Well this puppet just does not want to behave! I tried doing another walk cycle and its just way to much trouble to be animating with. All I want to be doing is concentrating on my movements and getting everything how I want it but when using this fella and the rig I just seem to be battling my way through it and having to start over which is just not on.
I am going to begin making a new puppet and its going to have tie downs and it is going to be a lot smaller. I measured this current puppet and it is a whopping 13"!! My next one is going to be around 8-9".
I have also gotten myself some of this lovely stuff to play with.
I have been wanting to have a proper play with plasticine for a while now but never had the chance. Its also the ideal time as I need to use what my little funds can afford me and I cant afford to be buying silicone all the time.
I'm going to make a few heads and try some replacement mouths out which I am really looking forward too. I have always been a bit scared of using plasticine as I was never too confident in my sculpting. It should be a lot of fun! I am also looking forward to making a new puppet as this last one was the first since my uni project a year ago so I kind of had to expect some faults here and there.
Here is the last walk cycle I did. I'm not happy with it but I'm also not going to beat myself up about it. I cant get him up and down enough to give a believable weight. I couldnt get him back in the same starting pose to make the cycle smooth when looping but that was no ones fault but my own.
I also cant really get in to animate it that well as my current set up it just an old set clamped to some chairs and because the chap is damn big I have to use a wider angle lens close in which doesn't leave me much room to animate.
I know the picture looks like I have loads of room but believe me there isn't!
Over the weekend I finally got to do some animation!!! I first tried on Saturday but had so much trouble with my rig I couldn't carry on and had to wait till Sunday to fix it and try again. The rig is, in true stop motion fashion, just a knocked up mish mash of bits and bobs I have lying around.
It consists of a really heavy anglepoise lamp base with threaded rod glued in and two old umbrella swivels from some of my old photography equipment that I don't need anymore.
With these all bashed together I finally had something to work with and got some tests done
The rig is still proving to be a big problem and really effecting the animation. It keeps slipping and tilting the puppet and also the arm is swiveling very slightly making the puppet lean to one side. I thought this would be an easy thing to fix whilst animating but found that it wasn't at all. So many little problems end up being one big problem and made it a very disheartening and stressful time on something that I have been so excited about for so long. So the conclusion here is make sure your rig behaves!
One HUGE problem has come to light while doing these tests, I cant secure my puppet down with magnets. The magnets are far to week even with the thinnest board between them and the feet. This means he has to be rigged at all times which is pretty much useless as I am limited in how I can move him with the rig attached.
I have made changes to the rig and will be doing some more tests today but this has confirmed my earlier thoughts that I am going to have to make a new puppet.
I will post more about the new puppet after I have done some more tests with the current puppet. I will probably post the results later this evening or tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed!
Also over the weekend I have decided to set up a new blog that is dedicated to real stop motion animation. I'm talking strictly puppets!
At the moment i have just posted a load of short films and 'making of' videos. I'm starting t think whether this was a bad idea as things are quite easy to find and people wouldnt have much use for it but then again it's always nice to have a place where it is all bookmarked for you.
I think it would be better as a sort of database site rather then a blog. I'm just a bit unsure. Have a look and let me know what you think as I would really appreciate your feedback on this http://realstopmotion.blogspot.com
Also if you have twitter you can follow @realstopmotion for updates.
And you can also follow my personnel twitter HERE
After lots of trouble the chap is now finally finished!
The clothes caused a bit of an unwanted delay but my lovely mum took over and got them done and I just finished of with a bit of sewing, which is why his back wont be making to much of an appearance in any of the animation ;)
The next thing I need to do is knock together a rig as I have made a few BIG mistakes with the construction of this puppet.
The first is that he is really top heavy as his head is made from solid baked Super Sculpy firm also he is around 12" tall so this does not help with my problems. And finally as he has steel feet for magnets I couldn't fit in some holes for tie downs as well and the magnets I do have arent going to be strong enough to support him when he's standing on one leg etc so he is going to have to be attached to a rig quite a lot of the time.
Either way he should be heading in to bootcamp by the weekend and I am very excited to be animating with a puppet again!! Bring it on
I cant believe it has been just over 2 weeks since my last post. Doesn't time bloomin fly ey!
My training puppet is coming along very nicely. After doing the hand test with the liquid latex I decided I would do both hands at the same time while the technique is still fresh in my head.
I took a few step by step pictures of how I do my hand armatures as I think they are very simple to do but but very strong.
With one strand of 1mm aluminium wire I make the basic shape of a hand
Then I hold the bottom of each finger and twist the wire leaving a loop at the top to form the base of the fingertip. I also twist the wire to form the wrist and forearm
Then with what ever wire that is left from the forearm I double back up to the wrist and wrap it around to form the base of the palm of the hand. Thats it, you now have a quick and easy hand armature!
Also here is a couple of photos of adding the thin foam to the hands and then cut into shape ready for the latex build up
The hands did not come out as good as my last try but they will do as I'm not going for perfection with this puppet. You will see them in a few photos a bit further down.
The next step was to make the main body armature. I had already roughed up the proportions and armature design but left them very sketchy as I knew I wanted to make adjustments as I went along.
I started out with two blocks of wood for the hips and chest. I sawed these down to the right sizes and then rounded off the edges.
I drilled holes in the top of the chest block so I could slot the wire into to it for the arms and neck and did the same for the hip block. For the arms and spine/neck wire glued some aluminium tubing to harden up the areas that dont need to be manipulated. I attached the hands and also made a neck by using the same build up technique that I used to make the hands. I have also drilled a hole in the hip block to attach a rig when needed.
The next step was to sort him some feet out. This took a few days of trial and error as I want the puppet to have toe joints. The feet are made from steel strips as I am going to try out magnets instead of tie downs. At first I tried to make aluminium braces to clamp the wire down to the steel. The only way to do this was using 5minute epoxy. I glued them together then clamped them with spring clips to keep them secure.
Unfortunately this didn't work as the epoxy does not seem to bond steel and aluminium very well. The next step was to try soldering them but I had to wait a few days for that as I was waiting on an order of silver solder, flux and some square K&S tubing.
When they finally arrived I decided to ditch the brace idea and use K&S tube to fix the wire to the steel feet plates. The first test I did was with one piece of tubing but when it was done I attached it to the puppet and I found the ankles were not strong at all and would just bend too easily. So I doubled up the K&S tubing and wire that went into to them create a stronger joint. this worked great and was very happy with the results.
The finished feet armatures
While I was waiting for the materials to arrive I started to pad the top half of him out.
The next thing I did was to make shoes for him. I made them using the liquid latex build up as I need the toes to bend. Using some cushion foam I made the base of the shoes which I think look like slippers! After the glue had dried I chopped them down to right shape.
I then added in some very basic details like the back of the shoe, tongues and a rim around the outside.
Then it was time to add the latex. I didn't smooth the whole shoe as I was liking the texture it was producing when drying.
One tip I can offer is if your doing latex build up work and adding it on to foam it takes a while to dry so I found out using a hairdryer to heat it speeds the curing process up quite a lot. Remember though if you have a very thick bits/pools of latex it will just dry the top layer and underneath will not be 100% cured.
The finished feet
After the feet were complete I could pad the rest of the puppet. I only took one photo of that step as I worked pretty fast and didn't really stop while doing it.
I wanted to leave the puppet like this!!
So that's pretty much where I have gotten to with this chappy. He is at this moment in time lying on the table ready to be clothed. I have all the patterns done and some material cut ready to be sewn. I also need to paint up some wood for an animation table and also make the rig to support him when running/jumping but I have to get some photography work out of the way first before I can do those jobs. Hopefully this time next week I will have some animation tests done to show you.
So I will leave you with a sneaky look at how he is looking at the moment even though he is pretty much naked! Hope you are all doing well
Well what has been going on with me? Unfortunately this week I realised I am not going to be able to do Animation Mentor as I have been messed about so much with my loan applications and there is nothing else I can do to raise the funds. BIG bummer :( Animation Mentor have been so supportive with their correspondence to all of my troubles so a big thank you to them!
The way I look at it is I can only but try and you will never know otherwise.
So I have my stop motion hat back on! Woooo! I am going to carry on with my previous plan which is to gather enough shots to make a showreel that I am happy with and proud of. This will showcase my understanding and ability to perform with character animation and the 12 principles... hopefully :D It basically is going to be a lot of practice shots and maybe some mock up scenes for pretend films.
At the moment I am currently making a training puppet and nearly finished with painting his head. More on that in my next post.
One thing I have completely forgotten to post about is the finished camera dolly.
Well I say finished but it does in fact need tweaking.
I did start to blog about it with this POST but it has been so long since we made it that I cant actually remember what and why we (We is my Dad really) did certain things. I asked my Dad if he could remember as he is usually spot on with these things but even he could not so I'm going to have to do my best I may get a bit lost along the way so I apologise in advance if you get confused :D
I did a lot of researching and scouring of forums and found THIS TUTORIAL by Brady whitcomb on stopmotionworks. We based our design pretty much exactly on this apart from a few different pieces of materials.
So the basic components to a stop motion camera dolly is: The rails, truck, drive shaft, handles and the base.
These are most of the main components to the dolly minus the threaded rod. I was lucky enough to find the two steel poles that were exactly the same length. They are going a bit rusty now as the are untreated so i need to sort that out. Also we have skateboard wheels and the bearings which are quite important. You will want to get a good few spares as you need these for the winding mechanism. You can kind of see the shape of how it is going to look.
Then we have another piece of the puzzle that took me a while to source. In the end Ebay triumphed. Here is the Laboratory Jack. I'm not sure what they are used for in a lab but I remembered reading about one in Mike's blog (darkmatters) This is for attempting vertical camera movements.
The first thing we did was make the truck of the dolly. This took my Dad quite a bit of precise planning as if you line the skateboard wheels up slightly off the truck wont run along the rails smoothly. Probably the hardest parts of this was attaching the lab jack to the base of the truck as we had to mark out where the bolts would go without stopping it from being able to move up and down. This is because there is a bar at the bottom which as you extend the height, it slides along leaving you with little space to bolt it to the base of the truck. The other hardest part was getting the hex bolt for the drive shaft in the correct place. This again was accomplished by my dads careful planning.
We then bolted and screwed the base of the dolly together. I forgot to take photos of this but it was pretty straight forward. The hardest part of that process was making sure the steel poles were as straight as they could be and in the correct position as if they were not the truck of the of the dolly would not run along it smoothly and you would end up with really jerky footage. To do that I did loads of video tests on the dolly which would quickly show us if there were any problems.
When the rails were in their correct place we then had to add the back boards to the base of the dolly. This was another tricky job as both backboard has a hole in where you will place a skateboard wheel bearing which you then insert your threaded rod too. The handle then fixes onto the threaded rod on the outside of your dolly.
The mind numbing job of screwing the threaded rod into the dolly's truck then into the backboard was a very long process. But we took it in turns and shared the pain.
For the handle we ended up cutting a circle of wood out and using various long screws surrounded by the shell of an old paint pen.
We also made a few cool adjustments to the original design. We made a pole on the truck which you can mark with increments so when you animate a vertical move you can plan your move better. We also added a wooden beam along the side of one of the rails so I can mark down the increments of the camera move and then to be even more precise we added a marker on the side of the truck so that you can see exactly where you are in the move.
I cant really remember what we did after that so I shall leave this weird walkthrough/rambling confused mess and show you some pictures of the finished thing.
The drive shaft on the bottom of the truck.
A front view of the finished truck attached to the rails and thread.
The laboratory jack attached to the truck.
Opened lab jack with increment pole and tripod head attached
Marker on the side of the truck
The finished beasty. 6ft long
So after it was finished I did a couple of tests to see how it performed. I did find there to be a few things that need to be sorted. The lab jack does a weird wobble action when at its maximum height. I still need to do more tests for that problem and see if i can determine how high I can move it before it wobbles.
The other problem I have found of that when the truck is at the very end of the rails it jerks a bit when moving it back into the middle. This can also be sorted by doing more tests.
So there we have it.
I really do apologise if this has made no sense to you and if I have written this out in a very incoherent manner.
Well I shall leave you with this video of the test footage I did after we finished the beasty.
For some reason on both videos it is playing back quite jerky. I find you have to play it once then again and it should play through smoothly then
Well it has been a while since my last post, I really don't know where the time goes!
So a little update on what has been going on.
I cant remember if I have mentioned or not but last August I badly damaged my knee with supposed ligament tare and missed out on a few months of work experience on a stop motion commercial. I was not happy about that at all but one must keep smiling and carry on.
It took until January this year to get my knee scanned and that was only because it re-injured itself while putting on my trousers :S So I finally had surgery on it at the beginning of last month and It is healing away nicely now. I did have some super cool bruising which I named my "Nebula" as it resembled something that you would find in the deep depths of the universe.
So that is whats been going on the whole of last month. Lots of pain, being uncomfortable and sleepless nights. Fun times ey!
Anyway, I have been accepted into Animation Mentor and am scheduled to start at the end of September which will be amazing but I am not getting myself too excited yet as I am still in the process of sorting out loans and what not as there is no way in hell I can pay for it until I am in a very steady job. I'm keeping my fingers crossed an am just hoping for the best with that one.
I'm getting myself ready for if I don't get my loan accepted and cant start the course
then I will have plenty of resources to get on with.
I have done a few little character designy drawings just exploring a style more that I have been playing with for a while now.
Self portrait
My brother
A very quick one of my mother
Last night I was going through some of my old hard drives and stumbled upon all of my first ever animations. It really got me thinking about how much I have improved or even have I improved? I think I have improved a lot but not as much as I could of. It is quite encouraging I think.
So I thought I would share all these old animations on here. There is a load of 2d work and stop motion work so be prepared to laugh and cringe. I think all of them are from 2004 - 2005 then there is one from my very first couple of months at university. Enjoy :D
Well well well, what do we have here then! I'm currently making up a generic puppet to practice with. It is so I can do some basic principle shots to put on my showreel.
To start me off I have gone back to my head mold from an earlier post and carried on where I left off. I have also decided to leave my attempts at making a sophisticated head armature and am going to just make a very basic one with eyebrow and mouth movement.
I have an inner core for the mold so I can cast a skin in silicone. This was made with Polymorph ( I think it's called friendly plastic in the U.S) I just whacked a load in to the mold and then clamped each half together. It only takes about 10 minutes to harden depending on the amount you use. It needed trim the excess plastic of which I had to do with a Dremel drill. It's not as pretty looking as I have seen them made but this is all trial and error so it will do.
Then its time to cast the skin. I still have some Dragon Skin left from last year so I used that. It is my favourite Silicone so far. Easy to use and only takes 30 - 40mins to set and de-mold. I also have some flesh colour pigment to tint it. I forgot how little you actually need of the pigment and went a bit overboard with it.
I'm not going to say this was a success as the casting has revealed loads of imperfections in my mold and also the original sculpture that I hadn't noticed. Also there is a really thin part on the back of the head but I managed to patch that up with some of the excess silicone from seaming the head.
That was also another thing I'm not too happy with is my really poor seam job. Another thing, I completely forgot to do when casting the skin was to set the actual eyes into the mold to save cutting back the silicone in the eyes which I have done a bad job of doing :S So lots of little things went wrong but like I say I'm not too fussed as its for a practice puppet. I learned a lot from the process of making the skin and it will still work out ok.
I have also made the skull that goes inside the skin. I made this by spreading a layer in on each side of the mold with Polymorph. I let them set and chopped them down and split up the the top of the skull and made a hole where some wire will attach to the eyebrows.
I have started the armature for the skull but I have got a little stuck with it at the moment and will figure it out while I am making the rest of the puppet.
So that's how far I have got with that.
As for my last post about Animation Mentor, I have sent in my application for it and am now waiting to hear their decision. This will take a few weeks. There is the chance I wont get excepted or will get refused the loan but I have my plans now so I feel I am kind of on the right track with where I am going.
Here's a newer version of my work in progress video. Now with added sound so you can hear just how awesome I am at voice acting ;)
I have been wanting to have a proper play with plasticine for a while now but never had the chance. Its also the ideal time as I need to use what my little funds can afford me and I cant afford to be buying silicone all the time.
I'm going to make a few heads and try some replacement mouths out which I am really looking forward too. I have always been a bit scared of using plasticine as I was never too confident in my sculpting. It should be a lot of fun! I am also looking forward to making a new puppet as this last one was the first since my uni project a year ago so I kind of had to expect some faults here and there.
