Skinny skin skin

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 ;)



So that's all for now. I hope everyone is well!

The Happy Haps!

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 !!!

Barn owl

Just another quick upload of a concept sketch and an exploration sketch of barn owls. I have gotten a bit stuck with my head armature so I'm giving it a little rest and working on something that i have wanted to do for a while now, which is making an owl puppet.

Truth be told that I used to be a very big birdwatcher and I still have a great interest in them I just don't get the time to do it anymore. My Grandad got me into it when I was about 11-12 and when he passed away in 2007 I always wanted to do something with birds in memory of him.
So I am going to do a few puppet tests with owls to explore their characteristics and just in general I wanted to build a new puppet to play with :D But I am hoping with this exploration that a story will follow while I am just having some fun playing around.

I also chose the barn owl as it has the best reference footage I can find. I would like to do my own but I don't think we will have many in the middle of the city ;)

So here is my concept piece, more of a colour script I suppose

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And here is just a play around trying to familiar with drawing the barn owl

Some closer shots of them individually

Sketchy sketch

Just a quick bit of character design. I'm trying to get back into drawing in my sketch book instead of on the computer. I still cant help having a quick play with it afterwards though :D

Chris Bowden

Yesterday morning I went to a stupidly inspiring talk with Chris Bowden, the executive producer at Mackinnon and Saunders. This was so amazing.

He went through the process of Mars Attacks, Corpse Bride and Fantastic Mr Fox. Being the obsessive stop motionist that I am, I felt really geeky in that I already knew a lot of what he was talking about and seen what he was showing but the best thing was some of the production photos and videos shown were never before seen to the public, this included A few test shots they did with the Mars attacks puppets which they got Phil Dale in to animate after the project went all CG and they wanted to see what it would of looked like. It was AWESOME!

He also brought along some of his little friends

I wanted to take some more photos but I ended up waiting around to have a good chat to him but I never really got to. By the time I was about to get my chance to talk his ear of the owners of the venue came in and made everyone leave and Chris had to quickly pack away all the puppets. Major sad face :(
I have asked a couple of people to email me the photos they took so I will post up a few if I get them.

Mold making

I finally got the time time to make the mold for the head I posted previously. I wanted to try making the mold slightly different as the way I did it before is a little tedious with taping copious amounts of cardboard around it so this time I thought I'd try out a way I had seen in a few videos on you tube.

Instead of cardboard for the mold walls I used small sheets of perspex and sealed the corners with a glue gun.

This actually worked out great! I would like to make a mold properly, like how Ron Cole does his or how Kathi Zung shows you how to do it on her Dvd but I really don't have the space to get that messy. So this way will have to do for the moment.

I also would really like to try out a different material like the same material that Mackinnon & Saunders use. But i will have to do a bit more research on that to try and find out what it is they actually use as nobody seems to know.

Anyway, The first half of the mold came out great and I was super chuffed at how clean I  managed to get it. Now the second half didn't come out as well which I think could of been for two reasons
1. Too much plaster in the mix or 2. Not enough petroleum jelly for mold release

This resulted in some of the mold breaking inside and cementing to the other half of the mold. This was not too much of a problem as the mold still closes nice and tight and also the other half is the most important as it is the face of the head.

So all in all not a bad few hours work, it could of been better but could of been a hell of a lot worse. One bonus was that the head came out of the mold without too much damage which means I can strip the face off and reuse it.

I also thought I would do a wee timelapse of the process, just for laughs.

Busy times

Well things have gotten really busy round here at the moment so I thought I would post up the head sculpt I was last working on.

Click to view large

There is still a little bit of work to do on him. I need to trim the back of his head and his jawline so I can give him a neck. Then there is just general clean up before making the mold but I have not got a clue when I will get to finish him due to currents projects and work going on.

I always find it funny that I'm really happy with a sculpt until I take a photo of it and put it on here!

The next blog post will probably about the camera dolly my Dad is helping me build at the moment.
 I found some designs and threads about camera rigs on stopmotionanimation.com and just passed the research to my dad any he's planned it all up. One requirement I have is that it needs to be for stop motion and for live action so we are trying to figure a way that i can detach the thread from the main truck part of the dolly when its needed for live shoots.
Anyway here is a few photos of all the basic parts minus the threaded rod.

 

 

I will do a more detailed post when it's all finished.
Well back to working on this animation about planets ;)

I hope everyone is doing well!!!

Shelved...again

I was involved in another project over the past few months that has unfortunately been put on hold while the client gets the funding for the project. It also has to be timed just right as it is music video and needs to be released at the right time so trying to balance the making of it and the time it needs to be released is quite a hard task.

Either way it was a cool project to work on and I am happy I can at least share some of my concept work for it.

I also keep promising to post up some photos of the head sculpt I'm doing at the moment but I keep getting side tracked when trying to finish it. All I need to do is decide whether I'm going to sculpt eyebrows on it, or when its finally cast in silicone, to punch hair in. I also needs a neck sculpting on it but that shouldn't take all of 30mins then it's on to making the mold!

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Robots

Here is a sneak peek at a future project that has been put on the shelf for the moment while I work on current and more important jobs.

I am looking forward to getting back to work on it as it should turn out to be super cool. The idea of making these designs for stop motion really gets me pumping plus it's robots, who doesn't love robots?

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supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Well what a cool week its been so far! First off I get an email from my old tutor to tell me my film is being entered in to the national RTS awards as it one the midlands award. That's pretty damn cool. I'm really not bothered about winning but it would be super cool if the film gets shown to the audience as there will be quite a few big names there.
He also emailed me today to let me know that I have been featured on the university's news page

You can see it here

Secondly over the weekend I got a message from the awesome chap that is Marc Spess to let me know he had put up a wee post about me on animateclay which is pretty damn awesome! I was super stoked with that news. Many thanks Marc for putting a big smile on my face for the weekend!

 You can see it here

I will have some photos to post up in a few days of a head I'm sculpting at the moment so i can test out making some new head armatures.

Practice & tests

A couple of months ago I put together the set from 'till death do us part' and had a little practice with the puppet from it. The first shot I just did without anything in mind. For the 2nd shot I wanted to try some follow through on the hair as I didn't really get a chance to test it on the film. The 3rd shot I wanted to animate something elegant.
Another reason for doing this was to test my set up at home to see if there would be any problems shooting my own projects.I am also a portrait photographer and have recently acquired a 600w light it also has a 200w modeling light which I wanted to see if it was powerful enough to shoot stop mo with. The main problem I thought would arise was flicker and it did but I soon solved that by changing the shutter speed on my camera. So its pretty cool that I can use my light for photography and also stop motion. Another bonus is that it came with barn doors and a honeycomb grid so I can shape the light quite effectively.

Youtube link

I also wanted to test out my tripod head to see if I can do some manual camera moves.  I have a Manfrotto 128RC Micro fluid head.

It is very very sturdy for shooting film with so I wanted to see if it was up for the job of stop motion. I found that is is very suitable for the job the only thing I need to do is to make some plates with markers on so I can tell how far it I need to move it. Awesome!!!
These moves are quite fast as I only had a short time to do them.

Youtube link

Forgetful

I was having a look through my illustration files earlier and found a couple of drawings that I had forgotten about. I quite like them so I thought I would share them with you

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Inspiring words

Compare your life to Pixar.

I found this video to be very inspiring. I think it applies to all in the creative field and not just animation. It will be a video to turn to when all feels lost.

2011

Well there goes another year. It had some very bad lows but also some very good highs. I wish you all the best for 2011 and hope you had a great Christmas and new year!

I haven't blogged in a while about my own work due to not really having much to talk about. First off is that me and my chum are trying to start a small animation/film studio. We are currently negotiating our first job which will be a stop motion music video for a band. If all goes well It will be a really great job but I'm not going to get my hopes up as over the past few months things haven't gone to plan.
With that in mind I am going to continue with a few personnel projects. One is a short film that I will talk about at a later date. The next is to explore and expand my skills in puppet making. I am going to work on head armatures and replacement facial features.

I also need to make a practice puppet so I can animate a few basic principles for a new showreel.
For this I have sculpted a head which is pretty much finished apart from needing surgery due to knocking it over resulting in a bludgeoned eyebrow and chunks of hair missing.

Luckily I took some photos of it before the accident.











I have gone for quite a stylized look for this chap and am quite happy with how he has turned out. I'm looking at doing replacement beards for lip sync and cast the rest of the head out of silicone to get nice subtle translucent skin with movable eyebrows.

The rest of the body will also be quite stylized. I still need to do some concept work for that as with the head I started out with the shape of the head in clay then did a super quick drawing of what was in my mind



So hopefully by the end of the week I will have the rest of the concept work done and perform surgery on the head. I will try and keep everyone up to date with the process.