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!

The Inspector - Maquette

He's finally finished!

There are a few things here and there that I'm not too happy with but it does its job as a maquette and lets me see the whole character in 3D. I'm not too keen on the colour of the plasticine hence the reason for all the black and white photos.
I will add the digital paint over soon but I think I am actually going to physically paint this chap at some point so the digital paint will really help to make sure I get the colours right before hand.

16" Newplast plasticine

Edit (28-07-12)
Digital paint over

The Butler and the Detective

Hello there!! At the moment I have given myself a task to keep me active. I am currently working on my own project where I can concentrate on character design and also take my time with developing the characters. It's a theoretical short film about a Butler who is a criminal master mind and a detective who has spent the last 10 years hunting the butler down. I don't really have much of a story but I have enough to explore the characters. Maybe one day it will be a real short film but at the moment this is not financially or logistically possible for the foreseeable future but at least it is a cool little project to keep me creative.

 So here is a bit of development so far

The Butler

After doing a few more similar designs I decided this was not the look I wanted for this guy.  I did a couple more head drawings and was feeling a bit more happier with the shapes

After doing these I still was not feeling the design so I did another set of heads but this time kept in mind that I want him to look very creepy, smug and snake like... you know... like a criminal mastermind :)

I was happy where these where going so I picked one and then moved on to visualize the whole chap and came up with this

The Detective

I already had an idea of how I wanted this chap to look so it didn't take me too long to find the design I was happy with

This was the first drawing I did and found it wasn't what i wanted.

After a bit more of a play around i came up with my detective

I then added a bit of colour and set a scene

With all of this designing I was getting the itch to sculpt one of these guys. So I picked the detective :)

I did a quick head sculpt to see how the design translates to 3D

Happy with this I decided it is about time that I try making a full body maquette as I have not done this before. Doing character busts has become a bit of a comfort zone habit so now its time to change that.

Here is the armature. I used some hard packing foam to bulk out the stomach and then wrapped it in a kind of rough masking tape to the plasticine something to stick too.

After I blocked out the main shape I found I wasnt really feeling how it looked so I took to photoshop and did a bit of layering with the drawing to see where I was going wrong. I also did a bit of jiggery pokery with the actual drawing to change the pose to be more suited for sculpting

Thankfully this helped me out quite a bit and got back on track

So that's where I have gotten up to with documenting this maquette. I have gotten further with it but I'm going to save the rest of the progress photos for when it finished.

In other news, the series that I did some work experience on at Aardman has been on the TV over the past few weeks which means I have had the pleasure to see the sculptures I did all finished and moving in the episode 'Swimming' from 'Shaun the Sheep Championsheeps'

They dont look like much to excited about but at least I know that they originated from my hands. The original sculptures will have been doctored to how the animator needed to do the shots, so they added arms and glycerine for water (I think)

I managed to take a really crude photo of the TV paused but at least you can see the characters. I have got a photo of the actual sculptures from when I finished them but I don't think I'm allowed to post them so these will have to do :)

I hope all is well with everyone! Until next time!

The Sculpt Of Carl

I have finally managed to get a bit of sculpting done!
I wanted to see if the kind of characters I am designing at the moment translate to 3D so I started with a really quick 15 minute sculpt just to test the waters. This was only around 1.5" and sculpted this small to make sure I could focus on shapes rather than detail.

Then it was time to move on in a bigger scale.  I went through a few of my character designs and picked out Carl The Thug. I didn't want to necessarily sculpt the thug character but more use the design to play around with.

Then it was pretty much a 7-8 session to sculpt it. I didn't take any progress photos as I was far too sucked in to sculpting.

So here he is

I would really, really  like to turn this chap into a fully fledged puppet but I just don't have the the space to do so at the moment. Hopefully in the near future this will be possible

Edit:
A digital paint over just to see what he could look like in colour.