Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Mary & Max - parts animated by Jason Lynch

Jason was brilliant and shared some technical information support to the first year animators about compositing their films.

This is some of his work featured on Mary & Max. Don't forget to read Jason's comments under the film clip.

1 comment:

Frank said...

From Jason Lynch. In correspondence:

"There's a few other ways to import your pics into PremPro designed for animation (from v 5 through to CS5)
If you were clever enough to capture or create your images so the file names are sequentially numbered - IE: sc1_0001, sc1_0002, etc. when you goto import file in premiere pro, choose the first file (only the first one!), then a check box at the bottom of the import box becomes available. (numbered stills) check this box, press OK.
Your string of stills becomes a piece of film footage which can be imported into the timeline and treated as film footage. (ie cut, copy, paste, filter, light, colour grade, etc.)
If your number string breaks (for what ever reason, like you accidentally moved or deleted a file, you may get a short clip. in this case, go back to import and choose the next available in the sequence to get the rest of the clip.)

Once your footage is in the time line, (as film or stills footage) to change the speed (ie change from 1's to 2's) right click (command click) the clip, choose speed/duration then change to 50%. Vwa-la. Doubles. Be aware that when you slow speed in CS1-CS4 with live action and any other footage on singles, premiere will inbetween the two frames and create a cross dissolve (frame blend) to achieve this. This causes the footage to go 'soft' which is great with live action shot at 25fps and slowed to 50% speed. Good for live action, crap for animation! (This is not the same as slowing your project to 12fps, which changes the output, and can be messy when going to DVD, film, etc. try stick with the final output frame rate!) This doesn't seem to default to happen in CS5. If you need to turn it on/off, right click the clip and choose 'frame blend'.
Also, if your images are higher res than your project, set the clip size to 'scale to frame' size by right clicking the clip, etc. etc. (otherwise they'll crop all over the place. (You can make this setting default when you set your preferences as you begin your project.)

I guess like anything, knowing this before you start is much more helpful than trying to rename your files later.
**If you have all your files but haven't imported them into Premiere yet, MS office picture manager has a batch rename function. you can sort by name then rename (if that's the right order, or alternatively, sort by date.)

** Always make a backup first**

Hope this helps a bit."