STAR WARS……Ok, we just need a moment to collect ourselves here at Dragonframe HQ. Like so many people in the animation and film industry of a certain age, the creators of Dragonframe were greatly inspired by the early Star Wars films. Even more inspiration came from those amazing ILM “Making of” documentaries on television in the 1980’s, sharing all of the technical old-school (now) processes used to create the effects and animation in those films. They often highlighted stop-motion as big part of that magic. As Darth Vader once said “The circle is now complete”. We are so proud to see the great Phil Tippett and his talented team using our tools as part of their process in recreating this iconic Holochess set piece.

Tom Gibbons and Chuck Duke animated the two shots using Dragonframe and two Canon 5D Mll. “… we shot both angles ‘continuous’ meaning both cameras have ALL the action in case they wanted to slip the edit from one angle to the other at any point. We used the Line Up Layer feature in Dragonframe to make sure we had the perspective correct on the camera angles to match the live action. The Line Up Layer allowed us to make a best guess at what was going to look right in the movie. Dragonframe (other than being just AWESOME) really helped when part way through the shot, Hunk’s legs/pelvis came loose and we had to remove the puppet and do a major surgery and then get him back into the scene.” – Tom Gibbons

Here is a more extensive video covering the process: Behind-the-Scenes: Making the Stop-Motion Puppets for Star Wars: The Force Awakens!