Stop Motion with old Camcorder or a decent digi-cam?

[XDelusion]

I was trying thinking the other day about how utterly cool Toy Commander was on the Sega Dreamcast. Which reminded me of playing Micro Machines on my Amiga, and how utterly cool that was.
Naturally the next thought was DOOM. And from there the idea of developing a side project called Toy Fighter. Toy Fighter will be all toy themed in HUGE rooms, and will prolly have a version for vanilla DOOM II, and a re-mixed version for DOOM Legacy.
What I would like to do before I do ANYTHING is build up all the sprites (enemies, players, items, etc) first. To do that I would like to take actual pictures of REAL toys if possible. Such as some lego contructions, Little Army Men, Dolls, Dominoes, etc.
To do this I would assume I'd need a blue screen, and a good digi-cam? Does anyone have experience with this? Like what kind of lighting you need, where to place the lights, how to make blue screen, etc.

[mrtristan]

You definitely need an bad ass Barbie doll in the mix. Give her a bazooka, or something.

[Rookie64]

Look up any of these books on Amazon.com, Half.com, Ebay or other places you buy books from.

Also try your local library to save money.

Everything you need to know about it is pretty much covered here:



Stop-Motion Armature Machining: A Construction Manual
by Tom Brierton

Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation (Focal Press Visual Effects and Animation)
by Susannah Shaw

Animation in the Home Digital Studio: Creation to Distribution (Focal Press Visual Effects and Animation)
by Steven Subotnick

Stop-Motion Puppet Sculpting: A Manual of Foam Injection, Build-Up and Finishing Techniques
by Tom Brierton

The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles, and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion, and Internet Animators
by Richard Williams

Creating 3d Animation
by Peter Lord

Timing for Animation
by Harold Whitaker, John Halas

The Animation Book : A Complete Guide to Animated Filmmaking--From Flip-Books to Sound Cartoons to 3-D Animation
by KIT LAYBOURNE, JOHN CANEMAKER

The Complete Animation Course: The Principles, Practice, and Techniques of Successful Animation
by Chris Patmore

Model, Rig, Animate! with 3ds max 6
by Michele Bousquet

Creating the Art of the Game
by Matthew Omernick


Ultimate Game Design: Building Game Worlds
by Tom Meigs

The Indie Game Development Survival Guide (Game Development Series)
by David Michael

Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering
by David Freeman, Will Wright

Digital Texturing & Painting
by Owen Demers

Digital Lighting & Rendering
by Jeremy Birn

Digital Cinematography & Directing
by Dan Ablan

Stop Staring: Facial Modeling and Animation Done Right
by Jason Osipa

Essential CG Lighting Techniques
by Darren Brooker

Digital Creativity: Techniques for Digital Media and the Internet
by Bruce Wands

THE GRAPHIC DESIGNER'S DIGITAL TOOLKIT
by Alan Wood

[yoda313]

Hello,

bad ass Barbie doll in the mix. Give her a bazooka

Oh boy theres an image! Down bazooka - down boy!

Kevin

[XDelusion]

Cool thankx, I'm having my local library try to get:

The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles, and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion, and Internet Animators
by Richard Williams. Also I got some good starting points in the newdoom forums.

As for Barbie, ya she'll definatly be making an appearence.

If I get good at this, I may have to start scanning my Starwars toys too, for my Starwars Legacy project, though I've prolly no need for that since Jedi Knight and Knights Of The Old Republic have plenty of textures and models to steal in themselves.