Tim Allen is a treasure to the stop motion community. Not only has he worked on numerous award winning and classic stop motion films, but he also openly contributes and teaches at workshops around the world to spread the art form we all know and love, stop motion animation.
Edu Puertas also is a gem of a contributor to the world of stop motion with his many tutorial videos and fun entertaining way of teaching everything from arduino controllers to animation. So the pair of these two fellows coming together to shoot a special video is something of a unique treat. Edu had Tim on his YouTube channel explaining the fine points, literally, of using a steel spike called a Dob Stick in the use of subtle animation. This is a commonly used device in stop motion feature films and sometimes television. The simplicity of such a tool is mind boggling if you’ve never seen one used. You will literally bang your head against a wall and say “why did I think of that”… Don’t worry we’ve all known a number of pro-animators who have never even seen such a device.
So here you go my friends, Tim Allen breaking down the subtle and fine uses of animating with a spike made of steel. Checkout the video below.