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Stina Boberg

Swedish animator working in Stockholm.

Sunday 23 February 2014

The faces of an animator

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I was photographing reference for some blendshapes, and yeah... this was made. :D

Wednesday 12 February 2014

Muku Shuttr Review

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Lately, I've been growing more and more tired of the tedious process of recording reference for animations. My dream would be to have a room with a two-camera setup that would record simultaneously, and have it uploaded and edited to my preferences by the time I'm back at the computer, but oh well...

I have found one product that made my life quite a bit easier though. As I haven't seen any reviews for this product from an animator point of view yet, I thought I'd write it myself.

The product I decided to buy was a remote shutter for iOS and Android by the name of Muku Shuttr.


Muku Shuttr had a pretty successful Kickstarter a while back, and can now be bought through Amazon and Trycelery.

It's very small, as you can see above I attached it to my keychain for easy access. On the left side is a switch for OS (iOS or Android), and on the left is the power switch. There's only one button on it, I think it's pretty obvious what it's for.

Setting it up is easy, providing you have the right device. Any Apple products with iOS 5.0+ and the newer products of the Samsung Galaxy line won't require any third-party software. Just activate the shutter, connect to it through bluetooth, and you're good to go. There's a couple more devices it works on, including a few Nexus ones, but you would need to install a camera app.

I tried using it with my Samsung Galaxy S4, and iPad 3. A downside to Muku Shuttr is that since it only has one physical button, it will favor taking a photograph over a video if both buttons are available in the camera app. This is not a problem on the iPad, since you switch between photography and video recording mode in the sidebar. However on Android it turned into a bit of headache, as the inherent camera app has the two buttons side by side, and Muku Shuttr rarely works with third-party apps (there's a list on their webpage of what apps it is compatible with)

After a bit of looking around, I found that there is a camcorder installed per default on Android, it just doesn't have a shortcut. A quick look through Google Play gave me an app that gave me easy access to it. Problem solved!


Of course I had to take a photo of Muku Shuttr, using Muku Shuttr. :)

I haven't really had time to try this thing out for real yet, but so far I'm very happy with it. The battery is supposed to last 2 years if you always turn it off after using, I just hope that it will survive for that long in my bag with my keys...

Friday 10 January 2014

Portrait

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Just painted this portrait the other day and thought I'd post it here to liven this blog up a bit. Happy new year by the way!


Monday 19 August 2013

This thing called exercise...

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I'm doing a very non-typically animator thing on September 7th. I'm running a swedish mile (10km)!

I have the speed of a turtle though, and probably won't actually be running the whole way. Hell, I'm impressed if I run half the way in one go.

You should all try running. It's good to see the world and get some exercise every now and then. I usually run near water and forests during sunsets. SO BEAUTIFUL. Because of that I'm going to post a few pictures that I've taken while out running. Just to get YOU to go out and run.

Visby, where I studied for three years.
Another view from Visby.
Nowadays I live in Stockholm. This is the path I usually take.
Every now and then I will go on the other side and see these houses instead!

Tuesday 13 August 2013

Plotagon is out!

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Hey!

Hey hey! This is exciting!

The app I've been working on since March was released around a week ago. So now people around the world can make animated movies, on their own, just by writing some words.

Mind you, it's not a final release by far, it's just a public beta. But it's available, and you can buy it and play around with it, and it's awesome!

We have already had a number of movies made since release, check it out: https://plotagon.com/movies

Unfortunately we still lack a lot of features, for example sharing videos to other platforms, so I can't add any videos to this blog post... you'll just have to go there and see for yourself!

I've learned a lot from working on this, for example how to try and produce feature film animation in a game production pipeline. I'm still working on learning that though. I'll write about it - someday.

(check out the app!!)