the fxphd deans blog

I am working on our new stop frame and miniatures course here in Adelaide with Anifex. There are so many brilliant aspects and while we were working on replacement animation for lip sync yesterday, I got to play with Magpie Pro. I had heard of it but not used it.

The program allows you to load either 3D target heads/mouths/expressions, or drawing or stills of the claymation mouth variations for all the major mouth shapes related to all the major mouth sounds. You then feed in a .wav file and the program will do a first pass at lip syncing it based on the audio alone. Once done you can modify it to better suit your character. In the later versions you ca then go further and time out the eyes, eye brows etc .
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We are so excited about the new term - we have some brilliant classes. Today I started filming for the new miniature / stop motion course. I have to say I am insanely happy at the end of the day… the sets look amazing, the team here are brilliant and I’d be stunned if people did not enjoy this.

I think this course will be great for people wanting to learn more about this aspect of film making either because they want to move into doing post for this style or work, or they want to use miniatures or stop motion in one of their own projects. But I doubt anyone with a passion for the craft - that does what we do for a living would not love this subject area. It is the birth of visual effects and the last bastion of what I like to call ‘inventive film making’.

Without a doubt we had an absolute ball today - it was just heaps of fun. Tomorrow we have an early start and we are pouring latex - I mean does life get any better ?

Man after kung fu in China and some of the other classes we have coming up… this will be our best term ever.