for more videos.
Continuing the current “Dark Knight” theme, I have decided to provide a list of interesting trivia related to the latest Batman film. Please note that some of these items may contain spoilers, so you may wish to come back here after watching the movie.
As a joke, one bat suit was made with nipples, as in Batman & Robin (1997). It was presented to Christian Bale as the real bat suit, but he knew instantly it was a joke, having seen a few design pictures during preproduction. He did pose for some publicity photos in the “nipple” suit.
To prepare for his role as the Joker, Heath Ledger lived alone in a hotel room for a month, formulating the character’s psychology, posture and voice (the last one he found most difficult to do). He started a diary, in which he wrote the Joker’s thoughts and feelings to guide himself during his performance. He was also given Alan Moore’s comic “Batman: The Killing Joke” and “Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth” to read. Ledger also took inspiration from A Clockwork Orange (1971)’s Alex and Sid Vicious.
I love seeing what people can achieve using Lego. Whilst this may have been done before though, I haven’t seen it executed this well. Check out these cool remakes of famous photo’s using Lego by Balakov.
Puzzled by food mysteriously disappearing from his refridgerator while he was out at work, a 57-year-old Japanese man from Fukuoka installed a security camera in his home. Reviewing the footage, he was shocked to see someone walking around and called the police in to investigate.
58-year-old Tatsuko Horikawa was discovered in a flat storage space only just big enough for a person to squeeze into lying down. She had sneaked a mattress and several plastic bottles into the closet and appears to have been living there, undetected, for months.
It is unclear how she managed to enter the home without being noticed. Police suspect she may have been “closet-hopping”, moving from house to house perhaps for years.
Synsepalum dulcificum is an innocuous red berry that, in and of itself, tastes like something you might feed to the birds. It has a mildly sweet, firm pulp that surrounds a bitter seed – like a less flavoursome cranberry. You might think that the less than impressive taste might mean that nobody wants to eat them, but you’d be wrong.
This berry is a miracle berry. Its active ingredient, known as “miraculin” is a protein that binds to the taste buds of its ingestor and acts as a sweetness inducer when it comes into contact with acids. Limes become candied, vinegar resembles apple juice and goats cheese tastes just like cheesecake.
Franz Aliquo has been holding so-called “flavour tripping” events for some time now, inviting guests to chew on one of these mysterious berries before trying, amongst other things, tabasco sauce, (tastes just like doughnut glaze), lemon sorbet and Guinness, (chocolate shake), and oysters, (chewing gum).
The Western world has known about this miraculous African berry since the 18th century but, after being turned down as a sugar substitute in the 1970s and owing to its extreme rarity, it has developed only a small cult following.
Each berry goes for about $2.50 each and, although our American friends can order a freezer pack of 30 for $90 from www.miraclefruitman.com, I wonder if they’re available in this country? It would sure be an interesting experiment…
Lately I have been messing about with Adobe Photoshop (although, merely just Photoshop Elements 2.0). As I was browsing the forum today, I came across an image of Gordon Brown as the Joker. This reminded me of a past idea I’d had of Jim Carrey playing as The Joker in The Dark Knight, and inspired me to finally create the image above.
I’m a little concerned about the lack of advertising about this movie, especially as it is due for release in a month or so. It doesn’t exactly fill me with a lot of confidence, especially when you compare it to the amount of advertising done on the Iron Man movie.
Is it because they knew Iron Man was worth the effort and Hulk isn’t? It certainly makes sense not to waste money on a product that is doomed to fail.
Continuing the current “Dark Knight” theme, I have decided to provide a list of interesting trivia related to the latest Batman film. Please note that some of these items may contain spoilers, so you may wish to come back here after watching the movie.
Synsepalum dulcificum is an innocuous red berry that, in and of itself, tastes like something you might feed to the birds. It has a mildly sweet, firm pulp that surrounds a bitter seed – like a less flavoursome cranberry. You might think that the less than impressive taste might mean that nobody wants to eat them, but you’d be wrong.
