Jun 12, 2012

Carlo Vogel explains how to bring fish back to life

Carlo Vogele, who has brought Ikea light fixtures, socks and pants to life, has ventured into fish animation. That's the trailer for his new short film "Una furtiva Lagrima," which won an award at Annecy last week.

Carlo recently animated for Pixar's "Brave," but the lo-fi stop-motion process used in his personal work is decidedly demanding. When he buys a sea bass at the fish market, he puts it in the freezer until he's ready to animate it overnight (Stop Motion 101: If you want steady lighting, sunlight is not your friend ;-D). A few hours before the shoot, take the stinkin' bastards out while you set up the lights and camera. The fish will thaw from stone hard to slightly hard in 3 hours, and after a while the head, fins, and mouth will be hard enough to hold a pose.

So I animated the fish as fast as I could until it was fully thawed and the jaws were slack. Later, if the threads were too visible, I could easily mask them out of the frame.

Gross trivia: After a week, for some reason, the fish's guts begin to swell, and the pressure almost pushes its tongue out of its mouth. It was so easy to forget that what I was moving was a slowly decomposing corpse. The orange pus oozing out from under the gill cover during the shoot was a reminder of this.