This stop animation stuff is fun. I’ve finished two scenes of my next attempt and fiddled around with it in Flash a bit. I’m trying to get the image quality as high as possible, and the maximum resolution for a Flash frame is 2880 pixels. The unfortunate side effect that I’ve come across is that when I try to export it as an .swf movie file, my computer runs out of memory. Now, I have 1GB of RAM, so were not talking a piddly amount of memory here. I think if my processor were faster it would export just fine. So it looks like I’m going to have to knock down the resolution a bit more. I’ll probably stick it somewhere around 1000 pixels wide.
I’m also searching for free generic stock music for films, which is much harder. Other difficulties that I’ve run across would require me to shell out money for a new camera and tripod, and since I’m just doing this for shits and giggles, that ain’t gonna happen. Sometimes I bump the camera or the set pieces and have to realign them, and other times the camera won’t focus on what I need it to focus on, despite using the spot focus function. I think this is a side-effect of having it in macro mode. This next adventure with Joe Bob is only slightly more complex than the first screen test. There will be music hopefully, but no intertitles or dialogue. I’ll save that for when I’m good. I’d really like a huge, sturdy and level table to do all this on, but my kitchen table will do.