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Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine

howacarworks.com

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Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine

#21

Post by AlexMuir »

Spacemolte wrote: post #7

Wow, that was really awesome, great work! A small piece of critique, the last part of the video was really garbled/messy? and i kept trying to focus on the car parts, but was unable to due to it jumping around etc. So that part messed a bit with my eyes.

Sorry. The last part is too strong. I take full blame for it - I made it myself on Friday night because I wanted to get this out before it burned up more of my time and limited budget. I couldn't face another week of delays while the end was put together so I just bunged a few videohive templates together and went for it. I will redo it on Vimeo because I can replace the video there, but sadly it's now permanent on Youtube and Facebook I think.

(This is one reason why I'm running Youtube through my own site - I can upload a new version and anyone hitting this link in the future hopefully won't be forced into a seizure.)

Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine

#22

Post by Stratoscope »

AlexMuir wrote: post #5
Stratoscope wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really nice work! How did you do the shots where the cassette tape and the engine parts are moving around in the air?

String. Coat hangers. Bits of wire. Sticks as fishing rods. We tried various ways and in the end I mainly used some conductive cotton thread that I bought from Adafruit ages ago. It was strong enough to take a lot of weight, but nice and thin too. For the heavy stuff I just had to hold it and then photoshop my legs and arms out.

That is really great - I never would have guessed how you did it.

> photoshop my legs and arms out

This reminds me of the first time I saw Forrest Gump. For some reason I didn't know who Gary Sinise was, and all through the movie I thought the actor playing Lt. Dan actually was a double amputee.

And in the flashback scene that showed him walking, I marveled at how they were able to fit him with artificial legs that let him walk so naturally!

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-10/entertainment/ca-1404...

Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine

#23

Post by [deleted] »

AlexMuir wrote: post #5
Stratoscope wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really nice work! How did you do the shots where the cassette tape and the engine parts are moving around in the air?

String. Coat hangers. Bits of wire. Sticks as fishing rods. We tried various ways and in the end I mainly used some conductive cotton thread that I bought from Adafruit ages ago. It was strong enough to take a lot of weight, but nice and thin too. For the heavy stuff I just had to hold it and then photoshop my legs and arms out.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine

#24

Post by rl3 »

AlexMuir wrote: post #15
jacquesm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beautiful! Are you planning on rebuilding it? Another shoot? Is there a reason you don't mark the parts original location or is that simply because you intend to replace them?

The honest truth: This whole car is headed for the scrapyard at the end because it's not worth the extra time ($$$ per hour) while we film to mark parts, directions, alignments etc. I mark things when there's time. We're also modeling the whole thing in 3D and I'm sure the guys doing that will be mixing the bolts and fixings up. I'm kind of interested in how well it runs after this reckless teardown and rebuild.

>We're also modeling the whole thing in 3D ...

Can you elaborate on the process for this? I'm curious what software you're using, how many modelers you have, and if you're using 3D scanning equipment.

Modeling everything by hand has to be unimaginably laborious.

Incredible work by the way, you've already sold me as a customer. :)

Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine

#25

Post by jacquesm »

AlexMuir wrote: post #15
jacquesm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beautiful! Are you planning on rebuilding it? Another shoot? Is there a reason you don't mark the parts original location or is that simply because you intend to replace them?

The honest truth: This whole car is headed for the scrapyard at the end because it's not worth the extra time ($$$ per hour) while we film to mark parts, directions, alignments etc. I mark things when there's time. We're also modeling the whole thing in 3D and I'm sure the guys doing that will be mixing the bolts and fixings up. I'm kind of interested in how well it runs after this reckless teardown and rebuild.

Ah, there is a commercial angle to this. Ok, that explains it. I've done a couple of rebuilds and marking parts is something I do religiously otherwise the rebuild won't live long.

Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine

#26

Post by AlexMuir »

Dowwie wrote: post #12

This is beautiful. Love the synthwave soundtrack :) Where is the Reddit post of this? You're going to front page, for sure.

Feel free to submit it to /r/cars and reap the karma :) (Edit: Maybe wait a little! I'm not sure I can handle the front page of reddit too.)

Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine

#28

Post by AlexMuir »

radiorental wrote: post #27

Inspired by this viral video from a few years back perhaps? https://youtu.be/daVDrGsaDME

Absolutely :) There's a great porsche one too, and the most crazy of all is this one where they literally used an angle-grinder to erase a bike engine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CqeOXqtNxk

I can only imagine the amount of dust that created.

Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine

#29

Post by AlexMuir »

laurencei wrote: post #19

IMO what is really clever about this is that it is a "sales" video - except you dont realise you are being sold to until the end, by which time you've enjoyed the video so much, the pitch at the end is reasonable. And you've shown what the value is long before I asked myself the question "how much" - which I usually ask early in the process - but not here. At least that is how I found it... great work. Would be inter…

I can't really share conversion stuff yet. But one interesting observation off the top of my head is that my customers MASSIVELY prefer paying with Paypal to Stripe, even though I deliberately steer them towards Stripe.

It was a massive pain to implement Paypal and I hated every moment of it but it produced an uptick in payments.

Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine

#30

Post by AlexMuir »

rl3 wrote: post #24
AlexMuir wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The honest truth: This whole car is headed for the scrapyard at the end because it's not worth the extra time ($$$ per hour) while we film to mark parts, directions, alignments etc. I mark things when there's time. We're also modeling the whole thing in 3D and I'm sure the guys doing that will be mixing the bolts and fixings up. I'm kind of interested in how well it runs after this reckless teardown and rebuild.

> We're also modeling the whole thing in 3D ... Can you elaborate on the process for this? I'm curious what software you're using, how many modelers you have, and if you're using 3D scanning equipment. Modeling everything by hand has to be unimaginably laborious. Incredible work by the way, you've already sold me as a customer. :)

We're making it all by hand because it needs to be relatively low poly for the app and website :) I'll write about the process when we've figured it out completely. I'd say we are about 70% done on the modeling. Rigging and animating is a whole other animal.

This was the state of the engine a few days ago - all internals are done. https://twitter.com/howacarworks/status/895417122385481728

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