Making the
stop motion version of The World God Only Knows opening is no easy task, but ever since I saw the first episode, I was touched. It's such a great episode and the rest of the show were great too! So I really wanted to do something for it.
The first task was making a replica of the first picture of this post. Getting all of the figma I had wasn't really enough. I tried not to put the same character variation in this picture, but Saber was different enough to be placed twice :P There were even a few figma I haven't even opened yet and opened for the first time. A total of 23 figma were used in this picture. The figma's weren't enough though, so I used a couple of Revoltech Fraulein from Queen's Blade to fill in the empty spots.
This is the print-out I used to put the figmas and Revoltech in the right poses. I had to put the sticky notes to make sure I remember which figure goes in which position ^^;
So then the next part was deciding who would be Elsie. The first choice was a figma with a broom. So that would be Reimu or Marisa, and I have neither. I was going to get a Reimu from Mandarake, but was sold out when I got the order in. So who? Who can I use for Elsie?? And then I realized I have a Yoko Revoltech Fraulein... But why Yoko?
Well, let
Yakuri's drawing show you why! And no, I didn't force her to draw this against her will....... Umm... Yeah, I did request this drawing with Elsie and Yoko to show their similarities, but really, I didn't force it on her ^^;; Ok, maybe a little... But anyway, the result looks great! Elsie looks uber cute! And Yoko got her big oppai XD Hehe and Yaku got them pointing at their skull hair accessories! Not only that, but they both have ponytails and each have pink thigh highs. Thank you very much Yaku!
Unfortunately Yoko doesn't have a broom... But she's got big guns! Umm... I mean, a big rifle. Y'know, her big rifle that she uses? Ah never mind, you see it in the picture anyway.
One of the hardest thing to do for me with stop motion would be the spinning part... Thankfully the newly bought Lightning Base I got is able to rotate Yoko in place for the camera!
Speaking of the Lightning Base, I used it as the central piece of the multiple figma picture. The original picture was similar to this, so I bought one. Plus I like blue!
As for Ayumi, Mio, Kanon and Shiori, I used these 4... Haruhi is Ayumi, Kagami is Mio, Cute is Kanon and uhh... Mio is Shiori. Yeah, well, the Mio figma doesn't have twin tails to be the actual Mio, ok? I had to use Cute because she is actually designed by Watanabe Akio, who is also the designer for The World God Only Knows.
Miku is mami'd... Mostly just because I need her hand for the 4 girls' hands. The other ones were Ritsu, waitress Mikuru and Sun Seto.
The next part was to do a rotation of the PSP... This was a challenge because I've put the original KamiNomi opening in the PSP for a reference, especially to see how the PSP rotates in the opening. So I took a few angles of the PSP and compiled it in Photoshop and hopefully I can cheat the rotation and spinning of the original PFP ^^; The end product didn't look too bad, I thought.
I've picked Kyon to replace Keima because... well, he's one of the only male figma I have. He also has similar hairstyles and at least he's wearing a uniform. Oh and this scene I added the Revoltech and figma logo as well. If you've seen the original, this part would say three-dimension and two-dimension in the street signs. I wanted to have that kind of similarities on mine. But for some reason I couldn't center the logos properly ^^;
When I redo this video, I'll replace Kyon with someone else ;)
Other backgrounds in the video includes this really nice front yard of a house in my neighbourhood. I wouldn't have noticed this house if I wasn't looking around to find backgrounds for this project.
This is a park near my house. Not all the trees have their leaves yet since it's still early March and still pretty cold outside.
This is one of my favourite anime/manga stores in Vancouver, SakuraMedia. There was that one part in the opening where a manga/book store was a background, so I asked the manager (whom I knew quite well) if I can take a picture. It's a very generic shot, but I just wanted the bookshelves, so he lets me ^^
Here are some stats for the record:
- About 24 hours of photo editing, if I did it all without stopping, distractions, sleep, work...
- About 2-3 hours of video editing... Easier than I thought.
- 247 individual frames
- The first 35 seconds were from the original opening
- The title at the end is from Windows Live Movie Maker
- Total of 29 figmas, 3 Fraulein Revoltechs, 1 Bandai Lightning Base and 1 PSP were used
And yes, I did mention that I will redo this with different variations. Hopefully an actual stop motion in the beginning instead of using the original clip and improved animation for some of them. Below are the original video and my video if you'd like to see a comparison. Thank you for reading/watching/viewing my 200th & 201st post! A special thank you to Yaku for that Elsie & Yoko art!
Oh, and I apologize for the cryptic 200th post ^^; I was posting the lyrics to the full version of the opening song. The bold text was something I felt when I was making this project.
