animating

when animating I found that lighting an positioning was crucial, the way you see the character side on front on, all give a different appearance and feel to the character, so I found once I actually started shooting that I had to tweak the story board and continuously re evaluate what it was I  was trying to create, I found with using the dragon software it was really handy having onionskins so I was able to keep close eye on what I had already shot so i could, match up, and make sure I've not moved my puppet to far out of line or out of place.

DISASTER STRUCK:
 camera tripod knocked it very slightly... trying to re match this up again was a complete fail and I struggled big time taking me about 3 hours to even get it close to what it previously was. So marking where the camera is on the floor and that exactly and trying to not touch and keep as far away from the camera when shooting was really important.

walk cycle breaking it down, story boarding

I found that, I was going to have to break it down step by step,  so by using some on line examples of how others broke down there walk cycle and the style that give, I started to work on mine for my character, here are a couple of the examples which I used as a reference,

walk cycle key frames

some of the key walk cycle basic's which I worked from to create my walk for my character using this as a base point to start from.

aardman- stop motion

DAEWOO: clay  by luis cook for aardaman

walk cycles women,toddler,boy running, and dad also the dog ( four legged) these are all very different from each other the toddler being unbalanced and jolt like, as there unstable. The woman walking tall, the man, walking quickly opening and closing doors hurrying and the dog galoping towards the rest of the family, done in clay and being stop motion the way there walks give them more character and shows more personality and quality's about them individualy.
http://www.aardman.com/commercials/showreels/stop-motion/ the video can be found here 

aardman - stop motion

Kellogg fruit twistables " Fruit camp by luis cook

the fruit twist commander, walks, heavy footed exaggerated steps and it shows authority and power in his walk if he was to walk danterly , or light footed the effect wouldn't be so power full of the character, the walk is perfect for this character, creating the other fruits to fear him
check video out at :
http://www.aardman.com/commercials/showreels/stop-motion/

aardman - stop motion

When looking at walk sequences, I found it had just finding a walk sequence, a lot of animators have, cut away suggesting a change of place or area, an avoided the walk sequence, when looking at some well know stop motions, I looked in to the comfort adverts, the comfort -leaving by Luis cook, as the mum enters the room she has a walk which, is specific to her, and body language is open, she walks by moving her hips, in a quite statement style, that she walked in the room her feet don't leave the floor fully, but walks with a slight drag of the feet this reflects the connection between her an her daughter, telling her daughter to cheer up the mothers walk shows, she not really bothered, and thinks her daughter is being silly over the situation.

http://www.aardman.com/commercials/showreels/stop-motion/

Madame tutli putli -2007

http://films.onf.ca/madame-tutli-putli/index.php?lg=fr link to the offical website , for a short film which detail really is small ieces of art work in them selves

film makers :

Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski