Armature

This week's task was to build an armature for a puppet. I must say that this was my favourite assignment so far. On monday Ben spoke about armature constuction, explained do's and don't's. Basically, he covered pretty much everything. I've decided to make something as simple as possible.

Reference:

http://stopmotionben.blogspot.com/search/label/armature

Second step - tools! It was actually a bit hard to decide on them since I was not sure what kind of armature I'm going to build. So I only got the necessary things: wire 1,5 mm (of course), thin wire (for the hands), miliput,  PVA ( I have no idea what for) and foam.

Also a superb video reference I found on youtube. I've used it as an example and started moving on from it. 

Process:

Firstsly, I started to twist the wire to make the armature stable.

I've made the separate parts: hands (one long wire), torso ( a short one) and agian a long one for the legs. Then attached them together. I didn't use any glue, because the wire was perfectly holding the constuction.

Attached the head ( umm..) and cut off the unnecessary bits in its legs. Twisted in the shape of feet. I was surprised that the constuction was steady.

Now time for the hands! I didn't find the thing wire the same colour as the tick..oh well. I've started bending it in the same shape as hands.

Twisted  fingers. Ouch!

Wraped the hand again with wire and attached to the armature.

Finished Armature:

Yeah! I like how the arms have turned out.

Sculpting

For the third task we had to design and develop a character model head sculpt.  Plus this design will also need to show at least 3 different expressions. Last but not the least, the heads have to be photographed from various angles (Side, Front, 3/4, Back).


Later that day Ben showed us the making of puppets for the "Coraline" animation. The amounts of replacement faces are stunnig. Adults can really bring puppets to live! I was so impressed with the movie, that I've chosen a small girl design for the sculpting process.

For my reference I've looked at fary tails with small, adorable girls. No, I'm not a maniac!!! I came across this animation by accident, it's called "Masha and the Bear" - nostalgic. 

Continuing with the fairy tails: "Alice in Wonderland" and "Red Riding Hood" illiustrations.

Process:

Equipment:

Modelling Clay (air dry)

Stick

Ball

Crafting tools

Sponge (to keep the clay wet)

Sanding paper.

Next step was applying modelling clay on the ball. This way the sculpt will much lighter, all heads will be the same size and save up a lot of time.

After I started building up the facial features of my character. But I left the mouth for last.

Time to make her look like a girl! I've been changing her hair design loads of times.

In the end I've decided to cover the rest of the head with a hood. But still she was missing something - ears. It still needs time to dry, after that I'm going to use sanding paper to make the surface even and smooth.

Sculpted Replacement Heads:

Okey, my first  plasticine head attempt. Looks weird. I should have tried different beeds for the eyes.

 

Moving on to actual sculpts. This was the first modeling clay head. It was kind of straight forward attempt.

Second sculpt. I wanted her to look rather evil, she turned out to be grinning. Children usually look harmless, but they are little devils.

The last one. Probably the least favourite as in the photos as in life. The expression I wanted her to show - sadness. When I started applying hair the expression faded and she ended up looking intimidated.

Experimental Stop Motion

Okey. Another amazing weekly task! For this one relates to the use of pixelation and stop motion to create an experimental short. We were encouraged to use various approaches, materials and techniques for this task. 

Reviewing some of the experimantal stop motion viedos in class, we got all the inspiration we needed to create our own short. Oh, this was a group task as well. The project started off quite awkwardly, it was pretty hard to keep the thoughts together, because the head was exploding and you had no idea where to start from. Mindmaping did the trick. So the theme was all about dreams and nightmares. The thing that we all agreed on was that the animation is going to a cut out.

The story is about a boy who's sleeping and there's these monsters that crawl out of the bed to scare him. But instead the kid scares them, and they all happily faint. Then the planning process started! We've decided how many monster cut out there will be, what size, plus the main character, planned the room and camera angles. 

An amazing early 2D short from genius - Tim Burton. This  animation triggered the idea of monsters and Bogeyman. I really like the exaggerated expressions here. Character designes are just perfect! Not only that, but they also reflect  their personalities.

There were some parts of the process that went not the way we planned it to, but it turned out to be quite an interesting animation. And yeah this was our first real stop motion animation.

There were a few things that could be changed, though. First of all, there is no such thing as "flat blanket"! Second, we probably should have added more frames, so that the monsters could move more smoothly.