Shooting the Movie

Over the course of the week I began to shoot. (Even though Barkely wasn't done yet) Barkley is in the first scene, so for the "Theme Song" I just put black pictures in it's place. I started off with Rubber Duckie.

So this part is kind of confusing to understand and explain. The program I use is iStop-Motion Home Edition. It is a great program except for music. There is no way add music to the video while shooting. So, what I do is upload the audio to the video on YouTube and make it private. So then I open 2 windows next to each other. One is iStop-Motion and the other is the private YouTube video. On iStop-Motion I take 3 seconds of pictures of whatever, my hand, the celling, etc. So I have 3 seconds of random stuff. What this does is when I want to watch my video with audio, I hit play on iStop-Motion. In those 3 seconds I have time to click on the other YouTube window and as soon as iStop-Motion reaches the "3" I hit play on YouTube. If I started both at 0 seconds I wouldn't have time to hit play on the YouTube window. One of the windows would be ahead of the other. So, it;s very confusing to explain. So then what I do when I am shooting is think if on the YouTube audio, at 30 seconds in the duckie squeaks, that means at 33 seconds my duckie squeaks. So I am always adding 3 seconds to the actual audio time. So I have to start at the beginning every time I want to see the video or the timing is very hard to get perfect if you start in the middle. So to watch how "Batty Bat" looks, I have to watch the theme song, rubber duckie, C is for Cookie and I Love Trash. So that is very time consuming. I hope you guys sorta understand.




This is iStop-Motion. This picture is off the pro version, the green bar is the music bar, which my version of the program does not have. It would be so much easier if it did!


Anyways, I filmed Rubber Duckie first which was pretty simple except for the duckie squeak times. Which I got down pretty good. Here's a secret, Ernie's body ends at his waist and he sits on stacked up Dixie cups behind the bathtub. I thought Rubber Duckie was so cute and I was very happy with the bubbles!

Then next was C is For Cookie which was a very simple to set up. I had my black backdrop and a big "C"! The video turned out great. I loved how at the end the cookies went into his mouth like he was eating them! I didn't know how that would look, but when I watched it back, it looked great!

I Love Trash was up next! At first I wasn't going to have Oscar's trash can move, but after a few seconds of shooting, I decided it was needed. For me, just turning the head seems boring. I turn it like 10 times and I think this is gonna look so boring on film! But what I forget is that is is only like 6 seconds. 6 seconds of turning his head is not boring at all, and it is very short. But for me, I took 60 pictures of him turning his head. So I think I will be too long of him turning his head, but it goes by so fast! So overall I thought it turned out very good. I liked the newspaper with fish wrapped inside. : D

The next day I filmed "Batty Bat" which is one of my favorite songs in the video. I loved how the dance turned out and the little bats were so cute! When he says "1,2,3 spread out the cape" I didn't really think of that when I made his cape. The cape did not spread out. So I quickly cut out a spread out cape out of paper.

"Monster in the Mirror" was the next segment. I want to start off by saying I hate working with mirrors. If you watch my "I Could Be Santa" video you can see my had and the camera in the mirrors. I knew that couldn't happen again, so I had to set up a blue piece of paper at the angle the mirror. It worked pretty well. But I had to angle the camera to see the image in the mirror because there was a big piece of paper directly in front of it! I thought the song turned out pretty good!

The next day I filmed "Elmo's Song" which was the longest of the segments. I loved the set because my sister and I had a fun time splattering it. And I thought it was one of my best ideas in the video. Elmo played the piano while sitting on a painted dixie cup and the piano was to low down for him to play so I put it on a Styrofoam platform. Big Bird and Snuffy were put in front of the camera for the first time and they worked well! In the middle of "Elmo's Song", my family and I went out for ice cream. When we came back in half an hour, Big Bird was on the floor. UH OH! Apparently, he was slightly leaning forward, so much that fell forward right off the table and splat! We do have a carpet in the dining room where I shoot movies, so that I think worked to his advantage. His arms fell off, which no big deal because all my characters arms and heads can come off. Also, his upper beak broke right in half. Not good. I quickly plugged in my hot glue gun and glued him back together. I didn't want to it look like a crack or globs of glue were all over, so I tried to very hard to make it look like nothing had happened between frames. It is barley noticeable in the movie. So Elmo's Song was done!

Then that night I finished Barkley. Barkley is a rare character on Sesame Street. He was Linda's help dog from 1977, when he first appeared, to the early 2000's. Linda is deaf and Barkley was put in the show to be her help dog. Linda left the show in 2003 and Barkley disappeared. In the 40th season premiere in 2009, Barkley was shown for the first time in nearly 8 years. Barkley is considered one of the big characters in the show (Like Big Bird and Snuffy) because he requires a full bodied person to work him. I painted his 2 different shades of orange and streaks of gray for his white fur.

Big Bird, Snuffy and Barkley

On the 23rd I filmed the beginning of the video, the "Theme Song". I used some of the characters I made that don't have there own song. I did not use any of the main characters in this part. It was very short and about 30 seconds long. I basically just did a couple basic moves for the whole cast to do. That was done!

Then I went back to the end to start "Sing" I started the first few seconds and then it got to be late and I went to bed. Then on Friday I went to school and came home and started filming. It was the 24th! The video was supposed to be out! It is very unlikely for me to be shooting the night of the release. Usually I have the video done wayyyyy before. For example, I shot Disney Extravaganza on April 23rd and it was released May 7th. under the Sea was done May 27th and was released June 10th. This gives me time to get a head start on the next video while everyone is still waiting for the other. But with me basically doing no work for Sesame Street for the first week and a half of school I was behind. I thought about delaying the video until next week Friday, so I logged on to Youtube to announce the delay and up in the corner of the screen where the youtube logo is was Elmo. How ironic! On September 24th, the day I have been announcing my release date was going to be for a month Elmo has taken over youtube! The official Sesame Street channel had people ask Elmo questions and the highest rated questions were asked to him and he answered in a 20 minute video that was uploaded on the same day as mine! What are the odds! So I thought, there is no way I am delaying this! So I started filming. I filmed all of "Sing" which is the finale of the video. I used all of the characters in the movie and they all had there own little solo or entrance. The end result was great! The last thing I had to was the Elmo ending. On the end of the song "Sing" Elmo says "Elmo is so sad the album is over! Oh, Oh, Oh Elmo has a great idea! Play the album again! See you at the beginning!" I heard that back in May when I was was doing audio for this and thought it was the perfect ending! But he says album 2 times. So I tried to find a youtube clip where Elmo says Movie or Video for me to put in it's place.  No luck. So I just randomly tried to cut out both "albums" and hit play. I have no idea how it happened but is Sounded like "Elmo is so sad it's over!" instead of "Elmo is so sad the album is over". It was perfect. I think what he actually says is "Elmo is so sad is over" but it sounds like it's, so it's perfect! Then second one sounded like "Play it again!" instead of "Play the album again"! It was just perfect. I still have no idea how I got it to sound so natural without the albums but it worked! So I filmed that little scene and Sesame Street was done! I watched it back a few times and tweaked a few things and it was done!

Filming "Sing"

Filming "Sing"

 I saved the movie and closed out of iStop-motion! Then I opened iMovie. I imported the video into the program and put the music with it. In iMovie is where I enhance color and add effects to the video. For example, Disney Spectacular 2.0 is all enhanced with iMovie. And the scene in "Hercules" where he is in the underworld waters and it's all blurry, that was done with iMovie. So I enhanced all the colors and added some minor things and the video was done! Then I imported the video from iMovie to Youtube. I checked my videos and it said "Uploading"! Yay! It was about 8:00 pm and was getting later in the day, but I still wanted to get it on Youtube! I came back an hour later to send it as a personal message it was still uploading! Usually that takes 3 minutes! So, I deleted the video and tried again. An 2 hours later it still was uploading! So I deleted it tried for a third time and it finally went. It was now 11:30 pm and I was putting the video up! But it got there and I was happy.

Also around 8ish I burned the video to a DVD using iDVD. In iDVD you can choose from a variety of menus and music and effects, I chose everything and burned the DVD. Then my family and I watched it! They all loved it and thought it was one of there favorites. Every time I have a video like this I have a survey for them to fill out with questions like

Character that looked most like the original, Character that looked least like the original, Favorite Set, Favorite effect, One part that could be improved, etc. Then I read them all and keep them in my Stop-Motion binder. Sesame Street was officially done. All I had left to do was promotional photo shoot, which I will do sometime soon.

I hope everyone enjoyed the video and thanks for watching!

-Ryan

The Addams Family Blog will open soon!

Finishing Up!

Ryan's Sesame Street is coming to an end! In the past week I have done a lot of stuff to finish Sesame Street.

On Monday I began shooting. Big Bird is the first character to be in the theme Song, and he wasn't done yet, so I just skipped that song and went straight to Rubber Duckie. Then i shot C is for Cookie, Batty Bat, and Monster in the Mirror. (More will be about shooting the movie in the next blog post). All I had left was the Theme Song, Elmo's Song and Sing, which has Big Bird in all 3. So I had to wait.

To start off characters, I made Big Bird. In my last post it said I made him out of clay, well he has a few cracks in him. (Model Magic does this some times, I am not sure why) So I painted him and filled the cracks with paint as well. I used bright yellow for him and orange for his legs and feet. Once he was all dry i started painting pink rings around his legs. It just didn't look right, so I covered them up with the orange paint. I rolled out a thin strip off clay and wrapped it around his legs. Then I did his eyes with sharpies and colored his mouth red. Big Bird has lighter yellow feathers right above his eyes, so i used light yellow paint and painted that upper part. Then I put wires on his arms and attached them. The next day, when the clay rings on his legs were dry, I painted them pink. He looked much better. I glued him together and onto his base. He was HUGE! I I thought he even might be my tallest character. The tallest character I have is the tallest Muse from "Hercules, so I put them back to back and Big Bird is about 1cm taller! So Big Bird was done!

Then I finished Snuffy by painting him dark brown and when that dried I painted light brown streaks to look like fur. Snuffy was done!

All of the characters were done excapt for Barkley! I still had to do props. I made a Rubber Duckie from Ernie,  a sneaker and some newspaper for Oscar, a mirror for Grover and other litle things like that. Once the clay objects dry, I painted them.

More will come tomorrow!

Finishing Up Development

I haven't made a post in a long time! Well, on the 7th, school started. Of course that means I am getting up at 6:15, (school starts at 7:20) and then coming home at 2. I usually have a snack, and watch Ellen. Then I have homework, activities, dinner, etc. So, for the first week, Sesame Street got nowhere. It wasn't until the 2nd week of school until I started working on the video.

Sesame Street is coming along pretty much on schedule. I have already blogged about 10 of the 15 characters, and all of the sets. So, I wanted to finish up the characters this week. In my previous post, I said I made a bunch of characters out of clay, well those were definitely dried after the week that sat there.

The first person I worked on was Honkers. There really isn't a character named "Honkers" on the show, it's more of species. They are muppets that have a big oval nose and trumpet-like horns on top of there head. When they press there nose, the horns make a noise. So, I looked at a bunch of them and decided the color combination I wanted. I decided on a neon green, pink and yellow color scheme. I started by painting his body neon green and this nose and horns a golden yellow. Then once the body was dry, I glued on his hair. His hair was hot pink and I grabbed a big lump if string and hot glued it on his head. Then he got a haircut! After the hair was shaped the way I wanted it, I hot glued on the yellow horns. Then I did finishing touches on him such as putting his arms on with wires, gluing on his eyes and putting pupils on, and gluing him to a base. Honkers was done!
Development




Ernie with a few Honkers


A few days later I started wok on Prairie Dawn. Prairie Dawn is probably one of the most human-like characters on Sesame Street. She is king of like a little girl, she always wears a dress, has short blond hair and plays the piano.



Prairie Dawn

 I started by painting her head, legs and arms pink. As that was drying, I cut out a purple dress for her. After she was dry, I glued the dress on her body. Then I painted 2 white circles on her face for her eyes. When they dried, I drew on her pupils and eyelashes. Then I started her hair. I cut yellow string glue used elmer's glue and painted a layer of it on her head. I placed the yellow string on it and then painted the roots with glue. The bangs were difficult because they were so small. They are probably about 5mm wide. So, it was hard to glue them on there, but I did. Then I attached all her parts and looked at her. Something was missing. Her dress was too boring, so I put a yellow sash on it. It looked much better! Another character done!

Prairie Dawn

Then I made Herry. I used blue paint for his body and after it dried I put streaks of light blue in it. I painted his nose purple, mouth black and glued on his eyes. Then I drew on his big eyebrow with a sharpie. I attached all the parts and put him on a base! Herry was done! 13 characters done, 2 to go!

The more and more I looked at Zoe, the more I thought she was missing something. When I googled her, I realized, she needed fur on the sides of her face and necklaces and bows and clips. So painted Elmer's glue on the sides of her face and attached different shades of gold and yellow string. Then I made necklaces, bows and clips out of foam sheets and glued them on her. Zoe looked so much better and I was much happier with her.

The next character I made is Snuffy. (Mr. Snuffleupagus). I wanted to make Big Bird and Snuffy out of clay at the same time. I started making Snuffy and he was huge! i usually get 3 or 4 characters out of 1 pack of clay. Snuffy took about 3 packs out clay to make. I have never made a character of that volume. I obviously did not calculate the right amount of clay for him, because I was out. That means I couldn't make Big Bird! It took 2 days before we had a chance to go to Joann's to get another tub of clay. So that will slow down production because I have to make Big Bird and let him dry.

Snuffy

I got this shirt a few months back and I was looking at it and I saw the dog in the right hand corner. I vaguely remember him from my child hood and I really wanted to make him. I looked him up and his name is Barkley. So, that adds another character to my list! So, I now have a total of 16 characters.



My Shirt

 After I shaped Snuffy, I set him on the table to dry.

I had a few more props and minor set things to do, so I did them! I made a chandelier for the "Batty Bat" mansion set. I used glue and lots of gold glitter. I added that to the set and it fit in perfectly. I also made a piano that Count Von Count will play. It is purple with orange designs on it.

Count Von Count's Unfinished Piano

That is it for now!

Whats Left? Big Bird, Barkley, Finishing Snuffy, Props, Shooting the movie!

Last Days of Summer

In the past few days, I have done a lot of work because school starts on the 7th. Once school starts, production slows down on the videos. I have school from 7:00am - 2:00pm. Sometimes I stay after til 3, and sometimes I come home right away. Then I have homework, studying, etc. So I just don't have all day long to do videos. So I decided to get as much done as possible before school started!

Characters:

Count Von Count was the first character I began to make. I made him out of white clay before I left for vacation on August 19th. I started by painting his head and hands purple. These parts will be the only areas without clothing. I cut out black fabric for his shirt and cape and hot glued it on. Then I painted his legs and shoes black to look like he is wearing black pants and shoes. I wrapped his arms in strips of black fabric and put wires in his arms for movement. Then I googled him and carefully drew his face on his already purple head with a pencil. Then I used white paint and a toothpick to draw on his eyes. I used a fine tip sharpie to outline his eyes and black paint for his mouth and hair. Then I cut out very tiny triangles out of plain white paper and glued them on his mouth for his fangs. I made his high collar out of stiff craft felt and attached all his body parts. I made his monogal out of silver wire and Count Von Count was done! Thats one, one count, ah ah ah.

Next was Elmo. Elmo was fairly simple and I did him quickly. Because Elmo sits on a stool and plays Elmo's Song on the piano in his segment, I had to make a sitting and standing body. The sitting body has his legs hanging down at a 90 degree angle and the standing body was like any other of the muppet's bodies. I painted both his bodies, head and arms bright red, his nose orange and left the eyes white, like the model magic. While he was drying, measured out a dixie cup to the height of the piano. I cut the cup down to size and painted the designs on it white. Elmo was dry, so I put his arms on and his nose and his eyes. I drew the pupils of his eyes with a black sharpie. Elmo was done!

I had run out of clay characters that dried over vacation. Time to make some more! That night I googled each character and sat there shaping each one out of white model magic. I made Baby Bear, Telly, Honkers, Prarie Dawn, Zoe, and Herry. Then I watched a movie and went to bed.

**** This is not ALL i do all day long. I do watch TV, go outside, hang out with friends, read, text, go places with my family and all that kind of stuff. I just don't blog about that, so it may seem that I go from one thing to the next without any break, thats not true. For example, I make Count Von Count and then went to the store with my mom for a few hours and then came back and started Elmo. I do have a life outside stop-motion. :)

The next day I was at my grandmas all day long and didn't do anything for Sesame Street. But I did work on my surpirse video for March 2011!

The 5th of September I caught up on Sesame work. While I was at my grandma's, the model magic characters dried. First thing I did was start on Baby Bear and Telly. I have over 40 bottles of paint in 40 different shades and I chose a brown shade and a jelly colored shade for these characters.

All my paints!

I painted each character there color and when that dried, I painted on the white eyes, did the pupils with sharpie and attached the legs and arms! Baby Bear and Telly were done!

Baby Bear in painting stages

The last character I did was Zoe. (pronounced Zoey). I mixed a golden paint with orange paint and painted her body. I used a pink marker to color her tiny nose and I painted her eye shadow with baby blue paint. I colored her eyes with sharpie and attached everything together, Zoe was done!

With all this focus on characters, I had to do some set work too!

Monster in the Mirror, which is Grover's song, is the same set as the set from "I Could Be Santa", one of my earliest videos.

Hidden Secrets: Where the mirror was in "I Could be Santa", is now replaced with a framed picture of Mrs. Claus, which pays tribute to her and the previous video.

I didn't make many changes to the set. I used the turquise wardrobe and kept the bed. All I changed on the bed was the headboard which now has a "G" for Grover instead of a "SC" for Santa Claus. Another set done!

I also did the Theme Song set, which is just a blue sky with buildings looking like the Sesame Street studio set. There is a street sign that says Sesame Street attached to a green lampost. The set was pretty easy and I finished it quickly.

The last set I did was "Batty Batt". The set design for this set is shown in the previous posts. I cut out strips of dark purple paper and glued them on light purple paper to look like striped wallpaper. I put a long piece of brown paper over the wallpaper to look like wooden walls along the bottom of the set. Then I cut out a large rectange on the wall and put thin strips of brown paper across it. Then I put a layer of cling wrap behind the brown strips and I printed off a scary scene to put behind the cling wrap. This was the winow. The brown strips was the window frame, the cling wrap was the glass, anf the scary night scene was the outside! The I cut out black fabric for the curtains. Then I cut out a wardrobe out of brown paper and decorated it like Halloween and glued it on the set. Finally, I printed out a portrait and frame and framed it and put in on the wall.

Hidden Secret: The portrait on the wall is of the Addams Family. I did this because this Batty Batt set will also be used in the Addams Family video in October. Just a little hint of the next video. Although, in the Addams video, the set will be in black and white.

All of the sets are done! Thats it for today!

After Vacation

We got back from California on the 28th. We went to San Diego, San Francisco, and DisneyLand. Of Course, DisneyLand inspired 2 new videos that will be out in 2011. We got up at 5:00am to get packed and go to the airport and we got home in NY at 6:00pm. We ate a lite dinner, because we ate out everyday on vacation. We were all tired and watched The Last Song. White I was watching it, I checked to make sure all my clay characters dried properly, and they did! So, while I watched the movie, I painted Cookie Monster and Grover blue. Then I watched for a little while as the paint dried. I used a hot glue gun to glue together all the parts. Cookie Monster could stand, but Grover didn't have very good balance, so I glued his feet to a base. Then I glued on Cookie Monster's eyes and used a sharpie to draw the pupils. I put wires into his arms and attached them to his body. Cookie Monster was done! Then I worked a little on Grover. I painted his nose pink and inside his mouth black. After the movie, we went to bed.

The Next Day:

I woke up and finished Grover. All I had to do was paint his eyes on, make a red line around his mouth, and glue his nose on. I used a toothpick and white paint to paint on the eyes. Once the were dry, I used a sharpie to outline them and draw the pupils. I painted the red line and hot glued his nose. 2 characters done!

The next thing I did was the Elmo's Song Set. I couldn't think of an idea for this set when I was designing in early August. In the show, he sits outside of a building, and I didn't want to make another building set, so I thought about for a while. I finally got the idea of white paper with rainbow color splatter paint. After we came back from vacation, my sister and I went outside and laid the white paper on the grass. I got Dixie cups of paint in all different colors and we used paintbrushes and just splattered the paper! The grass was multicolor when we were done, and so were my flip flops and legs! I washed my shoes and legs and waited for the paint to dry. After it was dry, we brought it in and it looked great! Another set done!

Then I started work on the "I Love Trash" set. This set is fairly simple and I got it done fast. I cut out a dumpster out of dark green paper and glued it to the side of the gray background. Then I cut out black garbage bags and glued them there too! The last things a did was cut out a rectangle out of red paper and drew bricks on it. That was a building, and I glued that on there too! Another Set done!

That was all I did that day!

On the 30th and 31st, I basically worked on the characters. I put out the clay characters Bert, Ernie and Oscar on paper towels, and got each of there paint colors needed . Then I painted each one. Ernie orange, Bert yellow, and Oscar green. I used metallic silver for Oscars trash can.

Ernie in painting stages

Oscar in painting stages

On this blog there will be lots of pictures of the making of the characters, but there will never be a picture of the finished character. You will learn all about how they are made and see un-finished pictures of them, but you will have to wait til the video is out to see them finished!

Anyways, after they all dried, I did a second coat of paint on each one. The first one I started on was Bert. I had bought fabric for him when we went shopping and I cut out the shirt and hot glued it on him. Then I painted on his eyes with a toothpick and did the pupils and outlines. I drew on his eyebrow with a sharpie and painted his mouth red. Then I painted his paints green and shoes brown. I glued him all together and put wires in his arms. The last thing I did was glue on his hair, which was a few pieces of black yarn.  Bert was done!

Then I started Oscar. I wanted him to have a textured look, so I put some white in the green paint. So the paint was a slightly lighter shade of green. I sponge painted the lighter green onto to Oscars head and arms. It looked great! So I painted on his eyes and pupils and drew his big fuzzy brown eyebrow with brown marker.
Then I glued him to his trash can. I put lines on the trash can with a sharpie to make it look more real. I painted his mouth black and his red tongue. All done with Oscar!

Last but not least, I made Ernie. The usual, painted on the eyes, painted the nose red and glued it on and painted the mouth red. The same as Bert, Ernie's hair is just black yarn. Ernie is in the bathtub for Rubber Duckie, so he isn't wearing clothes. But, for the end of the video, "Sing", he is going to have legs and wear clothes. So, for now I just painted his upper body Orange and placed him a a stand, which is the same height as the bathtub. Ernie was done for now!

That was all I did for that day!

Characters Done: Ernie, Bert, Cookie Monster, Grover, and Oscar
Sets Done: Elmo's Song, C is for Cookie, I Love Trash, Sing, Rubber Duckie

Blog Starts Today!

Hello! As I said in the intro post, this Blog will follow the making of my 10 minute Sesame Street Video. Lets Start by explaining the video a little. There are 8 songs, 8 sets, and 16 characters.

I tried to pick the best songs from Sesame Street that people will recognize and remember from there childhood. There were many songs that I wanted to include that didn't fit because of timing purposes. I wanted the video to be at max 10 minutes because of the youtube limits. So this is the final list of songs;

1. Sesame Street Theme Song
2. Rubber Duckie
3. C is for Cookie
4. I Love Trash
5. Batty Bat
6. Monster in the Mirror
7. Elmo's Song
8. Sing

The characters included are:

Lead Charcters:

• Big Bird
• Elmo
• Mr. Snuffleupagus
• Grover
• Count Von Count
• Oscar the Grouch
• Cookie Monster
• Ernie

Minor Characters:

• Zoe
• Telly
• Prarie Dawn
• Baby Bear
• Herry
• Honker
• Bert

And I designed 8 sets for each of the songs. Some of them are almost exaclty like the the Sesame Street Sketch, and some are not.

1. Theme Song - A City Street (looking like Sesame Street)
2. Rubber Duckie- Bathtub in a Bathroom
3. C is for Cookie- Black with a giant orange 'C"
4. I Love Trash - Back alley of a brick building, with a dumpster and trash bags
5. Batty Batt- Haunted Mansion Walls and spooky house items
6. Monster in the Mirror- Pink Bedroom, with a window, a wardrobe, a bed and a mirror
7. Elmo's Song- White wall and floor, splatter painted with colors
8. Sing- Blue Sky with street.

Starting the Video:

        First, I figured out what songs I would do and what characters to include. After I listed the songs and characters I designed the sets on little sheets of paper.

 The design for the Batty Bat Set.

 I went shopping for the supplies for Sesame Street the day after I finished Hercules. My family and I were leaving for California from August 19-28th. I knew that once we came back, we would be very busy catching up with our lives and not have time to go to Joann Craft Store and buy supplies.  So we went before vacation and I got all the supplies. The total for all supplies was around $65. We came back home and I organized it all. My mom allows me to use the dining room for my studio and have a whole system of where to put stuff. I put all the posterboard under the tables and furniture, under it's signs. I put little signs that say "Rubber Duckie" and uner the sign lays all the papers and supplies needed for that portion of the video.

Picture of the paper under the furniture labeled "Theme Song" and Rubber Duckie"

I got the supplies on the 17th. So, in those 2 days, I did lots of workl!  Before we left I made the Set for "Sing", which is just 2 blue pieces of paper, as the sky with white clouds and a black floor. I painted yellow dashes in the middle of the black floor to make it look like a street. I also used a orange piece of posterboard and cut out a giant C. Thats 2 sets done!

The opening of the video will have a street sign saying "Ryan's Sesame Street". So I made that sign out of green and yellow paper and a wooden dowel. I carefully spaced out each letter of Sesame Street in pencil and then painted it in white. A street sign has 2 sides, so I had to do it twice. Then I painted the wooden dowel gray and put black circles on it. That was done!

Ryan's Sesame Street Sing

 The last two things I did before vacation was the Rubber Duckie Set, which was very simple and the characters.

Ernie's Rubber Duckie Set.

And finally, the last thing I did was make 7 characters out of white Crayola Model Magic.

All of my characters start out like this. Arms are not attached, heads not attached, feet not attached, etc. They take about 1-2 days to dry completely, so I made them before vaction. I made most of the characters who have there own song. I googled each one and sat in front of me was a lump of white model magic. I took me about an hour to get all 7 characters shaped how I wanted them. Then I carefully placed each one on the paper.

Top from left: Ernie, Oscar, Count Von Count, Elmo
Bottom from Left: Bert, Cookie Monster, Grover

Then I packed my bags and we left! While we were in California, the characters dried. I will continue after vacation tomorrow!

Welcome to My Blog!

Hello Everyone! Many of you know me or have seen my stop-motion videos on Youtube. (http://www.youtube.com/cheerio753) I have gotten a bunch of questions over this past year about how I make a character, or how I made this or that. So I decided to start a blog about it. Every couple of days I will post a update on where I am and what I am doing. The blog will include pictures and videos of the making of a stop-motion video. I really wanted people to see the work and effort put into these videos in a new way. This Blog will open September 1, 2010 and will go through the Making of Sesame Street Spectacular. Then once the video is finished, it will be posted here as well as youtube. Then I will start a new blog on the next video (The Addams Family). Can't wait for this to open and hope you enjoy reading it! See ya September 1st!