I shot my monkey flat puppet walking some and it seemed to go better. I'm getting used to moving him, and it went a lot smoother... however what didn't go right was for no apparent reason iStopMotion wasn't showing me a live camera feed. I kept having to take a frame to see what it was seeing... once I figured out placement for his walk by doing that, I deleted all the frames and just started shooting blind. I worked on a dope sheet for it also, working out timing for his arms, legs, and head/tail on it... drew it out on a sheet of paper, and transferred that to the board. Halfway through my shooting, guessing if it was going properly or not, iStopMotion started behaving properly again and showing me a live feed... so the last half went much more smoothly. I think his walk is a bit stiff after reviewing it, but I think it went better than the two previous exercises. I'll get the other two posted to youtube in the next couple of days, along with everything else I've done in the class.
Note: writing out a dope sheet is like writing music. You have an idea what it's supposed to look (sound) like when it's played, but you don't know for sure if it will work until you see (hear) it. heheh.
Also, I scrapped my idea for a 3d puppet... I was going to do an ostrich, but then realized I'd be losing a lot of movement in the body by doing so (since this is supposed to be a learning experience, let's start with the hard human shape)... so I went with this ferret character I had laying around... something that walks on hind legs and has a tail, etc. Unfortunately I overestimated my ability to create the outside bits of him. After creating a few cat toys in frustration, I went to goodwill to see what I could find. I came across a tiger that fit my armature pretty well... snapped him up, sliced him open, and assembled the armature inside in like an hour. His feet are sewn just right, so I can bend the toe pieces and have it translate, but I'm going to cut holes for the tie-downs, and sew some extra reinforcement into the feet... something that can be taken out easily if (when) I need to replace armature bits.
Now to go take pictures of him in different poses for class tomorrow.
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