I have been trying to decide what kind of training puppet I am going to make. So At the moment I am kind of just playing around. The first thing I did was make a solid head as I thought it would help with concentrating on body physics and not have to worry about the facial movements. So I sculpted up something that has a bit of a children's TV character look to it. Nothing moves on this apart from the blinks that I have not made yet.
He is sculpted out of Super Sculpy Firm then airbrushed and touched up with a paintbrush.
A quick concept sketch that the head sculpt is based on
The baked head
A quick digital paint over to get the right colours
Then the final head all finished
Yesterday I spent the whole day playing around with the liquid latex build up technique. I had always wanted to try this out but was swayed by the look and feel of silicone. So I thought why not have a go?
It turned out to be a lot nicer and more relaxing than I had thought it would be.
I have been studying Nick Hilligoss's Build up tutorial videos which if you haven't seen then here is the links. Very inspiring stuff ------- HEADS & BODY
I have started out with making hands as I'm going to need some for my new puppet.
I followed how Nick does armatures for hands but ended up forming my own way of doing it.
Then Got some really thin bandage foam and gave it a coat of some adhesive spray and I wrapped it around the armature. I didn't take any photos of this part of the process as its was a very sticky and messy job and didn't want to get my camera grubby.
Next came the liquid latex. I was lucky that I have flesh tinted latex but if you want to paint it or add your own tint you need to get some ammonia to stop the latex reacting with the paint and going all lumpy.
My first attempt was quite poor but at least it let me get the feel for how the technique works. Learning how fast the latex drys and if there is any really deep pools it will take a lot longer to fully cure.
My first attempt
It reminds me of an old B-movies aliens hand :D But it did pave the way for my last attempt.
I am actually really pleased with how this turned out and actually prefer them to any of the silicone hands I have made. A couple of things I'm not happy about is the thickness and length of the fingers and I also went a bit overboard with trying to put detail on the back of the hand. No matter though as its just a test.
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
I'm just making a quick post to bookmark these videos for myself and everyone else.
I have watched them so many times over the past 3 years and keep loosing them in my bookmarks so what better way to keep track of them then to post them on my blog.
I highly recommend watching.
I will do a proper post soon about what going on with me. Hope all of you are doing well
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
I was saddened by the news of the death of Randall Mario Poffo AKA Macho man Randy Savage. He and all the other old school wrestlers were a big part of my childhood.
So here's to you Macho Man "Ooooooooh Yeaaaaaaaaaaaa" Rest In Paradise.
I'm posting this up for the people that might of missed it but 'MADAME TUTLI-PUTLI' is now online to watch. Not much more needs to be said than, if you haven't seen it, Watch it! If you have seen it, watch it again!
No matter how many times I have seen it I still manage to pick out something I didn't notice before.
As I'm trying to advance with my animation skills I have decided to get back into to doing life drawing. I haven't done any since 2009 and I think I would most definitely benefit from doing as much as I can. My plan is to try and get a routine of doing it every morning for an hour or two.
My only trouble is not being able to afford to go to classes or having friends that would be up for posing for me, so I'm having to use something called VIRTUAL POSE which is a 4 part series consisting of loads of quicktime movies which you can rotate 360º around the model. It is not as good as the real thing but certainly better than nothing. I have also got myself a timer so I can keep track of how long I'm spending on each drawing.
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 ;)
Over the past few weeks I have kind of been stressing about how I want to get where I want to be in life, which mainly is a character animator. I think I have spent way too long bogging myself down with technicalities and not just getting down and doing it. This has led to my one decision. I am going to try and apply to the Animation Mentor character animation course. I always said to myself that if I cant improve my skills with my own learning disciplines then it will be time to seek help. Now is that time.
I love stop motion with all of my heart and can dream of doing nothing else but the fact is I also love CG and always have. After seeing 'Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs' I was in awe. Then 'Tangled' came along and slapped me in the face. As much as I want to be a stop motion animator I would also love to do CG and who says that you cant do both! There are plenty of people out there that have done the same. Justin Rasch has worked in games, Webster Colcord as a VFX animator and even the great Phil Dale has dabbled as animation supervisor on "Tales Of Despereaux'.
So I am going to give it a shot as I believe Animation Mentor could really help me with being an all round better animator for both CG and stop motion. Its all the same principles.
Getting myself into even more debt cant be all that bad...can it?
Anyway here is two shots from a little practice piece I am working on. There is still some polishing to do but I am happy enough with them.
I am still doing bits and bobs on my owl project. I have the armature built and padded out but am a bit stuck with how I am going to pad the wings out with and also how I am going to give the fella his feathers. I will post up some photos of that soon when it looks a little more respectable ;)
I have also been doing a lot of practice with digital painting. It has been nice to sit and actually try and paint something instead of it being super quick concept work.
A scene from Sweeny Todd.
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Here is some screenshots to see the progress of it
And here is the second digi painting I did.
Quorra from 'Tron Legacy'
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And a close up and some process shots to go with it.
I did start another one but as it took me around 13-14 hours each painting its going to have to be put on the back burner until I have some more spare time.
I hope everyone is doing well!
A big congrats to Justin on his awesome new venture !!!
