Live stuffed animals???

[Mr Film Maker]

Hey everyone,
I'm looking to animate a stuffed animals in one scene of a short I am making.
You see a lot of movies where stuffed animals move ..

Is there an easy of doing this or do you need a 3d animation prog?

If anyone can shed some light how this trick is done, I'd be highly appreciative! :)

[Exomniac]

If you're considering doing stop motion, this could be difficult. The first thing that comes to mind is building a bendable wire skeleton for each stuffed animal that you want to animate. You'd have to perform some surgery on the animals, maybe even resulting in completely removing the stuffing to insert the skeletons and working from there. Even with this method I cant imagine that you'd have a whole lot of range of motion. Just an idea.

[weirdharold]

How about filming the animals against a green screen, then have someone "animate" them by wearing one of those green-screen suits?

[tomm2thumbs]

I like the green screen plan - even if just hot gluing some painted-green wood dowels to the character in the back and hard-marionetting it from above. The wood gives you the ability to turn heads, etc whereas strings would be difficult.

If you are going for eerie, I think sometimes the mere suggestion of animation is better than technically showing a lot of it. If memory serves me, a good example might be the clown/bedroom scene in Poltergeist, where first we see the clown's hand fall, swinging (as if by accident) , a shadow of the same, and then while not seeing the clown in frame, we hear it 'jump' down to the ground. My guess is much of the face shots of the clown are close-ups which can be puppeted, with quick edits to make the need for detailed animation minimal.

I would get a couple of duplicate stuffed animals and make one a hand puppet with access through the back (stuffing partially removed) and use a stiff wire or thin dowels inserted inside limbs to puppet any necessary movements. A close-up of a static arm, for instance, held for just a few seconds can climax with a subtle movement and musical 'hit' to tie in with the animation (perhaps a low piano note) to set a mood.

If this isn't a scary set-up, maybe I'm not helping. heheh (run kids, run) Still, hidden rods stuck in from the back can allow you to create motion without getting too complicated. The great thing about stuffed animals etc, if you have lots of time to plan a shot and your subject doesn't complain while waiting.

[svar]

I dont know what platform the 1.st asker is on, but on the mac platform iStopMotion (http://www.boinx.com/istopmotion/overview/) is one of the nice programs to make stop motion :)

[warden]

Carleton Torpin on Vimeo may have some info for you

Filmaking channel (http://www.vimeo.com/Filmmaking)

Maybe this (http://www.vimeo.com/620912)