Big Old Mould

I gave myself the morning off on Saturday to have a little doodle an and play about with some animation.

I made this guy run!


Here's a link to my other vine videos, lots of silliness goes on there :D http://seenive.com/u/907625454071062528

And I also had some fun drawing up my own Joker

So, puppet wise, I've been making a huge mould!

I find the first half of mould making a bit stressful as its something I've taught myself how to do by studying pictures and videos of other peoples moulds. So I'm never really 100% confidant that all will go well.

I start with a big base of plasticine, or sometimes a water based clay,  for the sculpture to lie in.

I then carve away the basic shape so I don't have so much to build up around the sculpt.

I've seen behind the scenes pictures of the certain stop mo studios using what I believe to be locators for holding the armatures in place when casting. I wanted to give this a go as I think its great way to ensure your armature is placed precisely in the mould. I made mine out of super sculpy.

Closing the gaps around the sculpture

The finished half with all the trimmings

I use Coroplast, or Correx as its known over here in the UK, a corrugated plastic I use for the mould walls. It's great stuff as you can make a whole wall out of one strip.

I have used a Ali-Fastcast to make this mould as it is a very, very strong material compared to the usual Crystacal R plaster I use. Basically it's a prefilled fastcast resin that is filled with an aluminium filler to add extra strength to the mould. Very easy to work with.

Here is the first half done, its just needs a good few layers of mould release and new correx wall then the last pour.

Here is the finished mould. I needed to do a quick test cast to set my mind at ease that everything has worked ok. I made a very basic wire armature covered it in cloth tape and poured in some Dragon Skin FX pro.

The waiting game... Also note that this thing is bloody huuuge! I'm sure it weights the same as a small child! And also another note that the edges on it were ridiculously sharp. I have a few rather large gashes on my hands due to this. Nothing a good filing down didn't solve though!

Time thief

"Excuse me officer, I'd like to make a complaint. Somebody seems to have stolen time from me..."

Ahh if only we could do that and claim for lost time! Where does the time go!!!! I seem to be saying that A LOT lately.


During my very odd few spare moments,  I'm still trying to keep doodling. 
POIROT
Then this morning I got up super early so I could get  quick bit of doodling in.
I also tried an animated gif. I am quite happy (for the moment) with how this turned out and am would reeaaally like to play about with more 2d animation.
 I'm also going to explore this character a little bit more over the next few weeks.

Poirot

These two are for the awesome Cup O' Doodle BLOG

Two Face

Teddy boy

This was my first ever animated gif, which was a lot of fun

So thats all for now! Until next time...  blergh to time ;)

We "March" to the top...

Good day everybody! 

I thought as its the end of the month I would give you a wee update of what's been going on.

I have been very busy recently, which is always a good thing! 

I've been locked away with a few character design jobs which unfortunately I cant show anything until I'm given the OK which maybe not be for a long time but that's just the way it goes. But I do have some other work that I can show you :)

I wanted to take a few new photos of the last two puppets I made to jazz my portfolio up a bit.  

I felt the others photo are quite clean cut so it's nice to add something a little bit edgy and darker. 

Here's a bunch of doodles that I've done after work hours. I like to wind down the day with a bit of scribble therapy.

I've also made a couple of silly doodling videos.

Most recently, I have been commissioned to make two puppets for a short film being made at Vienna Film Academy. This is a fantastic freelance job and will keep me extremely busy over the next 2 months. I started this job doing the character design and have now started to make the actual puppets. Fortunately I have an extremely cool client that has granted me permission to post photos while I go along.

The first thing I have been doing is working on the main puppets head. For this I will be doing replacement faces in the same vein as Coraline and Paranorman. It is taking me a while to get right but luckily, thanks to the amazing Flynn Brothers, I have a little bit of a head start in how to do things.

A sneak peek at the armature design

This is a photo of the rough sculpt that I did to help me get the dimensions right. Then the core of the head next to it.

Then here is how the head turned out. Unfortunately I have had to abandon this one and make another as it was a bit too large and was causing me a few problems. No bother though as I am very far into to the final one.

So that's all for the moment. Hopefully I will have some more pictures up soon as things progress. I hope everyone is doing well!!

Zombieeeeeeee

The awesome people at Laika house do a creative challenge every month and to celebrate the US release of Paranorman they announced ZOMBAGEDDON!

You have two weeks to create your piece of art to hand in and  the winner is picked by the amount of facebook "Likes"

I didn't win this time but it was a great excuse to make a stop motion zombie puppet

All of the main limbs are sculpted with Super Sculpey Firm, over armature wire. As this was a super quick challenge I had to make a very basic armature. No soldered sections just very strong plumbers putty to hold the limbs together. Then using the same plumbers putty I secured 2 rig points, one on his hip and one on his chest.

And due to this speedy process I didn't get the chance to take proper photos.

I also did the the head at the same time as the body. The whole puppet actually started with the head and the rest of the design flowed from that.

Very basic in design in terms of the armature. I used bandage foam to cover the jaw wires and created a kind of flaky skin texture.

Most of the parts that had bare wire showing were covered up with bandage foam and blended in to the sculpey. So like elbow, wrist, knee and finger joints.

Next up was the paint job. This was one thing I was really looking forward to do as I have never actually fully painted a puppet my self. I've always gotten my dad to do main parts or touch up the bits that went wrong but this time I was quite determined to do it all on my own. Most of it is done with an airbrush then finer details are brush painted.

I did a super quick digital paint over on the head to see the kind of colour scheme I wanted. Im not going to lie, it is very inspired by Paranorman's zombies.

I first had to undercoat it with white then block out the main colours

It took me a little bit of time to get used too the airbrush again as I havent used one in quite a while. Luckily it's like riding a bike :D
After the colour blocking was done I added shading and then finished off with the finer details.
As time was running out (again) I didn't get to take photos except for this one which also shows the armature before padding out.

After the paint job was finished I had to pad out the body and neck ready to be clothed. The clothes were probably the hardest part and were actually done the day before it had to be handed in.
The clothes were a mix of sewing, destroying old clothes and "No Sew Glue"

So that 2 weeks flew by super quick and as soon as I submitted it to the competition I was off on  holiday for a week with the family. 

Here are a few portfolio shots of the puppet.

Also when I got home this morning I was greeted by a super awesome gift from the super awesome Paranorman twitter crew

So very grateful for this, THANK YOU!

Troublesome chap!

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!

Excuses excuses ey!

Lessons Learned

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