The Red Flag

information:
About the Red Flag movie (Dec 1999)
The Red Flag is a short 8 minutes claymation about TeamFortress and Capture The Flag. Capture The Flag is a simple game so the rules aren't hard to learn; the Blue team has to capture the 'Red Flag' in the red team's base, and bring it back to their own base (blue base). That is what it takes for the blue team to win the game. The Red Team will try to defend their flag and then try capturing the blue flag in the Blue Team's base and bring it back to their base(red base).
Now this is also Teamfortress, so each team has nine different characters each with individual abilities, those varies from light armoured scouts to huge heavy weapons guys, medics pyromaniacs and snipers are also present. Tactics and teamwork is needed for the team to succeed.
If the Blue Team does not capture the 'Red Flag' before the end of this movie, they will not only loose that round, but they will loose all possibilities to ever try winning again (for the lack of better story line).

Our own words (Dec 1999)
To put it in another way, although we have tried to combine claymation and Teamfortress into this movie called 'The Red Flag', this movie is more like an experiment with the world of clay than it is to make an story out of Teamfortress. We did put a lot of hard work into it and the result was good enough.

Q/A (Apr 2002)
Q: How many materials did you use ?
A: We used about 10 m² x 2mm expanded polystyrene for constructions, Used and reused about 11 kilograms of oilbased clay to cover constructions and moveable parts of character models, approximately 1 Liter of Hardened clay for solid parts(feet, stomach, head weapons, etc.)

Q: What about scale?
A: The Clay puppets was about 13 cm tall, doors about 20 cm. The tallest setting piece was 60 cm.

Q: How long did it take you to make this movie?
A: About five weeks used to make/prepare characters and settings, Almost two weeks with the actual animation, all done during our summer holidays except editing and sound recording wich stretched for about 4 or 5 months.

Q: How many frames?
A: The animation is 10 frames per second for 8 minutes that is almost 5000 frames in wich about half is unique.

Q: How did you make the pictures?
A: We used a kodak digital camera DC260 for each 'unique' frame, Animation:Master to add mouths on still frames when the characters talked. Paint Shop Pro and Axogon Composer for effects and composition.

Q: Why is the 'red' flag pink ?
A: Due to a bug in the camera software wich wasn't fixed untill a year efter the movie was released.

Q: Why did you make this movie?
A: Because we thought it'd be fun and challenging to make.

Q: Where can I see more of your work?
A: Try our website: tigerbean.dk