Buliding animation tables

Because we are using tie downs for the puppets, we have to make our own tables. We ordered 1 mdf board 122 x 244 cm and aprox 25 meter of 4,5 x 4,5 cm wide wooden planks. We decided to make one table bigger and one smaller since the sets will be in different sizes.

Sawing the planks into right length.

 Building and putting the right pieces together. We used Pva (wood glue) and screws. To prevent the wood from cracking we first drilled a hole in the planks.

By using support for the corners it made the table a lot more sturdy. For this we just used nails and glue.

 In the end we attached the mdf plate. We had already measured and marked lines of where to drill.

Here is the finished tables. The height is 95 cm which we felt was good working height when standing. One table is 140 x 122 and the other is 104 x 122.

Character Designs

From the left: The woman's Creature, Neighbour woman, the Janitor, Neighbour father, Neighbour child, Main character and his Creature.

About and Synopsis

About:

This is the graduation film of Eirik Gronmo Bjornsen and Anna Mantzaris. We made the film during our last year at the Animation Department at Volda University College in Norway.
The film is a Stop Motion short, a bit dark and mysterious but also with humor and heart.

Synopsis: A man with social anxiety gets followed by a naive and clumsy creature. Terrified the man tries to escape, unaware that the creature is actually a helper with slightly unconventional methods...

Technique: This film is made in Stop Motion. That means that we take a picture of the puppet, then we move it a tiny tiny bit, take a new picture, and continue. For every 25 pictures we have one second of animation.Since we like the handmade feel in Stop Motion, we tried to maintain that while we challenged ourselves on the technical level by using ball and socket armatures and face replacements on the puppet. The face replacements gives us a small library of expressions and gives a big variety of expressions on the puppet.

The film is at the moment being screened at festivals around the world.


Feel free to contact us!

anna.mantzaris@gmail.com
eirikgb@gmail.com

A part of our workspace

Secondary Characters

 Puppets with foam on them. From left: Neighbour Father, Neighbour Child, Janitor and Neighbour woman. On monday we will start with the heads!

 

Armatures for the secondary characters. We used shrink tubes around the wire ad k&s pipes for the joints. The puppets have replacable arms, legs and hands, mostly becuse we wanted to try it out and test for the main character.

Creature Material Test

 

 

A small test-creature to find out what material use for it. Since the creatures should feel a bit surrealistic, we wanted something that stands out from the rest of the movies universe. We were thinking of knitted or textile. But after trying feltmaking with wool, we loved it and decided to go for that techinque!

Making the armatures

We started to make the armatures for the secondary characters. Here is the Janitor in production, with a rig for the scene where he is going to fall.

Creature Concept

Some concept drawings for the creature. He is going to have different kind of eyes in different situations - sometimes normal and sometimes staring.

Scale Testing

In order to decide the scale of the puppets and sets, we did some quick scale testing using cardboards. This was useful to find out if certain camera angles works. Becuase of the big and clumbsy creatures, we decides to make the overall scales not so big.

City Concept Design

Libelula Animation Festival

We are happy to announce that 'But Milk is Important' is selected 

to screen at Libelula Animation Festival  22 - 25 November 2012 in Lloret de Mar, Spain !!

Concept drawings

AniamtionVolda + Fredrikstad Animation Festival

The film was screened at AnimationVolda 2012 Festival during September.
There it was selected as one of the 11 (among 49 student films) to screen and compete at Fredrikstad Animation Festival, oldest and largest animation festival in the Nordic region!
Fredrikstad Animation Festival will take place this weekend, 8-10th of November, and we are looking forward to it! :)