© 2011 Kenneth Onulak

Here is my stop motion demo reel.
Below you can find a shot breakdown for my Demo Reel.

Enjoy!

Demo Reel Breakdown

© 2010 Kenneth Onulak

This is my Junior Degree Project that I worked over the Spring semester at RISD. I got the original concept of creating a cutout animation for art made with a single sheet of paper and the stratastencil technique. 

I wanted the animation to have a dream like quality exploring the reality and space in which the dream exists and felt that the cutout technique fit this idea. Color was another consideration that I built into the design of the animation to help enhance the dreamlike qualities of the film. From here the idea grew and as I did studies involving birds, umbrellas, water, trees, and other things I was able to refine my idea and break it down to find the core essentials of the film. 

Once I had my subject matter down and I was able to start animating. Most of the animation is hand drawn (the tree was drawn by hand then animated in Adobe After Effects). Once I had the animation drawn, I filled it all in with black marker, shot it, and brought it into Adobe After Effects and ran an auto trace on it to create that cutout effect.

To create the final look of the film, I started with a basic mockup frame that I used to make rough style frames and an animatic with. Later applying the animation over the animatic to create a fine cut, while using it to do render tests and get a feel of how the workflow was going to work out. From there I made the final frame and created 7 colored backings for it, which I swapped out while hanging the frame in different places on the wall. I lit the frame to give it the shadows in the image and used these pictures later, compositing them together so that they were all hanging on the wall at the same time. 

After that it was matter of compositing in all the animation, adding a drop shadow to the paper to make it flow better with the look and feel of the frame, and lots of rendering. 

For the sound I partnered with a student from the Berklee School of Music in Boston named John Nolan. I explained to him what I was looking for and through different sound tests and experiments he was able to narrow down specific instruments to use. With every edit to the sound I would provide some notes, feedback and things I thought would help add to the sound as well as strengthen the animation. John took those ideas and applied them with other elements to create a really beautiful final soundtrack. 

All of this came together over a 12 week period to create this final film. Feel free to comment and enjoy!

© 2011 Kenneth Onulak

This is my final project for Intermediate Stop Motion Animation. A character slowly starts to lose himself until assertively taking control and setting himself free.

For the Character himself, he was originally sculpted out of plasticine clay. From the clay sculpt I made a plaster mold. After the mold was dry, I cast the character in dragon skin. The head was later made out of clay.

Shot using Dragon Stop Motion software and a Canon 7D.

Enjoy!

www.kennethonulak.com

Enjoy!

© 2010 Kenneth Onulak

This is my Stop Motion Animation Final. For this animation I used the idea of a shooting star falling to earth and making a wish upon it.

The main challenge for this animation was making the shooting star character ‘glow’ of be illuminated in the animation. After considering multiple possibilities I decided to use reflective glass beads used for road safety to achieve the illuminated effect.

While working on constructing the characters, I worked on the set and its assembly. To make the forest, I took tree branches that had been trimmed and used a modular system to attach them to the ground plane in order to move them around and adjust them for every shot.

Once the character and set were ready to go, I did some lighting tests to see how the shooting star character illuminated and how the set was working in camera. This also allowed me to play with shot choices and camera angles. After the lighting situation was figured out, I was able to begin animating. I shot all the animation using Dragon Stop Motion.

Once i was done shooting the animation, I brought the files into Adobe After Effects, sequenced them, and composited all the different takes and scenes together into one. After some other small edits, I rendered all the animation out and then added sound to it to create the final animation.

Feel free to comment and Enjoy!

© 2010 Kenneth Onulak

For this assignment I had to create I character out of clay from either the waist or knees up to do lip sync with. We had the option of either making replacemnet mouths or sculpting the mouth as we animated. I went with the sculpting option.

After designing my character, something I wanted him to do was be able to bend in a vertical motion. So I designed the armature to be able to support the character while keeping it light weight and maintaing its flexibility by making every white stripe out of ultra light sculpy. Then filling in the gaps with plasticine to allow him to bend. He is atached to a piece of pink foam that is attached to a piece of plywood to help keep him stable and to attach him to the table when animating.

I recorded the audio for the lip sync, then brought it into Dragon Stop Motion once I was done editing it, and added any notes, what the character was saying, and mouth shapes when and where they happened as reference for animating.

Once I was finished shooting everything, I composited all the images and sound together in After Effects.

Enjoy!

© 2010 Kenneth Onulak

This was my first walk cycle in stop motion with a fully fabricated puppet. It is a creature I designed, in which I used tie downs to secure the puppet to the table.

I made the basic wire frame armature using brass tubing to create bones and eliminate undesired wire movements. I then covered that in foam which I trimmed to form the shape and depth of my character. From there I sewed the felt directly onto and around my character to finish him off. It was a good learning expereince for puppet construction and using tie downs to secure and stables the puppet. 

I used Dragon Stop Motion software to shoot the animation.

Enjoy!

© 2010 Kenneth Onulak

This was my fourth walk cycle in stop motion. It is a person who needs the restroom, in which I pinned the feet down to cork board to provide support to the armature. 

Unlike my other walk cycles, for this one I had to use a different armature (which I hadn’t made) to animate with. The reason being, I worked my armature so much that it ended up breaking and the feet came off so my character could no longer walk. This allowed me to experience the importance of making a good armature that is easy to work with (which this one was not) and how that changes the animation dramatically. On a positive note, this armature lent itself somewhat to the animation which was nice.

I used Dragon Stop Motion software to shoot the animation.

Enjoy!

© 2010 Kenneth Onulak

This was my fourth walk cycle in stop motion. It is a sneak, in which I pinned the feet down to cork board to provide support to the armature. 

I used Dragon Stop Motion software to shoot the animation.

Enjoy!