Burnt fingers

Hello there! 

A lot has been going on recently and everything has been very hectic. Last week I made my first ball and socket armature so I thought I'd show a few behind the scenes photos and not really a tutorial but a bit of a ramble about it :)

So when I say "I made my first ball and socket armature" I kind of didn't make it all myself in that I used various pre made joints and soldered everything together. I dont have the equipment to make my own joints and why worry when there are some fantastic joints out there already for the taking, albeit a pricey taking in some respects.

The knee and elbow joints are from the amazing John Wright http://www.jwmm.co.uk/
John Wright's supplies Aardman with a lot of their joints and also a lot of other people in the UK and Europe. They are pricey but most definitely worth it as the quality is outstanding! He also gives you a length of steel rod for each joint making it even easier to put the parts of your armature together.

All the other joints and everything else for this armature is from a shop that just gets better and better all of the time and is definitely helping to make stop motion more accessible to everybody. The joints can be bought separately or as part of the fantastic armature kit 'Armacreature'
It's hard not to sound like a sales pitch but this is the best armature kit I have ever used and I have used a lot of them! http://www.animationtoolkit.co.uk/armacreature-professional-armature-kit/


With all of the rods, K & S and steel plates cut to size, it was time to get messy.

Most of the components

My dirty colourful soldering block

All of the parts soldered together They almost look like I've gone into the piercing business

Getting there!

Now, for the leg and arm sections I needed to solder a nut on to the ends so that I can slot hands & feet in and lock them of to stop them slipping out while the puppet is being move around or even while it holds its position. I drilled a whole through the K&S to the correct size then to keep the nut in place while soldering I just used some old screws to keep it weighed down and to also stop any rogue bits of silver solder getting into the thread of the nut.  A tiny 3mm grub screw is what pops inside when done and tightens up with a wee allen key.

As I'm fairly new to silver soldering I did find that I ended up charring most of the components but
 that's ok as a little bit of elbow grease some jewelers pickle and some sanding got all of the marks off. I also managed to mutilate myself with various burns and cuts and a good old poke in the eye but hey its not a proper job unless you injure yourself, right?

All the soldering done but very charred!

After all of the soldering was finished I needed to then grind down the joints as even though they are small they were not small enough. This was a tough job as I need to make sure they stay strong enough for the job. But with a bit of TLC and mini bench grinder, all went well.

And here he is all finished. He stands at just over 11" tall

Here is a video that i made for my client. It also shows the balsa sections I add so it makes the puppet easier to grab at when moving around.



I actually really, really enjoyed making this and can happily say it has been my favourite part so far of this puppet build. I cant wait to make another one!


I'm currently working on casting his body in silicone. Hopefully I'll have a spare few moments to document how that goes.
Anyway, back to work! I hope you are all doing great!

April showers

Good day to all! Just a quick post while I wait for some fast cast resin to set :)

Here's a big selection of drawings from last month up to this week.

A quick update on the puppet

The core elements of the head are done. Now its time to mass produce the top and bottom sections and start sculpting all of the expressions.

I have to give another big thank you to Josh & Nathan Flynn for showing how to do this fantastic technique. You should really check out their website and see how awesome they really are! (click here)

And here is a very short video showing the head off.

That's it for the moment. In the next update I'll hopefully have a lot more puppet stuff to show. Until then, stay safe and keep smiling!! 

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!!

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!