• Joined: May 19, 2014

Topic: Ultra Smooth Stop Motion Animation (Frame Blending Tutorial)

This is my first episode in a new Brickfilm Series! I am fairly new to the site so tell me if this is in the wrong location. mini/smile
I hope you enjoy! and please comment bellow if you have any questions.

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LEGO Ultra Smooth Stop Motion (After Effects Frame Blending Tutorial) : Advanced Brickfilm Academy

Advanced Brickfilm Academy is a show without a schedule. When I receive a animation related question, then the creation of the next episode will begin. During each video I will use software including (Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro X). Every tutorial will greatly very in difficult and softwares needed. I hope through this series to inspire the Brickfilm community to the take there films next level.

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Legofan Productions's Website

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Re: Ultra Smooth Stop Motion Animation (Frame Blending Tutorial)

The tutorial looks great, really straight foward and you explain everything as needed without giving unnecessary information.  I may just try this out myself, one day.  Also, this is the proper forum for this tutorial, I deleted the other one you made. 

Welcome to the site!  Be sure to check out the rules and to introduce yourself and after that, just keep on brickfilming! mini/smile

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JonnDthunDer's Website

  • Joined: May 19, 2014

Re: Ultra Smooth Stop Motion Animation (Frame Blending Tutorial)

Thanks for deleting my other post (I could not figure out how to delete it). mini/smile
I am glad you enjoyed my tutorial, I tried to make it informative, but not long.

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Legofan Productions's Website

  • Joined: March 28, 2014

Re: Ultra Smooth Stop Motion Animation (Frame Blending Tutorial)

I watched the video, but I don't really agree with the method. I guess it's the purest in me. mini/tongue I think that for slower animation, just add more frames, and for faster animation, don't take as many frames. The frame blending makes it blurry and hard to watch because your eyes cannot focus on the movement. It kind of makes you dizzy. For things that require motion blur, it would probably look better, but for basic animation like walk cycles, the smoothness is really distracting. (Just my opinion. mini/wink )

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rioforce's Website

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Re: Ultra Smooth Stop Motion Animation (Frame Blending Tutorial)

I agree with you Rioforce, I think this is basically a way of cheating your animation. Nice tutorial tho mini/smile

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Re: Ultra Smooth Stop Motion Animation (Frame Blending Tutorial)

There's a reason professional studios don't use frame blending; stop motion just looks better done the old fashion hard way. Also, not to hark on your technique, but just looking at the actual animated shots from an objective standpoint, there are some ghost images that I think are part of the frame blending that are really distracting, and make the animation a bit hard to watch, even though it's smooth.

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Re: Ultra Smooth Stop Motion Animation (Frame Blending Tutorial)

So basically you can't animate anything fast with frame blending. I feel like this hinders your animation more than it helps. This being said your tutorial is well put together and I look forward to seeing more.

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  • Joined: May 19, 2014

Re: Ultra Smooth Stop Motion Animation (Frame Blending Tutorial)

rioforce wrote:

I watched the video, but I don't really agree with the method. I guess it's the purest in me.
I think that for slower animation, just add more frames, and for faster animation, don't take as many frames. The frame blending makes it blurry and hard to watch because your eyes cannot focus on the movement. It kind of makes you dizzy. For things that require motion blur, it would probably look better, but for basic animation like walk cycles, the smoothness is really distracting. (Just my opinion. mini/wink )

I think sometimes this effect is really helpful when you need a character to slowly move there arm up or to give the illusion of walking really slow. The problem with animating at that slow regularly is getting each minifigure to move that slow. Most of the time even if I barley touch the figure, there arm still looks too fast. I do agree with you about using it for regular or faster animation, it just looks weird with the strange blur look. I personally only use this effect on very specialized shots. Thanks for sharing your opinion, any feedback is greatly appreciated.

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Legofan Productions's Website

  • Joined: May 19, 2014

Re: Ultra Smooth Stop Motion Animation (Frame Blending Tutorial)

backyardlegos wrote:

There's a reason professional studios don't use frame blending; stop motion just looks better done the old fashion hard way. Also, not to hark on your technique, but just looking at the actual animated shots from an objective standpoint, there are some ghost images that I think are part of the frame blending that are really distracting, and make the animation a bit hard to watch, even though it's smooth.

I have worked very hard on this effect for a long time. At first it looked very ugly (due to light filcker and camera movement). Here is a video of the first attempt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTjeKiP9qpk

I feel like the effect I created will probably keep getting better until it is hard to tell the difference. That does not mean that I disagree with you. Presently the animation is hard for me to watch. The funny thing is most people (none brickfilmers) do not notice that refracting, but do find it smoother.

Thanks for the comment!

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Legofan Productions's Website

  • Joined: May 19, 2014

Re: Ultra Smooth Stop Motion Animation (Frame Blending Tutorial)

AquaMorph wrote:

So basically you can't animate anything fast with frame blending. I feel like this hinders your animation more than it helps. This being said your tutorial is well put together and I look forward to seeing more.

You can animate fast, but it does begin to look more ugly. mini/tongue You are right it really can hinder your work flow. I am glad you enjoyed the style of tutorial and there is a lot more to come.

I have always enjoyed your videos. My favorite of yours was the phonetic mouth movement. I made a video using it a while ago and people really enjoyed it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1bXJyH … dNYpk8KBPw

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Legofan Productions's Website

  • Joined: March 28, 2014

Re: Ultra Smooth Stop Motion Animation (Frame Blending Tutorial)

Legofan Productions wrote:
rioforce wrote:

I watched the video, but I don't really agree with the method. I guess it's the purest in me.
I think that for slower animation, just add more frames, and for faster animation, don't take as many frames. The frame blending makes it blurry and hard to watch because your eyes cannot focus on the movement. It kind of makes you dizzy. For things that require motion blur, it would probably look better, but for basic animation like walk cycles, the smoothness is really distracting. (Just my opinion. mini/wink )

I think sometimes this effect is really helpful when you need a character to slowly move there arm up or to give the illusion of walking really slow. The problem with animating at that slow regularly is getting each minifigure to move that slow. Most of the time even if I barley touch the figure, there arm still looks too fast. I do agree with you about using it for regular or faster animation, it just looks weird with the strange blur look. I personally only use this effect on very specialized shots. Thanks for sharing your opinion, any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Like you said, it would work well on specialized shots. When I was watching it, I though that it kind of looked like that effect they sometimes use in movies and tv shows for slow-motion shots where it sort of looks like it is fading.

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