Secret Recipe Ep 6: Why We Are Intentional Simpletons

KYSS KYMS! That is our motto. Keep Your Story Simple - Keep Your Movie Short.  KYSS KYMS

This secret recipe is perhaps the most important of all our secret recipes, because it defines the limits of what we TRY to accomplish.

It is our philosophy. If we had a "secret philosophy" section - we'd put it there. But we don't. So here it is in Secret Recipes.

We believe the recipe for successful movie making in stop-motion is to make the story more important than the tools used to tell the story. 

We once took a class in 3d animation, for instance. We spent 90% of the time learning the interface of the 3D software as we modeled a character and rigged it for animation. 90% of the class was NOT animation, it was getting ready to animate.

When we do any stop motion animation, we are animating as soon as our idea is hatched into some form of storyline. Why? Because we use everyday objects to tell our stories. If you can push a button on an iPad you can do what we do. 

Our mission is to make animated storytelling accessible to as many of the smartphone carrying/iPad/Android tablet using public as possible.

So this episode is a warning about going down the rabbit-hole of 3D or Flash Animation. It is a really cool rabbit-hole. But it is built for professionals with lots of time and money.

We are amateurs. We love story. So we step over the "high tech" rabbit hole and go on making our crudely "simpleton" driven stories.

So KYSS KYMS is our philosophy for online media creation.

Enjoy!

Bon Animate!

Slap Me With An App: iStopMotion for the iPad

We've been working in istopmotion for years. This quick review gives you the overview of the basic interface. You'll get some sense of the power of the app. We don't cover everything, but the basics are what we use 90 percent of the time in our stop motion animated movies.

Secret Recipe Ep 6: Whiteboard Animation

Sometimes you want to animate and have an idea reveal itself to you as you go.

This is called "straight-ahead" animation. Traditional hand drawn animation is called "pose to pose", where an animator draws the "keyframes" or "extremes" and an inbetweener fills in all the "inbetween poses, all while following a storyboard.

When you work in teams, this is a great strategy. But, already this is too technical for Animation Chefs' fans, who often work alone, and with stop motion.

This secret recipe is about starting an animation, and seeing where your imagination takes you. No storyboard. No real plot. Just start animating and we what happens.

Things come into your mind and go out your finger tips, onto the whiteboard and into the camera. A deep symbiosis between you and the machine and the idea happens and then, Viola! There is your movie! Revealed and ready to share with the world. Itis fun to do, and it feels like meditation.

There is no faster, easier way to do it than to get a whiteboard, put it under your iPad or other mobile device, and get busy. Enjoy this Secret Recipe from Animation Chefs' episode 6.

Animation Chefs: Animating Shark vs Rabbit!

Here is a little RetroAnimation Chefs. We created these lessons for our members over two years ago. Now it is time to let the rest of the world see our methods and madness as we make more media to re-stock our private area.

Look over our shoulder as we bring a scene from Shark vs Rabbit to life. We roll up our sleeves, get out a stopwatch, time out the events, then hop into animation. We show it to you timplapsed so you can see the whole scene unfold.

Even though we use an iPad to do this these days, the process is the same. Move, take a picture, move, take a picture, move, take a picture, move, take a picture...then Voila! - You have an animated movie.

We timelapsed our animation so you don't have to take as much time watching as we did filming.

Enjoy!

Bon Animate!

Animation Chefs

Chefisode: Animated Lawn Surfing

Summer is almost over in the US. Why not get an iPad or iPhone or Android mobile device - get a stop motion app and do some animation outside kids?

Like Lawn surfing! (an oldie-but-goodie)

Bon Animate!

Animation Chefs: Storyboard Secrets!

Why do a storyboard? Because planning saves time in animated storytelling. That plus you have an opportunity to move the camera around for effective emotional impact. This lesson on planning animation shots, focuses on how story-boarding can be used to make your movie better!

Try turning the sound off next time you watch your favorite TV show or Youtube video. Count how many times the camera changes from a close-up, to a medium, to a long shot and visa versa.

Each shot or scene in your movie has a purpose. And each shot is a camera position. Even in table-top animation, we need to think about ways to move the camera around. This is best thought through with storyboards.

Watch this short lesson and find out how the animation Shark vs Rabbit went from being a simple "one camera" position movies to multiple camera angle movie via some good old fashioned storyboarding.

Bon Animate!

Episode 6 Fan-imation: Godzilla on Broadway

When we did Godzilla vs Justin Bieber we learned a lot about green screen compositing and camera work. So we applied what we learned again to another Godzilla film with some local kids who take animation lessons from us. The result is this hilarious story. They thought it would be funny to see Godzilla turn into a drama-lizard and try out for a Broadway musical.

We are so proud of our fans. We are changing the way the world thinks about kids and media.

Bon Animate!

Animation Chefs

Call of Fruity: Behind the Bananas

A peek behind the bananas in our Pot-O-Problem animation challenge, Call of Fruity. While we are not the first to parody first-person-shooter video games, we think we've taken an interesting angle in this short animation.

The unrefridgerated vs the refridgerated fruits and veggies.

We give you a glimpse from one of the nights working in our kitchen...not the Animation Chef's kitchen, but our own. Mom had to approve much of what we did to her sacred space. (She make a cameo appearance)

It took us five or six nights of rotting fruit and blue light before we had enough to work with. Our iPad mount with a wide-angle lens created a great look and feel to the whole movie.

Our favorite part is not featured in this clip. We got slap-happy while making up the puns for the Voice Over kill phrases, i.e. impeached, ava-carnage, split-pit, mojito, etc.

We hope you enjoy Call of Fruity and this short glimpse into our midnight madness.

Bon Animate!

Animation Chefs.

Call of Fruity: Pot-O-Problems Animation Challenge

We had to work at night, many nights, on this challenge from the Pot-O-Problems. Our mom bought us the fruit and it went bad fast. So we had to animate at top speed. Learning how to do stop motion animation with produce presented some unique challenges. How to get bananas to fly? How to get a celery stick to be an animated first-person-shooter gun? How to get a scene put together without ruining everything else in the fridge with the doors open.

Making a movie in the kitchen was also tough. We literally had to put plastic wrapping on the kitchen counter to preserve the vegetable from night to night. Having a shrink wrapped counter top is not our mom's idea of functional meal preparation space. By the end the fruit was squishy and rotten. We truly had Zombie fruit.

We are very proud of this movie. We shot the entire thing on an iPad, using our favorite mount proving once again that the mobile revolution is upon us. Movies made on mobile are the future, and the future is here - it's just that not many parents know it yet.

Enjoy!

Bon Animate

Animation Chefs

Animation Chefs Episode 6

Episode 6 takes you into the minds of the Animation Chefs. Why do we animate the way we do. Why don't we do 3D animation? Why don't we do Flash? Why don't we grow real mustaches? (We can't...yet)

Our most ambitious show to date, Episode 6 has it all: app reviews, new viewer features, Pot-O-Problems challenge reveal, secret recipes and more. Mobile animating is the theme and we show you how to do it on the fly.

We live in wonderful times. We hope you enjoy our show!

Bon Animate!

Animation Chefs