Coming a long nicely

Well the set is coming a long nicely. We have all the major furniture built and everything to dress it up with. Also the clothing is nearly finished and the heads are about to come out of the molds. My mum has knitted a great little hat for my boy, it should look cute. She has done an amazing job with the clothing. Thanks mam!

Silicone suprise

Well its time to cast my puppets heads in silicon, which i have just done. I will have to wait until this time tomorrow to crack them open and see if they are a success or not. It will be an exciting wait but also a very nervous one. Also i posted up a question on stopmotionanimation.com to see if anyone had used RTV molding silicone before for casting puppets with and to see if anyone knew how to go about painting it. I think its pretty much a no go as the silicone will be coloured already when adding the additive. I will have to work round this as time is running out.

Here's the thread as it goes of into a very interesting read about Ron Cole's (a very very talented chappy) experience with a silicone called platsil 10, which is what I think I will try for my next project although the only places that sell it in the UK don't seem to put prices on there websites for any of there stock which makes me think that they only sell in bulk. Click me to read the thread

Set it up

We have started making the set. I went and spent a silly amount of money on the wood for the shell of the set. Not because I wanted too but because I had too. I got what was needed and based on the research I did on set building it was the right choice. I pretty much read all of the post's on stopmotionanimation.com's set section which is Here
and Here

I should also mention that I got a lot of information from the amazing Nick Hilligoss's post about the set he is currently building. Nick is not shy about sharing all the information he has learned and experienced in stop motion and is definitely a big inspiration to me and a lot of other people. Here's the thread about his set.

Based on the size of the mock up we prepared a cutting list from two 4ft by 2 ft sheets of wood. I went for a hard chipboard as it is very easy to drill through for the actual construction and for when I need to drill a hole to tie the puppets down and due to the size of the pieces needed it was a bit more cheaper than MDF and a bit easier to carry from Homebase back home.




I was watching all of the wallace and Gromit films again and got the idea of putting up some posters around the room to fill space so there aren't any bare walls. I will post them up when they have been designed.

Handy disaster

A big mess up with the molding of my hands. In the rush to complete the mold I must of left a gap somewhere around the edge of the sculpt as it was encased in the plaster leaving it completely ruined. I'm going to have to figure what I can do as I dont have time to re-sculpt and re-mold. Bugger...


Going well


Not going so well

Hobbycraft

I forgot to blog about the trip to hobby craft, so I will do that now. We went to Hobby craft in Solihull last weekend to get all the materials to flesh out the set. When we first walked in the I was getting very worried as the only thing I could find in there was the beads for the puppets eyes. I went around hunting for stuff while my mum disappeared into a hunt of her own for all things card making and beading. Just as I was about to abandon all hope, I bumped into mum and said "they only have tiny crappy packets of card and the over priced beads" to which she replied "you need to go upstairs then" Shocked that there actually was an upstairs she pointed me in the direction and I shot off in pursuit of all things useful. Upstairs was like heaven! Everything I could possibly need was up there. I ended up spending a near £100. So I highly suggest if your a crafty/arty person, give hobby craft a chance as there pretty bad ass!

This film is costing me too much money!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh well :)

Success....kind of

The foam casting went quite well apart from the skin that the foam creates set to the mold instead of the rest of the foam. But they still will work fine as the look of them really does not matter as they will be fully clothed. I think it was a good choice to use the foam as I dont have much silicone left. I could of used mattress foam and glued it around the armature but I had a bit of trouble finding where to get some locally and quickly. I think I will try this in future.


Also a pretty cool technique I found on Joshua Mosley's website. His technique is too use a latex glove and pull it up around the armature then fill it with cotton. A pretty cool way of doing it and also non destructive to your armature. His website

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Foam party

Well I'm just waiting for the foam to cure and it seems to have gone quite well. to foam that's has poured on to the table has gone very nice. I can only hope that the same has happened inside the molds. Will be back shortly to show the result

Heads up

The heads have now been molded. I will be casting them in polyurethane foam a little later today. I will post the results when there done if nothing extremely bad has not happend and I'm too frustrated to speak. hopefully all will go well. If it doesent then I will have to try and strip the foam from the armatures or make some new ones. fingers crossed.

Moldy molds

I have made the molds for the 2 body's now, next up the heads and hands. The usual process, no epic disasters this time round.

Armatures are done

I designed the armatures based on a few sources which are from Susannah Shaw's book Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation and Anthony Scott's www.stopmotionanimation.com which I think is the best place to learn about everything stop motion related. They have a great handbook for beginners and if you cant find what you need in there then ask a question on the forum and your guaranteed a pretty damn good answer. Also there are a lot of professionals and generally very talented people on there. An endless resource.

I have made the armatures with 2mm Aluminium wire, rubber cork, aluminium tubing and white putty.

They are very sturdy and have confidence that they will last the duration of filming.

Playing with light

I've been experimenting with light on the mock up to see what kind of shadows I can get on the set. I'm quite happy with the outcome. It will be much better when the set is built and have some proper lighting to try and reproduce the light in the reference pictures, which I blogged in a previous post.

The mock up is complete!

Here is some photos of the finished mock up. I have also been playing with colouring the set to see what will work. It's a lot harder then I thought it was going to be.

Bodys

I have made up all the parts that I will need to cast. There made with super sculpey and have been baked. I have decided to cast the head and hands separately just in case any problems come up they can be replaced, as long as I have enough silicone. For the feet I will just leave them as hard super sculpey with a nut set in for tie downs.
These were made to the scale we produced. The armatures will also be built using these sheets.

Sizes and scales

When deciding on the dimensions of the full size Puppets, I had to restrict them according to my printing facilities, that is A4. From my concept sketches of the Characters I decided on a full size figure that would fit onto an A4 sheet so I could scale this up and therefore also develop  the props and fittings for the Set. I did this by assuming an accepted  height of 5’ 9” [1750mm] for the Shopkeeper then after printing my design for him on an A4 sheet, I put this onto my drawing board and developed a scale by drawing a line from the base line at 60 degrees, marking six equal divisions along this line [to represent 6 feet, then sub divided these into 3, 6 and 9 inch sections. I then drew a vertical line at the side of my figure drawing and put a line across from the top of his head,  cutting across this line which I call the “headline’. This represented a height of 5’ 9’’. I guessed a height of 6’ just above this then drew a line from this point to the 60 degree line at the 6th division point. It was then a matter of using a set square to draw parallel lines from the 60 degree line across to the vertical line creating a scale with feet and inches [ 0-3-6-9-1foot]. The scale worked out roughly to 1to7.
This development is illustrated on SHEET 1.

I will produce a small Mock-up of the Set, approximately half the scale size at 1to15. This will probably be made up of melamine faced chipboard that we have in our garage. I will need to make up a card scale ruler to be able to size up the fittings and to allow me to print off two card characters to plan out the story movements.

Sheet 1

Panic and a change in character design

Over the weekend I had a big panic that I wasn't going to be able to complete the film in time. I emailed my tutor and stressed to him my concerns, but with some encourigning words he conviced me other wise. So I have decided to simplify the characters heads and design so I can get to work saaright away on making the puppets. this wouldnt of been possible with the original designs as I was still needing to create an armature for the heads. So now they are going to have big block heads and replaceable mouths. I think this can be achieved after watching Elmer Kaan's "Mac & Roe" This has inspired me that you can get a great performance out of a very simple puppet. Heres the short film as it is outstanding and i feel it needs to be seen by all.

Mac and Roe from Elmer on Vimeo.

Also Heres a link to his flickr page with a load of photos of making the puppets.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/animatingadventures/

Success!!!!

The silicone test was a success! I left it till today to split the mold open and the head came out great. All I have to do now is order some more and find out what I need to paint it. I also could do with doing another quick test to see how it bonds with my armature wire, I can do this with my old hand mold.

Silicone

Well at least there was one good thing about yesterday, my silicone was delivered!!!!!


My mold came out ok even after the disaster that was making it. There was a few chunks broken away on the inside but it is still usable as a practice mold. Which is what I did with the silicone. It was a very messy and long event. The mix was very thick and I ended up being hunched over the mold for an hour pouring it in slowly as the pour hole on it was so tiny. Anyway this was accomplished but the down side to it is that I have to wait 24 hours for it to cure. This is ok as I will be out all day tomorrow doing my first photo shoot with my friends band.

Epic disaster

Well Yesterday was a complete and utter disaster. I decided I would make the mold for my new head, this was the start of the bad things to come.

I did my usual process of building up a clay bed around the sculpture adding in keys so the two half's fit together nicely. I tried a different way of straightening up the base. I squared it of as this seemed the most logical thing to do. I then made a cardboard wall around it and fixed very tightly around the clay. This is all my usual process apart from squaring it off.

After all this was done I mixed up my plaster and poured it in. All was fine until I nearly walked away to leave it to set and being stopped by hearing the sound of dripping. To my surprise the plaster was leaking out of the mold and had gone all over the table and on the floor. It had gone everywhere and even more worrying was the fact that this plaster cures in 15-30 minutes. I spent the next 2 hours cleaning up the mess. Also while I was scrubbing at the floor I realised that my mold was pretty messed up and ended up using the plaster I had scooped of the table and just pouring it in the mold. This was not enough so I had to wait for that to cue and add a bit more. The whole thing was very stressful. After cleaning up, I mixed up some more plaster and finished the side of the mold off.
I decided I deserved a break and left doing the second half till later in the afternoon.







The mold was eventually completed.

Little boy concept

I have gotten a lot of inspiration for my little boy character as I'm gearing up for the festive season as most of it has come from christmas films.

An unknown film in the UK called 'A christmas story' and everyones favourite "Home alone" have provided the inspiration and reference for the character. The children have the right clothing for what I need, especially in A Christmas story as this is set in the 1950's and goes well with how I have designed the character for the old mender, which I cant find when it is supposed to be set in but they both have the vintage look I am after.

Here is a few shots that I have been working from

A Christmas Story









I also found a chap on deviantart who does some great illustrations for old 80's classic movies and amazingly he had done some from A Christmas story too, which have helped me a lot. Here's his page, he is sooooo good

And here's one of his illustrations. I think you can tell he is an animator :)


Home Alone


About a boy


So here are some of my designs







A few different nose variations






And I think this maybe the final design