Animation · Craft
Six months in the rigs: notes from a stop-motion short
What we learned shipping Dragon's Call — frame counts, schedules, and the puppets that survived the shoot.
01 · What we shipped
Dragon's Call was 84 shots, 23 minutes of animation, 19 puppets, six months on the rigs, two months in post. We are still proud of it. We are also still recovering.
02 · The puppet rebuild
Three puppets had to be rebuilt mid-shoot. The armatures fatigued faster than expected at the wrist joint — a known weakness on the model we used. We now spec backup armatures for every primary puppet on day one, not month four.
03 · The schedule
10 frames a day per animator was our planning target. Some animators hit it. None exceeded it. That number is the truth, no matter what the rep at the manufacturer tells you about their new high-speed servo.
"Stop motion is slow. Slow is not the problem."
— Mira Okafor, Stop-motion Director
04 · What survived
The puppets that survived the shoot did so because we limited the number of takes per setup. Three. Always three. Two is not enough, four wears the rig.
05 · Closing
Stop motion is slow. The problem is pretending it isn't. Schedule for the truth and the work gets better, every time.
