This school is:

Wikiversity Film School - Narrative film production

This course is:

In this course, we will create a movie using Digital Puppets and a scenery generator.

For this course, I will recommend software which is free or very low cost. If you want to do more, contact me before you buy anything.

• DAZ Studio for character animation - free
• Bryce 5.5 for scenery generation - free
• AfterEffects (not free) for compositing

History

Digital Puppets (also know as Poser figures) is a unique form of 3D animation. We will use digital puppets to create a motion pictures based on everything you have learned so far.

Prerequisites

To begin this class, you must have completed all the other courses. This is because you will need the animatic which you created in the course on Basic Filmmaking which relies on the editing course and the film scoring course.

Animation vs. Live Action

When you attend film school, you will learn all about live action filming. You will learn to work in a team and become a team player.

Therefore, for this course, you will work alone to create the entire motion picture by using digital actors on your personal computer.

The first step will be to find the digital actors you want for your motion picture. This requires the same care as casting live action actors. You need to find the characters which help tell the story you want to tell.

When you select the characters, these characters will greatly shape the meaning of the motion picture.

Also the selection of the characters for your motion picture will decide what kind of voices you need for the characters.

As an example, look at the list of possible characters for this movie. See how each of the options gives a completely new feeling to the motion picture.

For background information on Digital Puppets, download some of the old copies of this magazine.

The most current issue

Download it here!

• Download the PDF files (1.7 megs) Digital Puppet magazine Number 9 - Winter 2006.pdf

• Download the PDF files (.8 megs) Digital Puppet magazine Number 8 - Winter 2005.pdf

• Download the PDF files (.7 megs) Digital Puppet magazine Number 7 - Summer 2004.pdf