That pan and zoom movement isn't the easiest thing to start with :)

Id say stay away from moving the camera until you get things figured out.

Someone somewhere suggested sticking tiny magnets in the feet for stikfas and animation. I dont know what size or where to get them, but you could then stick the holes in the feet down to a metal surface or stage.

Not bad for a first piece of animation. I should compress some of my old old old animation, then you could have a good laugh.

Id say overall your timing seems to be good, its the posing and the registration that you need to work on.

Id say yes for the magnets but I can get them here and they are cheap. It would be a waste of money on your part to pay to ship them.

Besides I am buying some this weekend so I can start animating more stikfas. I was almost going to animate the t-rex last night but I wans't feeling up to keeping it from falling over. I put them on momentary hold till I get some way of anchoring them. I tried plasticine clay last night but it wouldn't stick to the desk I was working on.

As for the poses, like I think I said previously, I picked the guy up and posed him in my hands back into the frames in my 2 stikfas animations. The Onion skin function in dragon worked good for re-registering the character in the frame. Although that may not be the smartest way to do longer animations. For tests and figuring things out, or if you have a tight stickfas, that might be the best way to deal with posing. Also I noticed from the animations I did with the stikfas, it was a huge pain to deal with the midsection when posing the characters in place. That was another reason for posing them off frame.

animationarchive.org/2006/05/media-preston-blairs-animation-first.html

Thats a link to the first printing of the first or second preston blair book original printing. Download the pages, they are much larger. Its got a ton of useful information on the pages.

animationarchive.org/2006/05/media-preston-blairs-animation-1st.html

Part two has more actual pose animation in it than part one.

Enjoy!

Wow! Felt like I just struck gold mine with that book prints! Part 2 is definitely a homerun. Thanks a lot for your hints and advice Mike. I hope to make improved stop motion works in future with all this info. Its so humbling to know the amount of work you animators do to make otherwise static objects breathe life.

I'm sure the founders of Stikfas would also find the feedback you've provided to be priceless in helping em design a better figure for animation.

My mind is itching to animate the Mechana Robot. So much going on.. but first a script and storyboard.

Excellent! grad you are enjoying. Funny thing with that book is that they had to reprint it due to copywrite violation way way way back when.

Theres also a great book that just came out:

amazon.com/Century-Stop-Motion-Animation-Melies-Aardman/dp/0823099806/ref=pd_bbs_sr_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231478107&sr=8-5

I literally just started reading it. Its really good though. I would highly suggest it if you can get a copy over there.

Do yourself a favor and do some walk cycles and some simple stuff before you dive into the craziness. It's also quite fun to do something as simple as a walk cycle. I plan on grabbing some magnets and having some fun myself this weekend doing some simpler type character tests wth some stikfas dinos.

I really enjoyed it! I especially liked the sound effects. Looking forward to the next one!

I'm going to have to look at this Dragon Software myself. Does it require having the camera tethered to a computer?... because I like to wander around with my camera, and I only have a tower.

Anyway, I always enjoy your posts.