Bears on Stairs

[Simon Edmondson]

http://dblg.co.uk/work/stairs

 

This was spotted by a friend and is a stop frame of a bear climbing stairs were each frame is made using a 3D printer. There is a little short explaining the process and the ( very ) short itself at 2 seconds long

Worth a look.

 

Coincidentally a lot of the facial work on the pirate captain in Aardmans "The Pirates ..." was done using a 3D printer. I may misremember the figure, but there was about 200 heads printed out and stored in a system so the animator could substitute as they went along.

simon

[Rodney]

At first glance this would appear to be serious overkill... why print out the model at all given that they could animate the sequence in the computer to begin with... but there is a significant difference in that a physical product involved in the animation which with the coming of 3D computer animation had completely disappeared. In other words, one could no longer sell (or collect) animation cels used in a film because there were no animation cels used in the making of the animation.

 

This demonstrates a potential for a paradigm shift in that it merges several aspects of traditional animation to create a new approach to animation.

 

But... there is an element of gimmickry (that is to say a part of the process that is uneccessary) in that any given 'frame' or prop in the film can be infinitely reproduced.

This is the aspect that is different (superior?) to the old world approach to collecting animation artififacts, which because of scarcity could demand huge prices on the part of collectors.

While this would drive the price down (i.e. no scarity with digital products, so production and reproduction would be based strictly on demand).

The downside being that of how to authenticate what physical object was actually used in the creation of the animation (as opposed to a subsequent copy of the original print).

 

As with the earlier video/ad 'The Bear and the Hair' that used physical props printed and then animated this is additional evidence that we are at the precipice of yet another new age of animation.

It'll be interesting to see where this is headed.

[NancyGormezano]

FUN! and...Interesting how the flickering due to the printing jaggy anomalies makes it look CG! (flickering toes and line across back of stairs)

 

Also amazes me how some of us human types gravitate towards complexity in solutions, just for the sake of the complexity involved.

 

Me, most of the time, who can appreciate these massive, crazy work efforts (eg, building empire state building out of toothpicks), usually find simplicity in solutions to be more elegant.

 

And I've been known to spend inordinate, outrageous amounts of time trying to find the simplest, easiest, laziest solution. Even to the extreme, when it would have been simpler, faster to brute force it in the first place.

[robcat2075]

Is it a pun? An inside joke?

 

The bear is stepping on stairs and there's lots of... "stair-stepping"... in the prints?