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