My animation equipment

 I use the Logitech C525 for my stop-motion animation, it's light-weight, can turn 360-degrees from a static position and can produce 720p HD photos, the highest possible quality for this device. I also own a SLR camera but they heavy and bulky things to move around and could easily bump into any set pieces, which is just my opinion.

Logitech C525 HD webcam

The first project that I used this was in "Blown to Bits"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUwl_MFmUTA.

 I remember how difficult it was to handle because it's obviously light-weight and the slightest touch could push the camera away from your target. Luckily, this stop-motion exclusive PC program called Stop Motion Pro allowed me to correctly re-align the camera when this happens.



Onion-skinning, is a useful guide within Stop Motion Pro that shows you where your characters BEFORE and AFTER you've moved the camera. This is instant relief for anyone who's made a mistake or to anyone trying to make their animations smoother. But, one advantage of filming a battle scene is it's okay to make your camera shake a little to show the chaos, just don't overdo it.

Moving on, I've made some home-made equipment that might interest some of you. First is a wooden dolly, picture below of the top view and several more photos of what it's made of. Quite simply a dolly is something that makes your camera slide across a flat surface.Here are more pictures showing the dolly already set up for filming a demonstration.

Materials

The underside of the rail track

1. Inserting the screw where the trolley will go through

2. Followed by the trolley

3. Topped by a turret ring

4. Mount the Platform where the webcam will be mounted

Here is my result, a tank crushing an army man, it was a fun little video

My second home made equipment is a tripod extension arm. An extension arm is useful because it allows me to adjust the camera's angle. Because I'm filming small army men I need something that will give me a face-view of my characters.

Here are a few pictures and steps on how I assemble it.

Materials

1. Tripod only

2. Attaching the extension arm using the tripod's screw

3. Securing the camera

Here's another test video.

Finally I end this post with me finishing up the test.

New Maps, and some props

I was having fun with my new laptop and made these two new maps for Plastic Apocalypse.
This first one is familiar because it's basically a "remastered" version of the original world map.

Hedge base on the other is part hand drawn, part photoshopped.

 Hedge base is located in Greentoria, inside a square-shaped hedge which makes it ideal for defence. Despite this, a massive green attack wiped out 4/5 s of the tan garrison in less than an hour. The Tan Captain Hammer and a handful of men retreat deep within their underground hideout, how will they strike back at the greens?

Making fake grass to serve as background fillers.

Here's a rather eerie prop or should I say character. He's destined to be Captain Hammer and he's made out of polymer clay from the waist up instead of plastic. I'm still working on this guy and all I could say that it's excruciatingly difficult to work with this material( I've recently broken this guy's left arm, the head would be a nightmare). I'll do my best of course. Besides Captain Hammer, there's Sergeant Pilar, his right-hand man. And several others minor characters.

I will be showing off my home-made camera dolly soon once I've tested and deem it worthy for animation uses. Later!

Captain America - Theater Of War

I
I'm promoting this video here because it's just an amazing ww2 animation.

Tanolian scorpion

Here's a logo design that I've made to represent the mighty Tans. I took inspiration from the following photos. 

The idea is to merge the letter T into the logo. I chose the scorpion because this insect resembled the letter T and I thought it would be badass.

 

Here is a sketch of my design. 

I pasted the sketch in illustrator and came out with this.

I'm quite happy with the result. I will be using this on little props like flags or posters for the scenes.  If I haven't mentioned, the Tans are the protagonists in my film and the Greens are the antagonists. More details about that in another post.

Experimental film

Here's a video I made last year. It's purely experimental and does not have a story in it.

I used a program called Stop Motion Pro and a webcam to capture the pictures. I think the advantage of using a webcam is that focus is consistent. And it's small so if you prefer filming indoors and in cramped spaces, webcams will help a lot. 

Also, if you're interested in using Stop Motion Pro, visit www.stopmotionpro.com. They have good resources to get beginners started in using the demo program. The full software is purchased.

Army men World brief intro

The plastic army men world, the green nation that's very familiar to us is called Greentoria. All nations are at war with each other, well at least at the moment. Map is by Michael Akkerman

 My spin-off that I've been dreaming up ever since I watched Michael's video would take pretty much on the same place where the his video did. Since I live in the Philippines and Michael's from the States, I would need to use my own set. And since my plot has a lot of night-time scenes to it, I would be using an indoor set, made from scratch.

So this map is mostly done by Michael to, I added some stuff just to fill the space. The backyard battle took place in an area called Hedge Base(upper left).

What I've been up to since the last post was to write the script for the three episodes that I've planned( Not an easy task at all). I've also experimented on some techniques in order to shoot the scenes better. Oh, and of course I've collected a bit more army men.