Tim Burton probably wants to kill me now...

After having tasted the art of stop-motion for the first time, first hand... i thought that it would be great to go forth and populate. Sadly after long hours of searching for a worthy mate it came upon me in instinct that my purpose wasn't to populate at all... in fact, there are population problems in the world as it is.

So, what to do in the dying days of our most beloved and cherished hols?

why not, another Stop motion feature.

Jason, Jason.. i promise you, this feature isn't 10MB large and doesn't consist of 2 seconds of crap
Instead, here i have for you a whopping 15.22GB and 1894 stills worth of crap.

ahem... one cannot just watch a short video and get disappointed, one has to note :

THE MAKING OF BLUEBALL

This being my second attempt at Stop-Motion. Once again i went in without any technical information in regards to how i was going to do this.... and we all know i DON'T READ. Anyway i decided to move beyond the late Horace's solid wooden exterior to something softer, more delicate and, well blue.
the BLUEBALL TEST featured here is just an attempt to animate modelling material or plaster or play-doh as most 9 year olds call it.

I made it a point to finish shooting in two days. such a rush resulted in rather bland and cruddy movement. The animation isn't smooth in other words...

one huge boo boo i made was when shooting part of the first scene... theres this huge jerk in movement because i accidentally knocked the polystyrene platform by accident. I didn't see this until i had reviewed the full video.

I had no script and simply thought of how to compose the shots and messing with various props (as you shall see) as i went on with the shooting.
Once again, i apologise for bad footage and all that... u can swear at me all you want later.

I decided to shoot this one with my webcam, hence the 1894 photos only taking up 15.22GB of my Hard Drive. heres the crap part... each pic was only about 800kb in size.

2 days (and more) of my life and 2 minutes, 30 seconds of yours.
Day 1 - shot scene 1 (1600-0100)
Day 2 - shot scene 2 + finale (1300-0230)
Day 3 - video rendering STAGE 1 (0230-0530)
STAGE 2 (0530-0600)
Final rendering (0600-0645)

Heres a brief synopsis...
The setting is this little white planet called Polyron (its polystyrene) inhabited by little BLUE BALLS... these little buggers can shapeshift a little bit, most of the time turning into finger-like things which appealed to my mum as male appendages. Quite true in a way.... eww.
so, this little blue ball (Blu) found a red blob lying on the ground, after prodding the blob, it rises up and tries to attack... the little ball runs off to tell TWO BIGGER BLUE BALLS (Blaek & Whaet) about the incident.
and..... well just watch the video okay!

Stills from "The Making of Blueball"


cam on a cup... haha!


a closeup of Blu explaining what happened to Blaek and Whaet.
(i nailed him to the platform so he won't wobble too much when i was adjusting his movements)


an over-head shot


my trusty companion through work and play.... mostly play.


creating the "shadow" effect of the blob.... my glasses case mounted on my mini tripod.


THE BLOB!


molding the Blob as it prepares to attack! i smothered the light with tissue paper to reduce glare.


i remember those days where i could have Batman vs Luke Skywalker.... like toys.


the Sauron-cam... this is how i got the overhead shots done.


full view of the Sauron-cam... its just a tripod with my webcam on top. Oh and two nails to prevent the webcam from falling back... its dangling!


I made two scale models of the BLUE BALLS for close up and wide shots.... guess which is which.


The Full cast of Blue Ball Test



Full cast + crew.

LADIES AND GENTS
without further ado, BBC Productions proudly presents:
BLUEBALL TEST, written,directed,produced & animated by Low Weiyan.