In the spring of 2022 I began work on a stop motion-animated film entitled Winston Picketer and The Cursed Trove. The idea was to make a sort of “Indiana Jones-esque” film, but as the script progressed, I think it became very much it’s own thing. The adventure/comedy film follows the (mis)adventures of Winston Picketer, the son of the late adventurer John Picketer. Winston is convinced by the eccentric Dr. Jeremy to come on a wild adventure for a trove of gold, but soon discovers this quest was not quite what he had thought it was. This film is my biggest animation project to date, with a nearly 40 page script, and its own soundtrack (written by @JoeyH) .
The animation itself is probably roughly three-quarters finished, though only a few bits of post-production have been done. I’m hoping to have the film released before the end of 2022. A while back I released a teaser for it:
Just yesterday, I made the poster for the film (the text on the left is a quote from the great G.K. Chesterton):
@Buffalo_Brickfilms This is quite nice! Thank you for sharing your work and process. It’s great to see people doing stop motion these days. The trailer feels interesting so kudos to you and Joey for all the hard work!
An update:
A good while back I put together an animatic for a battle scene (and bit of a wild battle scene at that). Well, just today I finished the animation for that very scene, which was probably the most difficult and involved scene, animation-wise. The animatic included a sequence in which Winston jumps atop a barrel and proceeds to run about on it, presumably wreaking havoc on his surroundings. I had thought there would be a lot of tedious masking or compositing for this sequence, but as it turned out, I was able to do almost everything having to do with the actual barrel running in camera. For shots from the front, the barrel was on a pole which it could spin on, and the camera was positioned so that the pole was not visible. Winston was positioned behind the barrel on a block of clay. Animating him through a run cycle, I turned the barrel a bit for each frame:
For shots from the side, the setup was much less elaborate: I just stuck as much clay as possible on the side that the camera couldn’t see, and hoped Winston and the barrel would stay balanced:
Though I was hoping to release it before the end of 2022, it may have to be in the beginning of 2023. However, progress is being continually and steadily made, and I’m very happy with the way things are going. In terms of where I am in the films, I’m animating in the last group events in the story.
And finally, I did a bit of calculation to estimate the length of the film. As the composer for the film put it it’s “basically a feature film.” It seems the film will be roughly somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes, give or take some.
If you read through all of this, I commend you for you’re persistence.
More updates to come.
God Bless!
