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 are from a shop that just gets better and better all of the time. 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!

Big Old Mould

I gave myself the morning off on Saturday to have a little doodle an and play about with some animation.

I made this guy run!


Here's a link to my other vine videos, lots of silliness goes on there :D http://seenive.com/u/907625454071062528

And I also had some fun drawing up my own Joker

So, puppet wise, I've been making a huge mould!

I find the first half of mould making a bit stressful as its something I've taught myself how to do by studying pictures and videos of other peoples moulds. So I'm never really 100% confidant that all will go well.

I start with a big base of plasticine, or sometimes a water based clay,  for the sculpture to lie in.

I then carve away the basic shape so I don't have so much to build up around the sculpt.

I've seen behind the scenes pictures of the certain stop mo studios using what I believe to be locators for holding the armatures in place when casting. I wanted to give this a go as I think its great way to ensure your armature is placed precisely in the mould. I made mine out of super sculpy.

Closing the gaps around the sculpture

The finished half with all the trimmings

I use Coroplast, or Correx as its known over here in the UK, a corrugated plastic I use for the mould walls. It's great stuff as you can make a whole wall out of one strip.

I have used a Ali-Fastcast to make this mould as it is a very, very strong material compared to the usual Crystacal R plaster I use. Basically it's a prefilled fastcast resin that is filled with an aluminium filler to add extra strength to the mould. Very easy to work with.

Here is the first half done, its just needs a good few layers of mould release and new correx wall then the last pour.

Here is the finished mould. I needed to do a quick test cast to set my mind at ease that everything has worked ok. I made a very basic wire armature covered it in cloth tape and poured in some Dragon Skin FX pro.

The waiting game... Also note that this thing is bloody huuuge! I'm sure it weights the same as a small child! And also another note that the edges on it were ridiculously sharp. I have a few rather large gashes on my hands due to this. Nothing a good filing down didn't solve though!

 Huzzah!!

After a very sloppy trim job here is the finished test cast.

So there we go! One huge mould and a test cast done. Now onto hands and feet! I hope you are all well! Until next time!

Strolling chap

Posting this here as I'm having extreme problems uploading it elsewhere. It's still very early days with these animated gifs.

Time thief

"Excuse me officer, I'd like to make a complaint. Somebody seems to have stolen time from me..."

Ahh if only we could do that and claim for lost time! Where does the time go!!!! I seem to be saying that A LOT lately.

So what have I been doing with my time? Well I've been trying to work as quickly as possible without making any mistakes. Which has been going well up until now.

Last week I started sculpting the body for this puppet. All was going well until I had just about finished and noticed that somewhere along my planing I had somehow gotten something a bit wrong. His head was too big or his body was too small, either way I have to do some severe problem solving as time is not on my side (I say as I'm writing a blog post when I should be working !)
I took to photoshop for some manipulations fun times so I could send my client a run down of what's happened and how I can go about sorting it out. Unfortunately I can not share too much of this process with you as it reveals the character design BUT I can how a wee bit. Here is how he looked before

His head looks way to big so basically I scaled the body up in photoshop to get the acquired size then changed the measurements on my plans accordingly.

 The scaled up version

Now a few days later, I am back to being nearly done with the body sculpt and will move on to mould & armature making.

Here is the nearly finished sculpt

Also I've done a first lot of replacement faces. This will be an ongoing part of the project as there are many to do.

DODDLE SECTION!

During my very odd few spare moments,  I'm still trying to keep doodling. 
POIROT
Then this morning I got up super early so I could get  quick bit of doodling in.
I also tried an animated gif. I am quite happy (for the moment) with how this turned out and am would reeaaally like to play about with more 2d animation.
 I'm also going to explore this character a little bit more over the next few weeks.

Poirot

These two are for the awesome Cup O' Doodle BLOG

Two Face

Teddy boy

This was my first ever animated gif, which was a lot of fun

So thats all for now! Until next time...  blergh to time ;)

DOGONAUTS - Enemy Line

My good friends Justin & Shel Rasch have a kickstarter campaign up and running to help to finish their stop motion film.

They are two of the most inspiring people out there and I have so much time and respect for them both. They have my support 100% and if you have any love for stop motion and animation then you should too!

I would be eternally grateful if you could take the time and check out the page. Please back this amazing film. You really wont regret it!

Here is the link http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2131064235/dogonauts-enemy-line

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!!