In December, FCT covered Danny Mosier’s extensive fan film, Star Wars Tales, a stop-motion animated action figure flick that spins a slew of new short stories that take place in the Star Wars Universe. Mosier spent three years animating the flick, which makes him either extremely dedicated or utterly insane (or both).

Speaking with FCT, he revealed a bit about the methods to his madness; today in the conclusion of the interview, we get some insight into custom action figures, how to make the little muthas stay in one place when you stand ‘em up, and the pros and cons of using a trumpet case as your animation base.

There’s a true art to stop-motion animation, and while we’ve covered the software extensively (the posts on free stop-motion animation software for Windows, Linux and Mac are probably the most popular ones on this site), we haven’t done much on how to do stop-motion animation. Accordingly, here’s some hints from a professional amateur!

SEE THE INTERVIEW AND THE CONCLUSION OF STAR WARS TALES AFTER THE JUMP!

Some of your more original characters, I have to say, I didn’t recognize from any of the Star Wars films—what’s the story there?

They’re custom figures; if you have an original character in you fan film, you might want to look into making one. I made several custom figures for Star Wars Tales and it’s a relatively quick and fun hobby to get into if you’re interested in it at all and the only way to make your own figures (and I do commissions, if anyone’s interested!).

Some Lego animators I’ve talked to love the fact that the little figures in Brixploitation movies don’t fall over that much, but I bet that’s not the case with Star Wars figures. How do you keep them in one place so that you don’t accidentally knock them over and such?

As far as having the figures stand goes, I’ve done several things. There’s this company called Ultrama that’s famous for their action figure displays, and they sell small pegs for both 3 3/4″ scale (Star Wars and GI Joe scale) and 6″ scale ones (Marvel Legends, DC Direct, etc. scale). For scenes where I used the pegs, I had a cardboard base and essentially drilled a hole that was big enough to fit the peg but was also small enough to allow the peg to stay still without the figure pushing it down.

They work well if the figures are not walking. The pegs allow for a great flexibility to animate the upper body and keep the figure relatively still. The major drawback is that they, of course, can’t walk when you’re doing this and you have to plan the animation around where you’re going to station the pegs. I didn’t use this method too much, though, since it is a little bit more work. Additionally, I used a trumpet case as a base for a lot of the animation, and of course I won’t drill holes into that.

The nice thing about animation, though, is if you’re not filming a long shot and can’t see their feet, you can just tape them down and make sure none of the tape peeks in the frame. If they have to move a little bit and you can’t tape them down, one of the things I often did was just to hold the feet down with my hand and made sure none of my flesh appeared in the frame. While it was a bit strenuous on my part and wildly uncontrollable, it does allow you to move the figure around and sometimes your shadow can add a nice lighting touch to the frames.

More articulation equals increased posability, and with more articulation, it’s more likely that you’ll be able to move and pose the figure in that one perfect position that makes it stand perfectly still. Of course this is painful, but watch any professional stop motion animator at work and you’ll see how that pain goes with the job. Sometimes with increased joints, they can get wobbly if they’re overused, but even when this happens, I do find it much easier to pose them as opposed to using an upright figure with four points of articulation where, if it falls over, you’re screwed.

Balance can also be a problem when posing a figure that is not tied or held down. As you might see in part five of my fan film, the figure of Taykla had a real problem with this due to her massive head with the head-tails. Threre’s not much you can do with an unbalanced figure such as that (it was a custom, but this problem does occur with factory product); you can just use one of the methods above or just find another model.

In December, FCT covered Danny Moiser’s extensive fan film, Star Wars Tales, a stop-motion animated action figure flick that spins a slew of new short stories that take place in the Star Wars Universe. Mosier spent three years animating the flick, which makes him either extremely dedicated or utterly insane (or both).

Speaking with FCT, he revealed a bit about the methods to his madness, including how to work with actors who fall over a lot and have only one expression (no, not Artie Lange). There’s a true art to stop-motion animation, and while we’ve covered the software extensively (the posts on free stop-motion animation software for Windows, Linux and Mac are probably the most popular ones on this site), we haven’t done much on how to do stop-motion animation. Accordingly, here’s some hints from a professional amateur!

SEE THE INTERVIEW AND THE FIRST HALF OF STAR WARS TALES AFTER THE JUMP!

Your movie is based on the old Dark Horse anthology comic book, Star Wars Tales; are these original stories or adaptation?

All of the stories in this movie were my creations. The notice that this is “Issue 25″ at the beginning is an allusion to the fact that the final issue of Star Wars Tales was #24, so this is “a continuation”. It’s just a small detail, and I don’t know how many people got it.

So what kinds of equipment did you use to make this action figure epic?

I’m a bit embarrassed to say this to you, but this was probably the most low-tech fan film ever. For capturing the images, all I did was set up a consumer digital camera on a mini tripod and either took the images of the figures in front of a green screen, in front of a printed background, or in front of some sort of makeshift set like the pop-up Cantina set [a Star Wars playset from 1998 that unfolds like a pop-up book to create a massive Mos Eisley Cantina for figures]. Overall, the film was about half green screen and half physical backgrounds.

Here’s a tip: When using a backdrop or a set, you should try to take a pictures without any of the characters to be animated in it from the angle you’re shooting, so you can use that as a template to clean up the animation. For example, let’s say you’re animating Indiana Jones in front of a temple and are using a temple backdrop. You take a picture of that backdrop first; that way, when you animate Indy, if any of the frames end up jerking or the lighting pokes in and “messes up” the frame, you can clean it up in Photoshop or any such program. It’s kind of like greenscreening, except you clean up the bad stuff and it’s less work.

Speaking of Photoshop and software, once you had taken the photos, what software were you stitching them together in?

To animate the images, I put them in Adobe Premier 6.5—that’s the 2002 edition of the program, which was the last version that had a function called Stop Motion where it took the images directly from your camera and automatically placed them all on the timeline at 24 frames per second. Since I used still images and I already had this program on my computer, I just ended up using Jasc PaintshopPro 8 for the effects (it’s pretty much a lesser clone of Photoshop), although you should definitely use Photoshop or After Effects for the effects, depending on how you’re animating it. That’s really the majority of the software I used. Your readers are probably really unimpressed right now and won’t watch my film, but that’s how I did it and it somehow managed to work.

Stop-motion animation is slow, painstaking work, and while action figures may look like people, they certainly don’t move like them. What do you look for in a figure when it comes to animation?

For any character, I try to find the action figure of that character with the most articulation (how many moveable joints the figure has) in order to get the best “performance” out of it. Rebelscum.com’s archives are a great resource to look at Star Wars figures and to get an idea of their sculpt, paint, and articulation.

I bet it’s pretty useful info if you’re buying your cast via mail order—speaking of which, where did you get your characters? Were you haunting Toys R Us for the last three years?

Nope; the best places to get Star Wars figures are eBay, brianstoys.com, bigbadtoystore.com, and Amazon, plus hasbrotoyshop.com for newer stuff. If you can get a figure loose (i.e. not in the packaging), it will save you a bit of money. The truly cheapest way to get toys is to join a collecting board and trade/buy with other users. It tends to be much cheaper than eBay and you have a lot more opportunities to get loose figures.

• • •

I’m sure there’s a joke to be made here about “I like my action figures the way I like my women: loose,” but of course, I’m far too much of a gentleman to say that (oops, guess I just did). In the meantime, tomorrow, we’ll run part two of the interview, getting some insight into custom action figures, how to make the little muthas stay in one place when you stand ‘em up, and the pros and cons of using a trumpet case as your animation base (really).

In the meantime, here’s Parts 1, 2 and 3 of the five-part Star Wars Tales; the other two will run with tomorrow’s interview finale

Dark Horse Comics used to print an interesting anthology comic book, Star Wars Tales, which offered up a batch of stories each issue, all set in the universe that George Lucas invented a long time ago (the Seventies) in a galaxy far, far away (California). Although it had its fans, the comic book came to an end with issue 24 and that was that…until now. Fan filmmaker Danny Mosier has spent the last three years creating his own stop-motion animated tribute to the series with the appropriately titled Star Wars Tales.

Mosier describes it thusly:

This stop motion animated opus is a reimagining of the classic Star Wars Tales comic book series from Dark Horse Comics in cinematic form. Here you will find five different stories spanning generations, planets, and allegiances. Featuring Yoda, Emperor Palpatine, Princess Leia, General Grievous, and scores of your favorite unsung Star Wars characters, Star Wars Tales will show you a side of that galaxy far, far away you’ve never seen before.

The flick, which runs 35 minutes, tells a variety of short stories, from Yoda kicking all kinds of butt in a familiar cave, to dealing with a locked Galactic Senate, to—my favorite segment—the story of how Wuhur, the bartender in the Mos Eisley Cantina, wound up working there after hitting on Princess Leia one night (it has almost a Robot Chicken quality to it).

Some of the tales are funny, some are sort of serious, but they all have something going for them and fit comfortably in the Star Wars milieu. On the filmmaking side, it’s worth noting that Mosier used a variety of animation styles, so it’s not all just figures going through the motions (as it were).

I recently did an interview with Mosier, getting his insights on the best ways to animate action figures, and learning how he pulled off the movie with the lowest of low-budget software and resources. It should be up on FCT soon, so keep an eye out for it.