The Zihua is a professional, interactive and heuristic online learning and information platform, which is dedicated to providing creative persons in film and television, photography, art, design and music field with high-quality, novel, unique and easy-to-practice courses, online information on distinctive views, and an active interactive community. To encourage people to independently study and realize creative dreams not following “one pattern”, the Zihua published the first stop-motion animation short film “distinguish from a set pattern and do yourself!” based on the 3D printing technology in the world on the online press conference on 17, Oct.
This short film is prepared by Zihua, Goodstein, Pixmondo and IDEARP team. This film describes the protagonist “Kuangge” character, which is printed by a flagship desktop 3D printer UP Plus 2 from the Tiertime. This protagonist does not satisfy its monotonous life, and continuously finds its interests, so it completes continuous disintegration. This work combines the cutting-edge 3D printing technology with the traditional stop-motion animation, personized shape and interesting plots, so all audiences brighten up.
The 3D printing part of this short film is completed by IDEARP. Lai Yuan is a founder of this creative organization. Lai Yuan said, “I am confident of quality and efficiency of the UP printer, so I decide to use it to complete 3D printing of this project. ”
Sheng Zejian, a designer of the “Kuangge” role from Zihua, said, “This printer can perfectly embody my whole artistic design concept. We design by using a low-precision printing due to limited time, but the printing hierarchy and texture consequently bring a sense of texture and style for the whole video. ”
Lai Yuan selects UP Plus 2 of the Tiertime to print the “Kuangge” character. Eleven 3D printers have been used to print 688 “Kuangge” characters of different shapes and body actions in the short film for 240 hours in 12 days. The challenge for quantity and time is faced in making. The making process of the whole project is linear and all steps are connected. The cycle for printing 3D model is shortened due to some unexpected difficulties. Excellent performance of UP Plus 2 improves work efficiency of the making team much in this case. “UP Plus 2 features in quicker speed, higher stability and longer operation duration and keeps 95% success rate”, Lai Yuan said, “If UP Plus 2 is set correctly, it can keep the same making effect all the time.”
Printing the stop-motion animation short film “Distinguish from a set pattern and do yourself!” with 3D technology is an unprecedented project. Lai Yuan said that the Tiertime has provided many materials. 5 printers of the 11 3D are used in making, are free new printers introduced from the Tiertime. The half of used 42 trays of about 30kg ABS materials are presented by the Tiertime.
The stop-motion animation is a traditional animation workmanship with over 100-year history. Compared to the traditional making materials such as clay, cloth or metal, Lai Yuan said that the 3D printing technology and materials have more strength. The stop-motion animation requires that all frames are different. To keep consistent actions, all frames should be transformed consistently, so it is difficult for the stop-motion animation based on the clay and cloth to realize manual accurate and fine-tuning. The 3D printers can output actions set on the PC frame by frame and print them and finally optimize effect of the continuous stop-motion animation.
