Lightsaber vs. Blaster

I did a lot of tests in this one little clip. Did blaster shots, lightsabers, and a bit of masking. Not the best, but it turned out decently ok I guess. Filmed at about 7.5 fps. Edited in GIMP, made in MonkeyJam, put together in WMM, and finally, changed to avi with PrismConverter.

This took me about 4 hours. The editing stage was very taxing! But I'm proud with how my lightsabers and blasters turned out. The audio is very rushed at the end (because WMM doesn't have multiple audio levels).

Comments and Critiques Welcome!

The animation is ok, but the ending wasn't really good.

The animation needs a LOT of work, (look for "stop motion LEGO walking tutorial" on youtube) but the effects were decent. And yeah...WMM SUX.

Yeah, it was only filmed at 7.5 FPS (half of normal) so it didn't turn out so good. I'm slowly progressing (I think) I just need to get the patience to take several hundred pics.

It need work but it is better. The FX are nice and the sounds...Need work. You can get 14 to 15 FPS on WMM. Try to get Adobe Premiere Elements 7.0 it would help with your sounds, you can put in 20 lines of audio, and more.

Trust me if I had Adobe Premiere, I'd use it.

But I used MonkeyJam for the animation, not WMM.

That's pretty cool TB, any tutorials?

The sound seems a little off in my opinion. Like PizzaMovies said, the animation isn't very smooth, but I guess its okay.

These stop motions things are really hard to make look good, huh?

I think it was a good test to see how effects work. Also do you plan on making longer stop motions with these effects?

@Troopa Daisy: Check the web. They have tons.

Axel wrote:The sound seems a little off in my opinion. Like PizzaMovies said, the animation isn't very smooth, but I guess its okay.

These stop motions things are really hard to make look good, huh?

You have no idea.

The lightsabers/blaster alone took me about 3 hours to do.

I could do 15 FPS, but I need to get used to animating a little at a time, with minute movements.

@501st: Eventually I'm gonna make my feature film "Thunder-blade: Hunter's Origins", but I feel a need to do all these short tests first, and develop my style and skill first. I don't want to make a 5 min film with crappy animation. I need to fine tune my skills with these short clips.

And in my next short test (whatever the subject matter) I promise to use 15 FPS.

Better use of the camera this time! Much better! The FX were pretty crisp too! You're getting there!

I'm still hunting that code you requested. One of the big sites I use is down for maintenance. Hopefully it'll be back up soon.

I like the blaster and lightsaber. Would you make a tutorial about how you did that please? But yea the animation wasn't that good. I would recomend spending the $1,500 and getting final cut for your dads mac.. Just a thought though.

Actually my dad can get Adobe Premiere for a discounted price (both on the Mac and PC), but my PC isn't "good" enough, and my dad doesn't need Premiere...

@Gareth: Thanks! It really means a lot to here that from you!

@Revo: Thanks man. You're really helping me a lot!