New head...maybe

While my Dad has been working on the set I have been sculpting another head as I am still not happy. The last one had a few flaws that I was not loving. So I started again, not really using any reference this time apart from all of the heads I have made previously and also with some designs factors in mind.

I dont know if I am happy with this one now but I am going to use it to do a quick test with my silicone and to also test out a design I have in mind for a head armature.

I have now published a lot of posts dating back to 20th February that I half started and never finished. I think in total you should see around 15 posts that have popped up out of nowhere . Yay :)

More cutting and sticking

My dad has been hard at work over the weekend turning the water colour board into walls amongst many other tasks on the set. He spent hours marking them up into sections of brickwork and then even more hours using his magic wand to make them look like actual bricks. Tomorrow we will be putting everything together, which will be quite exciting as I will get to see exactly how big this beast is.

Lumber jack of all trades

We now have the main parts for this set cut. We are going to be using water colour board for the walls instead of wood as it is going to be easier to bend them and they also have a really nice texture to them.

I decided this set was going to need legs, from my experience after shooting the last film, as I couldn't get hold of a table that was high enough and I kept getting animators back all the time.

Now the fun starts

Well we managed to get he wood yesterday. It was a task and a half to do as I had to carry a huge piece of chipboard ,with a few other pieces strapped to it, from Homebase back to my house. It was sooooo heavy!!! My arms are messed up from it today but oh well it was like a 30 minute workout which cant be bad for me.

My dad got working pretty much straight away, marking up the areas and getting everything ready to go.

Another bonus from today is that I have now have everything for my adventure into the world of proper silicone. It is going to be fun working with it, even though it all cost a small fortune!!!

"Let the wild rumpus begin!"

I will edit this post at a later date with a price list and where I got everything from

A weekend with clay

So I have spent the weekend sculpting yet again. After receiving my chavant clay on Saturday morning I got stuck into another head sculpt. I was inspired by the character design sketches in 'The art of UP' especially the sketches and sculpt of old Muntz. using this him as reference I managed to get this sculpt out.

Also heres a screenshot of all of the reference pictures of muntz I was using

I should hopefully be going out to get the wood for the set tomorrow if it's not pouring down with rain

Another sculpt

I thought the previous sculpts were looking a bit too young so I tried to get the character looking a bit older and more exaggerated. Even though I enjoyed doing it and it looks cool but I don't think it looks right for this film.
I also need to take into consideration that the puppets head is going to have a basic armature inside so the eyebrows need to be bigger to allow more expression and I have also been worrying that if when i move the eyebrow up it may expose too much of the eye which will look a bit unnatural. I think it will be okay if it does it a little as I have studied my own facial movement and as my eyebrow lifts the eyelid follows exposing the eye slightly.

Head sculpts

After drawing out various character designs I wasn't really getting anywhere so I thought I should just bust out the clay and do some concept sculpts and see if i could get any closer to what I wanted. It seems to be working out a lot better. I am going to keep doing them until I'm happy with the design.

Here they are so far(Click to view bigger)

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Mock up finished

So the mock up is finished and apart from having pink walls it looks pretty damn cool.

I have also remembered I had done a digital make over on one of the photos of the mock up before it was furnished. It was quite helpful to do.

So now to move on to the real thing which will be 1/7 scale

Mock up part 1

We spent a few days putting together a mock up set using bits of left over material from the last film. We built it too 1/15 scale. Doing this has given me a given me a really a good idea of how things are going to look.

Character design part 2

So I have spent a bit of time looking for some inspiration for my character and while watching 'Carry on screaming' I spotted a chap to get some ideas from.

Kenneth Williams

And here's what I did using him as reference

(Click images for larger view)

I am quite happy with it as an illustration but not for the design of my character.

I also did this design to work on the shape of the body and a first try at how i want the clothes to look

Character reference

Here is some of the pictures I have managed to find of old lighthouse keepers. They all seem to have the same kind of hat which I presume is to show a kind of status indicating there job position.

Character design part 1

I have been researching lighthouse keepers with not much joy, especially on what kind of clothes they wear. I would like the look of the character to be set in the early 1900's.

With the images I could find I got to work with some designs. Click the pics to view them bigger

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I'm actually really not happy with these so I am going to try and find some more inspiration from somewhere. I'll Maybe look at some actors or musicians.

Slacker...kind of

I have been quite busy getting on with my new short film, resulting in a severe lack of posts.

Basically I have had trouble writing my story and with the deadline coming up on the 28th May and my booked time to start filming on the 19th April I am going to have to finish writing the story while making the set and puppets.

So thats whats been going on.
Prepare for a barrage of updates with pictures of everything I have done so far.