My friend Sean Pecknold asked me to animate two shots of a fly for his stop motion short film, Tennis, Oranges. While a brief shot of a fly may sound insignificant, I jumped right in because Sean is so lovely to work with, and because the production design was absolutely jaw dropping. I could tell he was creating one of those special filmic moments that draw the audience deeper into the story. In the film, the character reacts to a fly buzzing around the room, and making the audience watch it alongside creates a wonderful sense of place and grounds us in the world of the story.
Tennis, Oranges
Dir. Sean Pecknold
Out of respect for my time, Sean initially asked for a low effort 3D fly, but I talked him into letting me try it in stop motion. If he hated it, I said, he could have his 3D fly no questions asked. The existing characters and materials of the film are so rich and textural, it seemed a crime to soil the picture with 3D. Maintaining those real materials seemed important, and also it gave me a chance to test a motion control idea I'd been thinking about.
The rig consisted of a stepper motor and an arduino connected to a hacked shutter release cable. I loaded the arduino with instructions - that when the shutter release was triggered, the camera would take X number of photos evenly distributed inside a 360 degree rotation of the stepper motor. I captured the full rotation three times - with the fly's wings in three different states of flapping. And since all three of the 360s were motion controlled, I could switch between them in After Effects like a flipbook to get the wings flapping.
Inside After Effects, I wrote an expression that time remapped the 360 degree sequence onto a control null's Y rotation. The final result is, one can manipulate the fly character's rotation as easily as if it were a 3D model, even though it's a real puppet. And no matter which direction it's oriented, the wing flapping sequence is always correct.