Clyde

Hello Everybody!

I've been working on this over the past few weeks in between doing various bits and bobs of character design work and other mysterious duties. Unfortunately it didn't turn out anywhere what I wanted it to be.

Clyde

The idea was to turn this sketch into a fully fledged puppet.

I was quite taken with the character and really wanted to try out doing some hair punching again and silicone painting and I'd got myself all excited but due to severe lack of funds I had to resort to good old newplast plasticine and I have a lot of it and it's a million times cheaper.

So I just started to sculpt and get a feel for the shape as I usually do.

Originally it was just going to be a mock up for a final head but I was liking how it was going so I decided to give him some drastic surgery and add a bit of a styrofoam headcore with K&S for a neck to slot in and out.

 As the head was thick plasticine I had to carefully dig out a trench for the head core to sit in. Then make sure the plasticine was nicely compacted around the core so there was no chance of it coming loose when moving the neck. 

Also I added some cloth tape to the neck wire so that the plasticine would fix to it without any problems sliding off which seems to be some peoples biggest problem when making plasticine puppets with wire armatures. You needs something for the plasticine to "Cling" on too or it will flop about around the wire.

With all of the surgery out of the way I finished the head up and gave him some hair. I didn't go with the original hair from the design as I just wasn't feeling it in plasticine. I think it was more that I could see it as real or synthetic hair and wouldn't work for me otherwise. 

I also added the flesh tunnels in his ears. They were made with two pieces of aluminium K&S round tubing that slotted into each other then the ends filed off to make them one whole piece. 

The eyebrows have a small amount of wax mixed in with the plasticine to keep it hard to help with being handled excessively.

As he was originally going to be a full puppet I had planned to make a full armature and what not but I got a few jobs in which I could see taking all of my time up so I decided for the moment this chap would be a pose-able bust. 

Time to give this chap a body and flesh out the neck!

The body was just more styrofoam with a piece of K&S glued inside for the neck to slot in. The body was then hot glued to a wooden base .

 

 

After I had done this he was unfortunately neglected for a week due to work. Over this time I had thought that I need to start fabricating my own clothes for puppets and have to rely on Mother dearest to do it for me. 

I scoured the internet for a pattern simple enough for me to follow and just went nuts on it.

This took me quiet a while and lots of trial & error. I think I redid the hood at least 4-5 times. I dont mind though as I have found sewing to be rather enjoyable. I used to do it a little bit as a young whippersnapper but He-man and turtles action figures won that battle.

Halfway through this process I was contacted about making some puppets for someones short film and decided that I couldn't afford to spend anymore time on this chap. I didn't really want to have something half finished either before I take on a big job. I've spent the whole of this weekend getting bits of sewing finished off and cleaning up the plasticine again as he had gotten quite mucky over the outfitting stage. I really wanted to change his face a bit and maybe add some more detail but I thought it was best not to start messing when he is pretty much done. 

So what started out as a full stop motion puppet has now unfortunately ended up as a small maquette/bust. Maybe in the near future I will revisit this character as I reaaaaally want to make that hair in the original drawing!!! I also really want to have another go with his clothes. Next time I suppose.There is a small chance that he might end up for sale but I'm unsure how I would go about doing so. Etsy or some other online store maybe? Hmmmm we'll have to see. 

Until next time!

Puppet production

Short version:

The skills developed to produce the puppets and their methods of being animated, were a marked improvement on previous work and were a result of much experimenting with casting methods, airbrush tinting and costume design. Added to this was the fabricating of much more intricate armatures and the testing of epoxy material for skull movement. Much of the Puppetry production was a matter of trial and error, to achieve the desired level of finish.

A considerable amount of research was necessary in finding out Puppet armature design and casting materials that had to be sourced and obtained. Also because of the time aspect, opinion was canvassed from other Stop Motion Professionals to confirm that the materials would give good results.
Research was also necessary into suspension rigs for a particular scene in the production, which enabled the making of a simple device to animate the main character.
Research was required for the costume design and subsequent production particularly with regards to wire framing for the female character.



Detailed version:

I am constantly researching materials and other animators processes on puppet making so I had a fairly good idea of how I was going to achieve this. I also had the character design in my head so it wasn't hard to get cracking on.

Making the puppets was a whole lot of trial and error and money down the drain.
I used the knowledge I had built with making molds and casting on my last project to my advantage although I ended up with just as many problems as I did when I first started experimenting with molds.

One of my biggest problems was air bubbles in my plaster mix. I think this was due to me thinking I had the process under wraps but really I hadn't. Air bubbles in molds equals ugly casting. Ugly casting equals bad puppets. Bad puppets equals completely the opposite what I had set out to achieve, a professional looking film.





After countless failures I ended up running out of plaster at a really crucial moment in the production. This resulted in having to buy many boxes of plaster of paris which I found out that evening is really not suitable for making puppet molds, especially hands as it destroys any detail you have in your sculpt. I needed the plaster I am used too and comfortable with, which is Crystacal R (U.K equivalent of the U.S Ultracal) This left me in desperate situation. I hunted on the internet until 6.00am and found a local builders merchant that had some in stock and luckily my mum was to the rescue and went and picked me some up and brought it back home before 10.00am. problem solved!!!

One of the new materials I used and had wanted to use on my last project was Silicone. I made the mistake on my last project by being a cheapskate and thinking I could use RTV Silicone, which is primarily used for making molds and found out at the last moment it wasnt going to work. This time I was prepared as I spent the christmas holdiay researching what silicone other animators use and how they work with it. Two main brands are heavily recommended. Dragon skin and Platsil gel 10. Both are used extensively in the special effects industry for prosthetic make up and skin for animatronic puppets. It is also used for your usual severed limbs and what not.

Platsil is a lot more expensive then Dragonskin and after reading up a lot more on special effects forums I found that Dragonskin had not long released their Dragonskin pro silicone. I managed to find a supplier and ordered myself some with various other bits and bobs like mixing and measuring cups, vynl gloves, silicone pigment and also the the silicone paint base 'Psycho paint' so I could paint the puppet.






I found using the silicone was actually an fun process and only after a few trys I was able to get pleasing results.

It was also my first time using foam to pad the puppet out. This is another technique that I researched and been recommended by many animators to try. Luckily I had some old packing foam from a few hardrives I brought over christmas and this proved to be perfect.

I cut foam in to strips and wrapped it around the armature and fusing it together with all purpose glue, I would then wrap rubber bands around the main this to hold the shape in place.



The clothes were then fabricated to my designs and sewn over the top of the foam (thanks mam!).

The feet of the main character are made out of silicone. I also decided to test out using acrylic paint instead of silicone pigment when casting them. I had read mixed reports of people doing this but it worked out fine for me even though they ended up looking a bit like those cola bottle sweeties.

The armatures for both puppets are from two different companies.

The main characters armature was from a company called skeletoon. I decided to use their pro armature as it had thinner joints which was ideal for the design of my character. For the lady puppet I used an animation supplies old pro armature which I had lying around for a few years, it just needed taking apart and rebuilding to my design.




The Skeletoon armature came with a big problem in that some of the Allen screws would not tighten and close the ball joints together, even after ordering mores screws from the site I had the same problem. This resulted in a lot of modding and having to seek out my own screws to tighten them. Never the less, crisis averted!

Tie downs where used for securing the puppets to the sets, I would had liked to try magnets as it would have resulted in not having to drill holes into the set and causing much more post production. I just was not certain the strength of the magnets would work with the thickness of the wood of the sets.

The female character is a ghost and therefor designed to not have legs and to float in a ghostly manner! I constructed the armature so that the spine of the body would lead all the way down to the floor and would attach to the set with a tie down.

Another new technique that I used was Applying real hair to the puppet with the process of hair punching. I was mostly inspired to try this after watching the Coraline special features for a gazillionth time. This was researched by with extensive reading on special effects forums.

Quite a simple process, that is similar to stop motion animation itself, requires a lot of patience. The process involves stabbing hair into the head of the puppets with a make shift hair puncher. This was made with a needle and an old wooden handle. You cut the eye of the needle to create a kind of fork which catches the strands of hair in when punching into the head.



The most fun from this process was purchasing the hair extensions from a local shop, where being greated by "Are you looking for something for your self or for someone else?" I then spent the next 30 minutes trying to explain to the shop keeper what stop motion is and that the extensions weren't actually for my head but for a project. Needless to say he didnt believe me!

Another problem produced itself when trying to work out how to style the hair. I read on the stop motion forum that a few people had used watered down PVA glue and brushed it into the hair. This did not work for me and ended up flaking out and resulted in my puppets looking like they had dandruff!
I watched the Coraline featurette on how they did the hair. They used a mix of prosthetic glue and super glue and" Other ingredients" which i believe is some magical glue as I didn't have much luck and ended up smothering the hair in superglue and painting over where it had gone on too thick and frosted up. I also tried to do a "Coraline" and weaved a bit of wire into to the clump of hair over hanging the right side of his face. After the trouble of doing this, I found the wire was no where near sturdy enough to hold a pose. It is something I will try again in a future project and use the failure to my advantage.

Even after all of my research and careful planning I ended up with many puppet problems.

So much to show, so little time

Things are starting to come together very nicely. I am so busy at the moment that I just have not had time to blog whats been going on, so here's a quick look at a couple of things. So I had to change the last head sculpt I did because me being me realized I had sculpted it far too big. So I went back to the drawing board and did a few others that I ended up getting angry at and mushing them up before I could take a picture. Then I landed on the 'one'
(Please Click thumbnails for a larger view)

So with a final head sculpt it was on to my least favourite part of the whole stop motion process, making the mould.

Which was a success first time, yeaaah!! When ever I have made moulds for heads before, they have always gone wrong so I was extremely chuffed that it all went fine

Although the sculpt didn't look too impressed by what he had just been through

I made a head armature as I need this character too have some basic facial movement to get across a few emotions, also I really wanted to try it out and I couldn't see the point in casting in silicone if the puppet is not going make a few big movements.

So with that out of the way I did some final research and went ahead with the exciting bit, which i had been waiting for ever since I started pre production. Casting with dragon skin

Well it didn't really work out very well at all. I think I used way too much pigment or I didn't mix the too parts of the silicone thoroughly enough. Either way I learned a lot and it was fun. I suppose on the plus side if I ever make a zombie film then I have a head for that!!

2nd time went ok, but left very bad air bubble pockets on the nose and forehead. I'm not sure what I did wrong here and could only think that brushing it into the mould first may combat that problem

3rd time was a an almost! But one of the wires inside had come through the skin of the head. Doh!!! I could fell the next one would be a winner. Also On the last cast I realised that making a skull, for the head armature, out of super sculpy was a baaaad idea. That stuff is no where near strong enough to cope with doing the job so I made another one and also made a few adjustments.

4th time was indeed a winner. yay! For this cast I had decided I wanted to try adding a lot less pigment to get a real de-saturated skin tone. It worked out pretty good I think

So with the head done I needed to get on with finishing the armature. I bought a skeletoon armature sometime last year and decided I was going to use it. I had read so many good reviews of their armatures that I was sure it would be perfect. I don't know if I got a defective kit or I was doing things in a stupid way but getting the joints to close up tight was just not happening, although it was only on say 5 out of 15 joints. AnywaysI found some screws that I had to replace their allen key screws for and now its working like a beast. I found some foam to pad it out with and spent a bit of time building it up to get the shape I wanted.

I have had a last minute change in the story which is going to require me building a second puppet which to be fair I know I can do in the time I have before filming starts. He's a wee look at the head sculpt I have just finished for her. It just needs a little bit of cleaning up before she goes into a mould.

And here is a teeny tiny peak of whats going on with the set. It has all pretty much been painted up now and is looking pretty damn amazing. My Dad has gone all out on this one.

So thats all I have time for at the moment. Filming starts next week so I have a few sleepless nights ahead of me but I don't mind, I love what I'm doing and am very excited about it.

Armatures armatures armatures!

I been trying to decide what kind of armature to use for my puppet next year . From having used both wire and ball and socket, I know which is best for me : the ball and socket armature. I have been scouting around the internet finding different tutorials and different ways of machining the armature. Then I came across this website john wright modelmaking. They have made armatures for Aardman studios use. What amazed me even more was that they sell custom armatures and even better the parts for them. This got me thinking even more that I could buy certain parts from them and do the rest myself. After pricing up the separate parts I found that this might be a little to expensive to the amount I am willing to spend, so I hit back to scouring the net for more options.After going through all the possibilities I finally found the right place Skeletoon This is where I will be definitely getting the parts I need or maybe the whole armature.

I have come to this conclusion after getting some advice from 2 stop motion veterans. They said that if you can get ball and socket armature or have access to one then use it. The only reason they don't is if they haven't got the funds or if they need to start animating as quick as possible. As I have the time and will have the funds I will be buying my armature. I will still be doing some tests with wire armatures over the summer just to be double sure.