Stop Motion!

Howdy. My brother got me this toy during one of his deployments to Japan. The moment I opened it I knew I had to animate it. It comes with a display stand that's essentially a stop motion rig, his hands and face all have replaceable parts for different gestures, and each joint has a pretty good range of motion and is pretty stable.

I've never really done any stop motion with a character (only did some tests in school with clay), but it was pretty fun just doing some straight ahead playing around. I still prefer cg in it's infinite preciseness, but it's fun to be able to get away with rougher animation in a 3d format like stop motion. It's also great to actually get to work with your hands and feel the character in your hands.

step

jump

Next time I think I might use my webcam for a more stable way to shoot this stuff. I could also then be shooting from a higher level. My lack of a tripod kept me at table level with my camera this go.