Green Monster and Lego's

Because I needed an extra computer for use at home, I took my old PC from the attic and found some old, short stop motion tests I did six years ago. 

It's interesting, by seeing this I remember that I was doing CG animation for work, but never had a job as a stop motion animator. Whenever I wanted to do build some things or do stop motion, for myself, I went to my parents home, where I turned my old bedroom in a small studio. Actually, it's the same space where I shot the Groove commercials.
In the attic I created a small corner (the workshop) with all my tools and materials. 
It's funny, that working on this old computer, takes me back to an younger me.

Anyways, the first two are from a monster character I created, mentioned in an earlier post (in this post it says "As soon as my computer likes me again, I'll upload some test animations I did", I guess I forgot about that, oops!).
Around the same time I did an other animation test with Lego's. Enjoy watching! :)

Fridge

Motion control... working!

Hi! I started working on my motion control project again!
In May 2011 an article about a DIY motion control caught my attention. I was especially interested to try it with the Dragonframe software. I followed the idea of Martin Koch but replaced the wire with a steel threaded rod and two nuts, to make it more suitable and reliable for stop motion animation.
Because I was working on other things as well I only started ordering the materials in 2013. After assembling everything, the rail movement worked when testing a few scripts, but I couldn't control it with Dragonframe.
 Now, after two years (and again, working on other things), I decided to give the prototype another go. And for some reason it works! I uploaded the provided script (without the kill switch line in the code) and the Arduino Uno connects and works perfectly with Dragonframe :)

I made a little video to show you the MC in action!
I'll do some more tests later to find out how well it can return to it's original position and such.

 
Motion Control - First test from Maarten Van Rooy on Vimeo.

Bikeshop

This is the streetview I have from my home.

Charcoil on paper.

New website & showreel

I recently have a new portfolio-website! There is a new showreel on there too!

www.maartenvanrooy.com

 

Relax!

Drums commercial

Here's another commercial I did for Groove Music Shop:

What A Feeling!

Clothes Stores

This tends to happen to me alot.

New Groove saxophone commercial

Another commercial appeared online!

Groove statue

Here he is again! Besides the three commercials, the shop owners had the idea to have a statue to put in their store. To create this I have made three molds. A two-piece silicone mold for the character, a one-piece latex mold with a plaster mother mold for the guitar and the same kind for the statues base. As you can see the color is different than the original model. This I did to match the store's logo color.

Because I wanted to be able to animate the pupils on the original puppet after the mold making, I didn't glue them on. Instead I added some latex eyes onto the cast model.

 Because the original puppet was made out of Plasticine, I used a softer kind (Play Doh, yes, the kid's toy) which doesn't stick to the puppet that easily.

 The first part finished. As you can see the surface of the mold is rough on several spots. This is because this kind of plasticine is more difficult to smooth out.

 The guitar mold. I removed the head of the guitar, because it is in angle onto the neck. This would otherwise require a two-piece mold. The iron strings were added later.

More musical commercials coming up

I'm currently working on two more commercials for Groove Music Shop. The first one featuring a drumkit is finished. Right now I'm doing the last bits of preparation for the second one, which will be about a saxophone. Tomorrow it's back to the animation set! I'll put links to the commercials here as soon as they appear online.

Groove commercial online

Hi again! Here's the commercial for Groove Music Shop I've been working on last month:

This is the first out of a series of three commercials. The next two will be finished in the Summer season.

Groove commercial stuff!

In the near future I'll post the short commercial I did for Groove Music Shop.
For now, here is already a bit of extra stuff! Some pictures I made during the making of the commercial.

These are the two versions of the guitar, for the biggest part made out of balsa wood.

Almost ready for shooting!

In mid-air! The wires and the strap were very véry annoying :)

Before shooting I made a little test for the explosion of the amplifier. This one is done at 24fp (in the commercial I did it on 12fps). I changed some stuff for the final animation, like the way the piece of wood falls down.

Because I had some issues with the 'flickering' on the images, I will use a brand new flicker-free Nikon lens for the next commercial. Hurray!

'Groove' stop motion commercial

Hi there! At the moment I'm working on a short commercial for a music store called 'Groove'. For now I just have this picture but I'll be posting some more photo's, video's and details soon!

Stop Motion Again

I've been doing some tests with liquid latex on snipping foam to see how well it works. The results are quite nice, and it's the process is not too complicated. So I decided to try this on a puppet!
It's a green monster, inspired by the one from the movie The Creature From The Black Lagoon.

It is a alluminium wire armature. I used wooden blocks for the chest and the feet, epoxy putty and alluminium tube for the arms, legs and hips. The eyeballs in the skull are wooden balls and are animatable. The jaw can go up and down and I also added some wired piece of loose skin at the back of its head, which makes it also animatable.

As soon as my computer likes me again, I'll upload some test animations I did. 

Les P'tites Poules

For the last five months I have been working on the CG animated children's series Les P'tites Poules (Eng: Little Chicks). The series is based on the children's books by Christian Heinrich and Christian Jolibois.
The animation is done in Angouleme, France and in Brussels. At the moment we're animating the final episode.
The episodes are aired on France 5 every Saturday and Sunday around 9.30 AM (GMT+1) in the Ludo program.

These are some illustrations I did a while ago.