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!!

Huge Doodle Dump

Good day everybody!

As the title suggests, this is just a quick massive post of loads of doodles, character designs and other scribbly things, from both last year and this year, that I haven't posted on here before!

 

Oh and a little bonus video of me doodling a dragon

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!