Here are a few more shots of our production plus a link to the Quicktime.
The opening shot shows a full house “Pop-up” in a larger than normal book. Morgan Hay went to work straight away on the house. It was our most complex pop-up. As the house settles Morgan used some cleverly placed rare-earth magnets to help make sure the house hit its end pose.
Anthony Scott animated the house scene using apple boxes and wooden wedges to hit each pose. The book had a notch in the middle so it would land on a rotation point. Anthony had to make sure he was heading toward that point during the opening of the book. Instead of moving the camera we decided to move the set on rollers toward camera.
We used one of my favorite Dragon Stop Motion cinematography tricks on this shot. We shot two exposures per frame. Anthony would capture the first frame with the fill light on and the second with the fill blocked with a flag. In After Effects we just put both shots in the same comp where we could vary the level of the fill during the shot. We could shape the fill with masks and key frame the amount of fill light over time.
Alex Juhasz painted so many motor cycles for the “Buck” sequence. Sometimes we decided to shift angles and Alex would be back to work. He was a real trouper.
The final shots with the shed were made with multiple light passes – again this is a great way to have CGI style control of the lights in post with stop-mo.