Hochschule der Medien

A 2007 Student film of the Media University Stuttgart (Hochschule der Medien), using stop-motion puppets and CG backgrounds.

In a freezing night in the carpathian mountains, a young woman knocks on the gates of a looming castle, where an old vampire count lusts for her neck....

nachts-in-den-karpaten.de

The film was shot with ca. 30 cm high, articulate puppets, with exchangable mouth expressions, in front of a blue screen. Camera movement was accomplished with a motion control arm, programmed via Maya-based camera animation.
The animation software Maya, next to background creation, was also used for heavy previsualization of the character animation; the puppets were reconstructed in Maya, and rendered images were used as a overlay during puppet photography to help with timing and spacing of the animation.
Real life puppet footage and CG backgrounds were combined in subsequent HD-compositing. Production time was 4 months.

For more information and the complete crewlist, please visit the website.