Mike Tharme, Continuing the Snowball.

Recently during my editing process, my tutor Sarah Kennedy approached me to look at the state of my film, at the time it clocked around 3 minutes, using all the shots I took and angles not to dissimilar from Ray Harryhausen's cinematography. After viewing it she told me it was far too long and that it needed to be shortened. I was really puzzled how she could think this but I attempted to trim it down, barely scrapping past 2 minutes and 30 seconds. She looked at it again and still commented it was too long. So I ask her if she would edit my film for me so that I could learn how to edit properly and also see how she could make it shorter. After a day in the editing suite watching her work, Sarah got it down to about 1 minute. I looked at her results and thought "This is far to quick, the buildup of tension and suspense from the stalking X-Rex carnivore over the Alloceratops herbivore was no longer present and some of the scenes she had rearranged I personally did not thin...

While editing Wildlife on Mars, I have found myself using more and more ways to enhance the film digitally, not  necessarily  ad ding CGI to it, but enhancing shots with the digital technology. Due to my limited knowledge of learning Adobe products I sourced Youtube for many tutorials on how to achieve certain looks I had in mind, namely tutorials from Premiere Gal and VideoRevealed .   For example, I originally planned to shoot point of veiw (POV) shots to put the audience in the shoes of the Alloceratops, after I shot the footage, I began to think how else could I enforce that what the audience was seeing was the POV of the Alloceratops, then I thought about the colour, perhaps they wouldn't see colour like we do, maybe its a different spectrum, inspired by George Pal's War of the Worlds alien probe eye, it inspired me to change the colours.  Then I thought about how the lens would function, perhaps its near sighted and relies on its sense of smell...

For years I have wanted to have a second stab at the build-up method for making my stop-motion puppets, back in 2012, Ray Harryhausen told me my build up technique was wonderfully done, but I could see the flaws in my work even back them, the second time round, I wanted to be a little more careful with it, but not take to long in making it. One big help to me was a book by my friend Richard Svensson "My Stop-Motion Monster Puppet Menagerie" which the opening of the book tells readers how he make build-up puppets. His level of puppet making is a true skill to behold, you can find his work, along with how to videos on his YouTube channel Bluworm . This was a better insight for me into making my newer puppets, where as previously I was making my puppets on pure guess work. Though I did not have time to make my puppets as detailed as his, it was nice to see what could be achieved from his photos had I the time to learn how to make them. I started with the Xenotyranuus ...

If you look at most animations today you'll see a running theme; most, not all, armatures are based on a humanoid or a bipedal character. This has many factors, mainly down to story or the imagination of the creator, but there is also a subconscious decision too. humanoid designs are easier to understand because, basically, we are surrounded by them, we see them in the mirror everyday, observe them in the streets and even watch them on TV. The humanoid form in biology is one of the most complicated feats of bio-engineering and evolution, concurring issues like balance and controlled falling (walking). All of which have been mastered in ball and socket armatures and continues to improve with new technologies and techniques. But what about the non humanoid designs, like the Quadrupeds, Theropods and Avian types? When stop-motion armatures started to be developed more seriously in the early years of cinema, many of the effects were based on non-human characters, such as dinosaur...

"Primal" is a new short animated series from Genndy Tartakovsky (also known for Samurai Jack, Dexter's Lab and Hotel Transylvania). The series is a fantasy adventure set in a fictional prehistoric world where dinosaur and cavemen exist at the same time (so this is not for those who want a historically accurate depiction in the animation format) currently there are five 22 minute episodes released, with another five due out in 2020. I'm focusing one the first episode "Spear and Fang" and looking at the camera work and use of lighting, as well as the main feature that caught my attention, no dialog! Despite the story not having dialog, the most part of the story is told through body language, emotions and sound, artistic liberties are taken with the creatures, for example Fang the Tyrannosaurid, have anthropomorphic personality feeling more like kids in the playground reenacting a dinosaur fight more than a wildlife documentary. Spear the ...