Hurrah, stop motion fans — it’s time for the Stop Motion Eye Candy of the Day!

This time, it’s artist PES, translating classic arcade scenes into stop motion, real world objects. It’s utterly brilliant — and a reminder that, stripped of more advanced code and graphics, early arcade games were reduced to strangely iconic designs. That’s food for thought when thinking about digital motion in general.

There’s more of this stuff, too — here’s a complete round-up from “counter-culture” mag Hi-Fructose:

Video: Clown Head Explosions: The Art of Pes

Found via Laughing Squid and Scott Beale’s Twitter stream

Now, digerati: perhaps these real-world sprites inspire some virtual ones for use in your next live visual tool?

As visualists we tend to spend most of our time working with digital processes. So it’s good to step back occasionally and remember that computers don’t need to do all of the work:

1154 stills taken over 2-3 weeks. The lighting and setting is kept remarkably consistent, although I’m guessing someone with a little more production knowledge (or spare time) would have removed the tripod-bump in post.

Ok, maybe not the last. But I’m proud to say I actually worked on this video, sweating, printing and gluing for hours on end. Directed by Asif Mian. Fast Cars turned out absolutely great. You can find a higher resolution quicktime on Asif Mian’s site here. It helps that im a huge Aesop Rock fan as well.

While we’re on the subject of animated pieces of paper: Switchfoot’s “Awakening” has been treated to a similar workflow (frames printed and photographed) with a very different result.

StudioDaily has an interview with Brandon Dickerson, on the workflow required to put this piece together.

Exciting things are afoot. As hinted, I’ll be Visualisting my way around the country soon. Touring Australia = Large chunks of time sitting on a bus, so when that hits I expect to be a veritable fountain of CDMotion content (including some of that hot new NAMM gear, stay tuned), but until then it looks like things are going to be a little… cramped? I don’t expect to have much time to devote to devote to the extensive, handcrafted editorialising we’re all used to.

Which is a problem, as I have loads of awesome stuff to tell you about, and it just can’t wait two months. So my plan is to do a series of Pocket Reviews, getting all of the salient points (which are quite easy to write) without the filler (which takes time to get right).

First up: My Russian Spy Lens - the Zenitar 16mm Fish Eye - arrived today.

US$150 including shipping from East Wave BestOptics. I’m using it on my Pentax *ist DS. The Digital SLR Focal Length Multiplier is 1.5, so it’s probably closer to a 24mm lens on this camera, but still gives a beautifully wide view angle, and plenty of lens distortion.

Has it really been 2 months since episode 1 of Steven Watkins‘ Backspace podcast was released?

Episode 2 came out on Friday. It doesn’t quite recapture the ethereal feel and technical polish of that first episode, but it’s still very impressive work for a one-man band (showreel here).

Previously:
Interview with Stephen Watkins.
Backspace Episode 1.

I haven’t seen the World of Warcraft South Park yet, but I did manage to catch the recent stopmotion/claymation episode of My Name is Earl before I left Australia.

DV.com has an interview with the production leads for the segment, containing plenty of background, logistical information on how a special episode like this takes place, as well as some After Effects workflow tips, and information on flicker removal techniques for time-lapse or stop-motion photography:

Matlosz handed 1920 x 1080, 24p digital still image sequences off to Buck, who took them into After Effects.

Buck: I use a plug-in from The Foundry’s TinderBox collection called Deflicker. It has six or seven different ways to remove flicker from the stills. You can perform multiple passes with each different setting. One of the hardest things to do is keep the frame-by-frame lighting consistent.

Matlosz: Digital cameras aren’t designed to be frame accurate with luminance, chrominance, gamma, anything. Those things don’t stay consistent frame by frame. They just don’t match. That’s the one issue you have shooting digital time-lapse or digital stop-motion.

Buck: What really kills the stills is any kind of camera moves and rack focuses, so the Deflicker filter was a lifesaver. But there are times when even Deflicker falls short. Times when a light is bumped or a bulb goes out and needs to be replaced. For those kinds of problems, we adjust the levels manually to ensure frame-to-frame consistency.

I’ve dealt with some of these issues before, but even with everything locked off on a manual lens there is often some flicker remaining. Deflicker seems like the obvious answer.

I’ve fallen behind. I apologise. These videos all deserve posts of their very own, but that will take mucho time, so instead I’ll just hang them out there and get on with whatever’s next:

MIT Sketching

Bugger the Jetpack, I want one of those! (via Wooster Collective)

WOFL on Motionographer. Simple animation that creeps up and tears out your brain.
Alpen - Start Now - some innovation in human-based stop motion. The frame morphing causes some unfortunate artefacting, but the rest of the production and photography are superb.
Make: Ruben’s Tube - Sound visualization… with FIRE! If you can watch this video without thinking “I wonder if I’d be able to bring one of those to my next gig”, you’re stronger than I.

Backspace is the Honors project of Melbourne Communication Design student Stephen Watkins.

… a Stimulating video podcast showcasing experimental short films to provoke your imagination.

I’ll be interviewing Stephen soon about his project, but for now: Watch that wonderful video again, and subscribe to the podcast.

via Wooster Collective.

Make:Blog’s current weekend project podcast is revisiting their high speed photography project. Interesting, but not really the hottest thing for visualists as the process only yields one frame per event. However, if you combine this with group of low cost cameras, you done got yourself some animation.

Ever want to freeze a rose in liquid nitrogen and then smash it and catch the photograph of the rose just as it begins to shatter? Watch this video podcast to learn how!
If you get inspired to make amazingly cool photographs, go get the Make:flash controller kit, and then upload your photos to the Make:high-speed photography pool!

Related on Make: High speed photography - water figures.