The Illusion Of Movement

Bringing back an old friend

2011-11-27T13:40:00.001Z

While I have been researching new mould materials I have also been playing with a new way to make puppet heads.

After previous puppet head fails I have been looking at ways to make a light weight head. I have developed a simple technique. It has probably been done before but I've never heard of anyone doing it or documenting. I'm quite happy with it.

The core of the head is made out of Styrofoam with a piece of K&S secured in to the bottom for neck wire or a smaller bit of tube to slot int. Then Its just a case of skinning the core with a thin layer of plasticine.

I was fairly happy with this but I fixed the K&S far too close to the chin leaving him pretty much unusable. Still it was a good first try.

For the next head I did exactly the same thing and made sure the K&S was fixed further back leaving enough room for it to have a fair sized chin.

The next step was to cut out a space for easy keying replacement mouths and covering the whole head in a surgical cloth tape to give the plasticine some extra grip.

Now for the fun part, Sculpting!!!

One problem I did come across was how too keep the eyes in place firmly as when I tried to manipulate the they would end up completely moving or popping out. This was solved by sculpting the eyelids around the eye to keep them secure. I will still need to look into to this for future heads as it may not be desirable with certain character designs. But it will do for the moment.

Then after a bit of smoothing and adding a mouth

As I'm not working from any particular design I couldn't decide whether he looked like he could be a small chubby kid or as an old chap. I asked peoples opinions over on TWITTER and most suggested an old chap. I did a quick bit of a draw over to see how he could look and was quite happy with how he would look as long as I could get it very similar to the photoshop make over.

I was also quite surprised that he looked like a better and updated version of my old friend from my first student film 'In with the old out with the new'

I am really quite proud of the old chap and is definitely some of my best work so far.

I have also mixed the plasticine for the eyesbrows with bee's wax as this makes it a lot harder and holds its shape for much longer. I am thinking that I will also do this with his mustache.

Here is the final head. (Click for a bigger view)

I just need to make a few replacement mouths and also a few replacement mustaches. All in all I'm really happy with this test.
I'm wondering if I should bring back the old mender and give him a new story or just to create a new character for him. Hmmmm so much to do and so little time.

To mould or not to mould

2011-11-27T13:38:00.000Z

An update on the creepy chap is in order.

I finished off the sculpting. He just needed a neck and a bit of cleaning up.

Now it was time to make the mould. I made the base using Klean Klay as usual then hot glued the acrylic walls together making sure there was not gaps for leaks. I also wanted to try out a technique I had seen in Nick Hilligos's videos where he puts some wire in the eyes so that when you come to cast in silicone you have great registration spots and don't have mess about trying to line them up in the mold or attaching them to your head armature.

One thing I did notice whilst investigating the sculpture was that there is a few spots on it that are going inwards quite deeply such as the holes in the nostrils and a few spots around the eyes and inside the mouth. This has made me a bit cautious that when making the mould out of plaster that it would leave these parts very weak and will most likely break when pulling out the sculpture and even when pulling the cast out.
This has led me to investigate some harder and more durable mould materials and started a quest for finding out what the professional studios use. this has proven quite a difficult task. Mackinnon and Saunders have told me that they use something called 'Formite' which is a mix of aluminium powder and epoxy resin and can be baked even for casting foam latex. I need to contact them again as I'm having a bit of a hard time sourcing on the internet. I also have been in contact with on e of the head model makers at Aardman to find out what they use. I'm still waiting on this info but hopefully it will be easier to find an online seller for it.

So this creepy chap will have to wait until my quest of the mould is complete!

Creepy

2011-11-18T11:22:00.001Z

This week has been quite good! I went down to Bristol for a talk on the puppet fabrication on Aardman's "Pirates' it was mostly centered on rapid prototyping and was absolutely amazing!

It was so great to hear, in depth, the process and research that went into making these puppets. Being able to inspect and study the pieces was incredible. Although it did make me feel like throwing all of my work in the bin it also has given me inspiration and drive to get better.

Here is the brilliant Amanda Darby and one of the puppets from 'Pirates' and me with the strangest expression I have ever seen. Only a face a mother could love, ey?

So I have been working on a new head sculpt as I remembered I still have some silicone that needs to be used up pretty soon as I've had it since May or June last year and I think it wont last much longer.

It is quite nice going back to using Chavant clay after using plasticine for a bit as I find its easier to get some of the angles and shapes that I like. I think this has turned out to be my best sculpt so far. I'm still trying to decide whether to sculpt the hair on of give him a synthetic make over after I cast in silicone.
He still needs a bit of cleaning up and a neck but nothing that will take too long

Then the final head

I think he looks incredibly creepy

With Christmas coming up I need to get a few things done before my work space becomes out of bounds. I am going to make another armature just so I can carry on with a couple of characters. One semi realistic with silicone head and hands and one more cartoony with plasticine head and hands.

Time Flys

2011-11-03T15:35:00.000Z

I really cant believe it has been over a month since my last post! Time really does fly way too quick.

So in my last post I mentioned that I would be starting a new armature and also playing with plasticine. On with the show!

Now Plasticine is lovely stuff! I'm still getting used to it as I normally sculpt with harder materials so having something that squishes easily can be a bit frustrating at first but when you get used to how much pressure you need to apply it soon becomes a nice and quick way of doing sculptures/ puppet heads.

I had seen that Aardman use an under skull to bulk out the plasticine and too also make it easier when digging the current mouth out to add a new one. I made a few out of some K&S and polymorph. One thing I did find it that you must have some room for the eyes so when the plasticine is layer on the skull you can make large enough holes for the eyes to sit firmly and not be sticking out the head too much.
I had to go through a few to find this out

And here is my first quick sculpt with plasticine

Then my second with a version on the end of how I would like it to finally look

I did do a quick sculpt that I could try out some replacement mouths with. He ended up looking a bit too much like Wallace and i probably wont use him for anything . I have still yet to find the time to test it out but hopefully will be able to by the end of next week.

Then this is pretty much the last sculpt I did. I'm finding it quite hard to smooth the plasticine out in small corners e.g the corners of the nose and under the eyebrows. I still need to play with a bit more to figure that one out.

I have also finished building a new armature. After my last big bugger of a puppet I decided to keep the size of it to about 8-9" and it really is considerably smaller then the last puppet. I have gone to great lengths to make sure it is sturdy as I can get it. I think I am going to do some animation tests before I pad it out and finish it off. Just to make sure everything is fine. One big mistake I did make was completely forgetting about a rig point. I'm not too worried about that at the moment but if i do need to rig it I will just have to do the old wrap wire around the puppet and hope for the best!. Also this time I have tapped some threaded holes in to the feet for tie downs and also used the same steel as before so that if I want to try out magnets again I can.The only thing I need to do is add some K & S to the neck so I can slot in a head

As this puppet is going to have plasticine hands I don't need to have wire fingers as I have heard it is easier to re sculpt the hands then have wire popping though all the time. A washer is used as the base for the hand. I still need to wrap it up in some cloth tape so the plasticine wont come of the armature.

And here is the finished armature!

The next step is to do some quick tests with it before I move on. I should hopefully do this over the next few days.

Troublesome chap!

2011-09-28T22:03:00.000+01:00

Well this puppet just does not want to behave! I tried doing another walk cycle and its just way to much trouble to be animating with. All I want to be doing is concentrating on my movements and getting everything how I want it but when using this fella and the rig I just seem to be battling my way through it and having to start over which is just not on. I am going to begin making a new puppet and its going to have tie downs and it is going to be a lot smaller. I measured this current puppet and it is a whopping 13"!! My next one is going to be around 8-9".

I have also gotten myself some of this lovely stuff to play with.

I have been wanting to have a proper play with plasticine for a while now but never had the chance. Its also the ideal time as I need to use what my little funds can afford me and I cant afford to be buying silicone all the time. I'm going to make a few heads and try some replacement mouths out which I am really looking forward too. I have always been a bit scared of using plasticine as I was never too confident in my sculpting. It should be a lot of fun! I am also looking forward to making a new puppet as this last one was the first since my uni project a year ago so I kind of had to expect some faults here and there.

Here is the last walk cycle I did. I'm not happy with it but I'm also not going to beat myself up about it. I cant get him up and down enough to give a believable weight. I couldnt get him back in the same starting pose to make the cycle smooth when looping but that was no ones fault but my own. I also cant really get in to animate it that well as my current set up it just an old set clamped to some chairs and because the chap is damn big I have to use a wider angle lens close in which doesn't leave me much room to animate.

I know the picture looks like I have loads of room but believe me there isn't!

Excuses excuses ey!

Lessons Learned

2011-09-26T14:31:00.002+01:00

Over the weekend I finally got to do some animation!!! I first tried on Saturday but had so much trouble with my rig I couldn't carry on and had to wait till Sunday to fix it and try again. The rig is, in true stop motion fashion, just a knocked up mish mash of bits and bobs I have lying around.
It consists of a really heavy anglepoise lamp base with threaded rod glued in and two old umbrella swivels from some of my old photography equipment that I don't need anymore.

With these all bashed together I finally had something to work with and got some tests done

The rig is still proving to be a big problem and really effecting the animation. It keeps slipping and tilting the puppet and also the arm is swiveling very slightly making the puppet lean to one side. I thought this would be an easy thing to fix whilst animating but found that it wasn't at all. So many little problems end up being one big problem and made it a very disheartening and stressful time on something that I have been so excited about for so long. So the conclusion here is make sure your rig behaves!

One HUGE problem has come to light while doing these tests, I cant secure my puppet down with magnets. The magnets are far to week even with the thinnest board between them and the feet. This means he has to be rigged at all times which is pretty much useless as I am limited in how I can move him with the rig attached.
I have made changes to the rig and will be doing some more tests today but this has confirmed my earlier thoughts that I am going to have to make a new puppet.

I will post more about the new puppet after I have done some more tests with the current puppet. I will probably post the results later this evening or tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed!

Also over the weekend I have decided to set up a new blog that is dedicated to real stop motion animation. I'm talking strictly puppets!
At the moment i have just posted a load of short films and 'making of' videos. I'm starting t think whether this was a bad idea as things are quite easy to find and people wouldnt have much use for it but then again it's always nice to have a place where it is all bookmarked for you.
I think it would be better as a sort of database site rather then a blog. I'm just a bit unsure. Have a look and let me know what you think as I would really appreciate your feedback on this
http://realstopmotion.blogspot.com

Also if you have twitter you can follow @realstopmotion for updates.
And you can also follow my personnel twitter HERE

He's done!

2011-09-21T22:56:00.000+01:00

After lots of trouble the chap is now finally finished!
The clothes caused a bit of an unwanted delay but my lovely mum took over and got them done and I just finished of with a bit of sewing, which is why his back wont be making to much of an appearance in any of the animation ;)

The next thing I need to do is knock together a rig as I have made a few BIG mistakes with the construction of this puppet.
The first is that he is really top heavy as his head is made from solid baked Super Sculpy firm also he is around 12" tall so this does not help with my problems. And finally as he has steel feet for magnets I couldn't fit in some holes for tie downs as well and the magnets I do have arent going to be strong enough to support him when he's standing on one leg etc so he is going to have to be attached to a rig quite a lot of the time.

Either way he should be heading in to bootcamp by the weekend and I am very excited to be animating with a puppet again!! Bring it on

Puppet Progress

2011-09-15T00:03:00.002+01:00

I cant believe it has been just over 2 weeks since my last post. Doesn't time bloomin fly ey!

My training puppet is coming along very nicely. After doing the hand test with the liquid latex I decided I would do both hands at the same time while the technique is still fresh in my head.

I took a few step by step pictures of how I do my hand armatures as I think they are very simple to do but but very strong.

With one strand of 1mm aluminium wire I make the basic shape of a hand

Then I hold the bottom of each finger and twist the wire leaving a loop at the top to form the base of the fingertip. I also twist the wire to form the wrist and forearm

Then with what ever wire that is left from the forearm I double back up to the wrist and wrap it around to form the base of the palm of the hand. Thats it, you now have a quick and easy hand armature!

Also here is a couple of photos of adding the thin foam to the hands and then cut into shape ready for the latex build up

The hands did not come out as good as my last try but they will do as I'm not going for perfection with this puppet. You will see them in a few photos a bit further down.

The next step was to make the main body armature. I had already roughed up the proportions and armature design but left them very sketchy as I knew I wanted to make adjustments as I went along.

I started out with two blocks of wood for the hips and chest. I sawed these down to the right sizes and then rounded off the edges.
I drilled holes in the top of the chest block so I could slot the wire into to it for the arms and neck and did the same for the hip block. For the arms and spine/neck wire glued some aluminium tubing to harden up the areas that dont need to be manipulated. I attached the hands and also made a neck by using the same build up technique that I used to make the hands. I have also drilled a hole in the hip block to attach a rig when needed.

The next step was to sort him some feet out. This took a few days of trial and error as I want the puppet to have toe joints. The feet are made from steel strips as I am going to try out magnets instead of tie downs. At first I tried to make aluminium braces to clamp the wire down to the steel. The only way to do this was using 5minute epoxy. I glued them together then clamped them with spring clips to keep them secure.

Unfortunately this didn't work as the epoxy does not seem to bond steel and aluminium very well. The next step was to try soldering them but I had to wait a few days for that as I was waiting on an order of silver solder, flux and some square K&S tubing.
When they finally arrived I decided to ditch the brace idea and use K&S tube to fix the wire to the steel feet plates. The first test I did was with one piece of tubing but when it was done I attached it to the puppet and I found the ankles were not strong at all and would just bend too easily. So I doubled up the K&S tubing and wire that went into to them create a stronger joint. this worked great and was very happy with the results.

The finished feet armatures

While I was waiting for the materials to arrive I started to pad the top half of him out.

The next thing I did was to make shoes for him. I made them using the liquid latex build up as I need the toes to bend. Using some cushion foam I made the base of the shoes which I think look like slippers! After the glue had dried I chopped them down to right shape.

I then added in some very basic details like the back of the shoe, tongues and a rim around the outside.

Then it was time to add the latex. I didn't smooth the whole shoe as I was liking the texture it was producing when drying.
One tip I can offer is if your doing latex build up work and adding it on to foam it takes a while to dry so I found out using a hairdryer to heat it speeds the curing process up quite a lot. Remember though if you have a very thick bits/pools of latex it will just dry the top layer and underneath will not be 100% cured.

The finished feet

After the feet were complete I could pad the rest of the puppet. I only took one photo of that step as I worked pretty fast and didn't really stop while doing it.

I wanted to leave the puppet like this!!

So that's pretty much where I have gotten to with this chappy. He is at this moment in time lying on the table ready to be clothed. I have all the patterns done and some material cut ready to be sewn. I also need to paint up some wood for an animation table and also make the rig to support him when running/jumping but I have to get some photography work out of the way first before I can do those jobs. Hopefully this time next week I will have some animation tests done to show you.

So I will leave you with a sneaky look at how he is looking at the moment even though he is pretty much naked! Hope you are all doing well

Heads & Hands

2011-08-24T22:36:00.004+01:00

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.

Dolly Mixture

2011-08-23T02:30:00.004+01:00

Well Hello there!

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

Also on Vimeo

James and the Giant Peach Animation tests

2011-08-13T13:08:00.001+01:00

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

Blast from the past

2011-07-07T13:55:00.001+01:00

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

2d stuff:

Stop mo stuff

And this is the uni piece from 2007

I hope everyone is doing well.

Macho Man

2011-05-21T19:21:00.000+01:00

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.

Click to view bigger

And here is yesterdays life drawing work

Click to view bigger

MADAME TUTLI-PUTLI

2011-05-19T08:52:00.000+01:00

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.

DIRECT LINK

Behind the scenes:
Animating Madame Tutli-Putli

Animatic and film comparisons

There are plenty more videos on youtube.

Life Drawing 1

2011-05-15T16:26:00.000+01:00

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.

Here is yesterday and today's studies

Click to view them larger

Skinny skin skin

2011-05-14T00:18:00.000+01:00

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!

2011-05-05T22:57:00.002+01:00

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.

--Please click the thumbnails to view them bigger--

Here is some screenshots to see the progress of it

And here is the second digi painting I did.

Quorra from 'Tron Legacy'

--Please click the thumbnails to view them bigger--

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

2011-04-08T01:43:00.003+01:00

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

--Please click the thumbnails to view them bigger--

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

Some closer shots of them individually

Sketchy sketch

2011-03-28T17:51:00.001+01:00

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

2011-03-27T21:20:00.001+01:00

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

2011-03-27T21:13:00.000+01:00

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

2011-02-24T12:30:00.001Z

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

2011-01-31T16:18:00.002Z

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!

Click the images to view them bigger

Robots

2011-01-31T15:42:00.002Z

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?

Click the images to view them bigger

supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

2011-01-20T01:35:00.002Z

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

2011-01-14T20:29:00.005Z

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

2011-01-14T15:15:00.001Z

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

Click the thumbnails to view large

Inspiring words

2011-01-14T10:56:00.001Z

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

2011-01-06T01:14:00.000Z

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.

Gerald's Last Day on DVD

2010-12-11T18:32:00.000Z

Justin and Shel's amazing 'Gerald's last day' is now available on DVD. I can not highly recommend this enough. Please do the right thing and go and buy yourself a copy. You can get it from their blog HERE

Here is a sneak peek of the behind the scenes that they have included on the DVD. Justin and Shel have worked so hard and you can see every last drop of it in the film,behind the scenes and even on their blog.

I always give them a shout out and I will continue to do so for as long as they do what their doing.

Now go and check them out and support some REAL talent! Gooooooooooooooo get the the chopperrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

Royal television society awards

2010-11-12T20:06:00.002Z

Last Thursday I attended the Royal television society midlands awards as I was nominated for best student animation. I spent the whole night with the very strong opinion that I would not win, but boy was I gobsmacked when they announced I had!

Many many thanks to everyone in the stop mo community as without you I would not of been able to make the film. A heartfelt thank you to you all.

Here it is

2010-09-14T03:37:00.001+01:00

Well its been a while since I posted anything on here so here is a pretty mega post!! I am proud to share with everyone my final grad film. I worked super hard on this film and even though it could be 10 times better and whenever I watch it, I pick it apart like a hawk, BUT I am happy with it. Also I have been working on my website which is also finished and online. http://www.stopmotionben.com

I do have some other news to tell everyone about but I am going to wait until I have something to show for when I announce it.

Oh and I am super happy to find out that my blog is included on the accompanying dvd in Ken Priebe's 'The Advanced Art of Stop-Motion Animation'.
I was also even more stoked to find my name in a thanks list in the front of the book. It's things like this that really keep me going. A big big thanks to Ken and also a huge congratulations to him for releasing a fantastic book. Go buy it now!!!!!

So here is the vimeo link to my film. Leave me a comment or or something and let me know what you think. I hope you enjoy it

Watch on Vimeo

Here is a youtube link in case vimeo doesn't want to work for you Clicky Here

Trailer and update

2010-06-28T13:14:00.000+01:00

Well that took me long enough to get round to doing! So it's not really much of a trailer but more of a few of my favourite scenes. I found it quite hard to make a trailer for something that is so short.

Click HERE to view it bigger at Vimeo

Click HERE to view on Youtube

Also I've been trying to get some inspiration for a new puppet but I am really drained for ideas at the moment so I am going to make some thing I have wanted to try out for a while now and was reminded when I did this illustration the other, It not the most exciting drawing but I'm getting closer to the look I want to achieve.

The wee Owl

(Click thumbnail to view larger)

I have to decide whether I am going to try and make the wings on it fold down or if its is going to be a flying only puppet. I would prefer to be able to fold them in, maybe have interchangeable wings. I am thinking it's going to be a stylized design rather than realistic so I can have fun with materials, also I wont need molds and what not.

A super quick concept and armature sketch

Oh and this is Pip, another practice sketch working on texture with brushes.

Hopefully I will have more to report on soon. Hope everyone is doing well.
P.s I finished and passed animation degree with flying colours. First class honours!!!

Oh and it's my birthday, I don't want to be 27 I want to be peterpan!!!!!

Día de los Muertos

2010-06-06T22:27:00.000+01:00

While taking a break for the past few days, I decided to do a bit of illustration. I have been meaning to try out a Día de los Muertos themed character for a while so that's what I did and I can feel it wont be the last.

As for my film I am going to make a trailer for it so all you peeps can get a glimpse. The scenes I didn't get to shoot will be done mid July and if there is time a couple of re-shoots. I really want to show people but I have to keep it off the internet if I'm going to enter it into festivals. I think I'll just have to see how it goes.

Fun times

2010-05-27T07:23:00.001+01:00

So here are a few production photos from the past few weeks. I have a had a great time. I LOVE STOP MOTION!!!!!!

These photos are courtesy of Matt Cusworth

And then a couple from me. Many thanks to all that have helped on this project, love you all xx

Puppet production

2010-05-26T08:05:00.001+01:00

Short version:

The skills developed to produce the puppets and their methods of being animated, were a marked improvement on previous work and were a result of much experimenting with casting methods, airbrush tinting and costume design. Added to this was the fabricating of much more intricate armatures and the testing of epoxy material for skull movement. Much of the Puppetry production was a matter of trial and error, to achieve the desired level of finish.

A considerable amount of research was necessary in finding out Puppet armature design and casting materials that had to be sourced and obtained. Also because of the time aspect, opinion was canvassed from other Stop Motion Professionals to confirm that the materials would give good results.
Research was also necessary into suspension rigs for a particular scene in the production, which enabled the making of a simple device to animate the main character.
Research was required for the costume design and subsequent production particularly with regards to wire framing for the female character.

Detailed version:

I am constantly researching materials and other animators processes on puppet making so I had a fairly good idea of how I was going to achieve this. I also had the character design in my head so it wasn't hard to get cracking on.

Making the puppets was a whole lot of trial and error and money down the drain.
I used the knowledge I had built with making molds and casting on my last project to my advantage although I ended up with just as many problems as I did when I first started experimenting with molds.

One of my biggest problems was air bubbles in my plaster mix. I think this was due to me thinking I had the process under wraps but really I hadn't. Air bubbles in molds equals ugly casting. Ugly casting equals bad puppets. Bad puppets equals completely the opposite what I had set out to achieve, a professional looking film.

After countless failures I ended up running out of plaster at a really crucial moment in the production. This resulted in having to buy many boxes of plaster of paris which I found out that evening is really not suitable for making puppet molds, especially hands as it destroys any detail you have in your sculpt. I needed the plaster I am used too and comfortable with, which is Crystacal R (U.K equivalent of the U.S Ultracal) This left me in desperate situation. I hunted on the internet until 6.00am and found a local builders merchant that had some in stock and luckily my mum was to the rescue and went and picked me some up and brought it back home before 10.00am. problem solved!!!

One of the new materials I used and had wanted to use on my last project was Silicone. I made the mistake on my last project by being a cheapskate and thinking I could use RTV Silicone, which is primarily used for making molds and found out at the last moment it wasnt going to work. This time I was prepared as I spent the christmas holdiay researching what silicone other animators use and how they work with it. Two main brands are heavily recommended. Dragon skin and Platsil gel 10. Both are used extensively in the special effects industry for prosthetic make up and skin for animatronic puppets. It is also used for your usual severed limbs and what not.

Platsil is a lot more expensive then Dragonskin and after reading up a lot more on special effects forums I found that Dragonskin had not long released their Dragonskin pro silicone. I managed to find a supplier and ordered myself some with various other bits and bobs like mixing and measuring cups, vynl gloves, silicone pigment and also the the silicone paint base 'Psycho paint' so I could paint the puppet.

I found using the silicone was actually an fun process and only after a few trys I was able to get pleasing results.

It was also my first time using foam to pad the puppet out. This is another technique that I researched and been recommended by many animators to try. Luckily I had some old packing foam from a few hardrives I brought over christmas and this proved to be perfect.

I cut foam in to strips and wrapped it around the armature and fusing it together with all purpose glue, I would then wrap rubber bands around the main this to hold the shape in place.

The clothes were then fabricated to my designs and sewn over the top of the foam (thanks mam!).

The feet of the main character are made out of silicone. I also decided to test out using acrylic paint instead of silicone pigment when casting them. I had read mixed reports of people doing this but it worked out fine for me even though they ended up looking a bit like those cola bottle sweeties.

The armatures for both puppets are from two different companies.

The main characters armature was from a company called skeletoon. I decided to use their pro armature as it had thinner joints which was ideal for the design of my character. For the lady puppet I used an animation supplies old pro armature which I had lying around for a few years, it just needed taking apart and rebuilding to my design.

The Skeletoon armature came with a big problem in that some of the Allen screws would not tighten and close the ball joints together, even after ordering mores screws from the site I had the same problem. This resulted in a lot of modding and having to seek out my own screws to tighten them. Never the less, crisis averted!

Tie downs where used for securing the puppets to the sets, I would had liked to try magnets as it would have resulted in not having to drill holes into the set and causing much more post production. I just was not certain the strength of the magnets would work with the thickness of the wood of the sets.

The female character is a ghost and therefor designed to not have legs and to float in a ghostly manner! I constructed the armature so that the spine of the body would lead all the way down to the floor and would attach to the set with a tie down.

Another new technique that I used was Applying real hair to the puppet with the process of hair punching. I was mostly inspired to try this after watching the Coraline special features for a gazillionth time. This was researched by with extensive reading on special effects forums.

Quite a simple process, that is similar to stop motion animation itself, requires a lot of patience. The process involves stabbing hair into the head of the puppets with a make shift hair puncher. This was made with a needle and an old wooden handle. You cut the eye of the needle to create a kind of fork which catches the strands of hair in when punching into the head.

The most fun from this process was purchasing the hair extensions from a local shop, where being greated by "Are you looking for something for your self or for someone else?" I then spent the next 30 minutes trying to explain to the shop keeper what stop motion is and that the extensions weren't actually for my head but for a project. Needless to say he didnt believe me!

Another problem produced itself when trying to work out how to style the hair. I read on the stop motion forum that a few people had used watered down PVA glue and brushed it into the hair. This did not work for me and ended up flaking out and resulted in my puppets looking like they had dandruff!
I watched the Coraline featurette on how they did the hair. They used a mix of prosthetic glue and super glue and" Other ingredients" which i believe is some magical glue as I didn't have much luck and ended up smothering the hair in superglue and painting over where it had gone on too thick and frosted up. I also tried to do a "Coraline" and weaved a bit of wire into to the clump of hair over hanging the right side of his face. After the trouble of doing this, I found the wire was no where near sturdy enough to hold a pose. It is something I will try again in a future project and use the failure to my advantage.

Even after all of my research and careful planning I ended up with many puppet problems.

Recap

2010-05-26T08:01:00.000+01:00

So as my project has come to the end (for now) I am going to recap on the process in a bit more detail and also talk about the problems I had and how they where overcome. So enjoy the read and I hope it may come of some use to any stop motion peeps out there.

The Smoutie

2010-05-26T08:00:00.000+01:00

As part of our projects we were asked if we needed any help from the 2nd years. Becky was interested in helping out but unfortunately I was too far into production. I spent a few days trying to find her something she could help with. I checked out her blog and new instantely that i wanted her to draw up a poster for the film as her artwork was stunning. Go check out Becky's blog as it's sweeeeet BECKYS BLOG

Here's the finished poster. it's amazing. Many thanks Becky, you have done a superb job. I'm just sorry that you couldn't help on the actual film.

Lighting tests

2010-05-26T07:58:00.001+01:00

As I Love lighting, it was only right that I did a few lighting tests on the sets when i had a few spare moments. Most of the test were done with 2 lights. A key light and a fill light.

This also helped a lot when it came to explaining the kind of lighting I wanted to achieve.

The were done on the mock up set, this was great for testing how much to push the atmosphere

The next lot came from when the set was nearly finished and the puppet was half done.

Unfortunately I didn't get to do any more test on that set or the next.

I managed to play with the lighthouse set to test if i could use a still image with a digital light on, in case I didn't get time to film the actual set.

As i felt that time was not on my side I went ahead and did some proper shots of the lighthouse set so I could use them in the film. I am really happy with how it has turned out

And a set up shot

Set Production

2010-05-26T07:57:00.001+01:00

Here's some process photos of the production on the sets

Inside the lighthouse

Exterior set

The lighthouse

My new home

2010-05-17T15:53:00.002+01:00

Well for the last three weeks I have been in this room from 10am until 6-7pm. It is my new home, needs a bit of work, maybe a bed in the corner and a shelf for my books.

Might have to move that beast out the corner though

Todays efforts

2010-05-04T22:00:00.002+01:00

Well me and Matt had one of those days where everything seemed to be out against us. The Milo seemed to be having a bad day as it decided to go mental twice. The second time it happened, I watched the set lift up on it's back legs and nearly take a light with it. However we persevered and carried on. We managed to get half the shot done which is better than nothing i suppose. It does however look very nice. There is about another 100 frames left to do on it

In the salon

2010-05-04T21:52:00.002+01:00

I though I would post up these couple of photos as they how sweet the chaps hair doo was before he went to his trailer for make up and styling

The Wife

2010-05-04T21:46:00.002+01:00

With the change of the story I had to whip up a second character. It was originally supposed to be just the one main character battling with his guilt of murdering his brother, but I got stuck with the that story and had to back track to a first idea. So I had the character design already in my head and went straight into sculpting her. I thinkas I have been watching Coraline and Corpse Bride pretty much everyday for the past few weeks there character design has rubbed off on me. So My main influence for her is Nell Vandort from Corpse Bride and Miss Spink and Miss Forcible from Coraline

Without even looking at them for reference I sculpted my head and was very happy with the first attempt.

This sculpt then went in to the mold and cast phase which came out pretty great. Also the armature was sized up and stripped from an old puppet. Another head armature was built for it as well.

She is all finished now and I will post up a finished photo of them both as soon as I get a spare moment while filming.

In full swing

2010-04-30T21:26:00.001+01:00

Well That was a stressful week. Getting everything done and ready for shooting took a bit longer than scheduled. I managed to get the puppets done by 7.00am Wednesday morning and with 3 hours sleep and a fun journey into uni with the set and cases of equipment.

For the past 2 days me and the amazing Matt Cusworth have been setting up lights and tweaking computer configurations. I am using the Milo again, which is soo much fun. Today we spent an hour trying different ways to shoot the first shot, exciting stuff.

I was a bit reluctant at first to post pictures or footage of the film in progress but I think I will as from studying the amazingly talented Justin Rasch's blog, I found it is interesting to other people as well as a good way to follow the progress of the film even closer.

I have had to bring the one puppet home with me over the weekend as his eyebrows are peeling off and I am going to try and split a little bit of the hair and add some wire to it too give me the chance to do some follow through movement. It is also a good job that I did bring him home because as soon as I took him out of my bag I realised one of his thumbs had broken, not happy!!!!

So Here we have a shot from when we just about finalized the lighting. I will post pictures up of the finished puppets and set details on tuesday when I get back into uni.
Fun times for everyone!!!

I forgot

2010-04-17T16:34:00.000+01:00

Check out my band for Some rock lovin in your ears!!

http://www.myspace.com/wearegohuman

So much to show, so little time

2010-04-17T05:06:00.002+01:00

Things are starting to come together very nicely. I am so busy at the moment that I just have not had time to blog whats been going on, so here's a quick look at a couple of things. So I had to change the last head sculpt I did because me being me realized I had sculpted it far too big. So I went back to the drawing board and did a few others that I ended up getting angry at and mushing them up before I could take a picture. Then I landed on the 'one'
(Please Click thumbnails for a larger view)

So with a final head sculpt it was on to my least favourite part of the whole stop motion process, making the mould.

Which was a success first time, yeaaah!! When ever I have made moulds for heads before, they have always gone wrong so I was extremely chuffed that it all went fine

Although the sculpt didn't look too impressed by what he had just been through

I made a head armature as I need this character too have some basic facial movement to get across a few emotions, also I really wanted to try it out and I couldn't see the point in casting in silicone if the puppet is not going make a few big movements.

So with that out of the way I did some final research and went ahead with the exciting bit, which i had been waiting for ever since I started pre production. Casting with dragon skin

Well it didn't really work out very well at all. I think I used way too much pigment or I didn't mix the too parts of the silicone thoroughly enough. Either way I learned a lot and it was fun. I suppose on the plus side if I ever make a zombie film then I have a head for that!!

2nd time went ok, but left very bad air bubble pockets on the nose and forehead. I'm not sure what I did wrong here and could only think that brushing it into the mould first may combat that problem

3rd time was a an almost! But one of the wires inside had come through the skin of the head. Doh!!! I could fell the next one would be a winner. Also On the last cast I realised that making a skull, for the head armature, out of super sculpy was a baaaad idea. That stuff is no where near strong enough to cope with doing the job so I made another one and also made a few adjustments.

4th time was indeed a winner. yay! For this cast I had decided I wanted to try adding a lot less pigment to get a real de-saturated skin tone. It worked out pretty good I think

So with the head done I needed to get on with finishing the armature. I bought a skeletoon armature sometime last year and decided I was going to use it. I had read so many good reviews of their armatures that I was sure it would be perfect. I don't know if I got a defective kit or I was doing things in a stupid way but getting the joints to close up tight was just not happening, although it was only on say 5 out of 15 joints. AnywaysI found some screws that I had to replace their allen key screws for and now its working like a beast. I found some foam to pad it out with and spent a bit of time building it up to get the shape I wanted.

I have had a last minute change in the story which is going to require me building a second puppet which to be fair I know I can do in the time I have before filming starts. He's a wee look at the head sculpt I have just finished for her. It just needs a little bit of cleaning up before she goes into a mould.

And here is a teeny tiny peak of whats going on with the set. It has all pretty much been painted up now and is looking pretty damn amazing. My Dad has gone all out on this one.

So thats all I have time for at the moment. Filming starts next week so I have a few sleepless nights ahead of me but I don't mind, I love what I'm doing and am very excited about it.

New head...maybe

2010-03-29T05:25:00.002+01:00

While my Dad has been working on the set I have been sculpting another head as I am still not happy. The last one had a few flaws that I was not loving. So I started again, not really using any reference this time apart from all of the heads I have made previously and also with some designs factors in mind.

I dont know if I am happy with this one now but I am going to use it to do a quick test with my silicone and to also test out a design I have in mind for a head armature.

I have now published a lot of posts dating back to 20th February that I half started and never finished. I think in total you should see around 15 posts that have popped up out of nowhere . Yay :)

More cutting and sticking

2010-03-29T05:18:00.002+01:00

My dad has been hard at work over the weekend turning the water colour board into walls amongst many other tasks on the set. He spent hours marking them up into sections of brickwork and then even more hours using his magic wand to make them look like actual bricks. Tomorrow we will be putting everything together, which will be quite exciting as I will get to see exactly how big this beast is.

Lumber jack of all trades

2010-03-27T05:09:00.001Z

We now have the main parts for this set cut. We are going to be using water colour board for the walls instead of wood as it is going to be easier to bend them and they also have a really nice texture to them.

I decided this set was going to need legs, from my experience after shooting the last film, as I couldn't get hold of a table that was high enough and I kept getting animators back all the time.

Now the fun starts

2010-03-25T04:31:00.001Z

Well we managed to get he wood yesterday. It was a task and a half to do as I had to carry a huge piece of chipboard ,with a few other pieces strapped to it, from Homebase back to my house. It was sooooo heavy!!! My arms are messed up from it today but oh well it was like a 30 minute workout which cant be bad for me.

My dad got working pretty much straight away, marking up the areas and getting everything ready to go.

Another bonus from today is that I have now have everything for my adventure into the world of proper silicone. It is going to be fun working with it, even though it all cost a small fortune!!!

"Let the wild rumpus begin!"

I will edit this post at a later date with a price list and where I got everything from

A weekend with clay

2010-03-22T03:52:00.001Z

So I have spent the weekend sculpting yet again. After receiving my chavant clay on Saturday morning I got stuck into another head sculpt. I was inspired by the character design sketches in 'The art of UP' especially the sketches and sculpt of old Muntz. using this him as reference I managed to get this sculpt out.

Also heres a screenshot of all of the reference pictures of muntz I was using

I should hopefully be going out to get the wood for the set tomorrow if it's not pouring down with rain

Another sculpt

2010-03-21T02:35:00.001Z

I thought the previous sculpts were looking a bit too young so I tried to get the character looking a bit older and more exaggerated. Even though I enjoyed doing it and it looks cool but I don't think it looks right for this film.
I also need to take into consideration that the puppets head is going to have a basic armature inside so the eyebrows need to be bigger to allow more expression and I have also been worrying that if when i move the eyebrow up it may expose too much of the eye which will look a bit unnatural. I think it will be okay if it does it a little as I have studied my own facial movement and as my eyebrow lifts the eyelid follows exposing the eye slightly.

Head sculpts

2010-03-20T03:00:00.001Z

After drawing out various character designs I wasn't really getting anywhere so I thought I should just bust out the clay and do some concept sculpts and see if i could get any closer to what I wanted. It seems to be working out a lot better. I am going to keep doing them until I'm happy with the design.

Here they are so far(Click to view bigger)

1.

Mock up finished

2010-03-20T00:55:00.001Z

So the mock up is finished and apart from having pink walls it looks pretty damn cool.

I have also remembered I had done a digital make over on one of the photos of the mock up before it was furnished. It was quite helpful to do.

So now to move on to the real thing which will be 1/7 scale

Mock up part 1

2010-03-18T23:40:00.001Z

We spent a few days putting together a mock up set using bits of left over material from the last film. We built it too 1/15 scale. Doing this has given me a given me a really a good idea of how things are going to look.

Character design part 2

2010-03-17T21:36:00.001Z

So I have spent a bit of time looking for some inspiration for my character and while watching 'Carry on screaming' I spotted a chap to get some ideas from.

Kenneth Williams

And here's what I did using him as reference

(Click images for larger view)

I am quite happy with it as an illustration but not for the design of my character.

I also did this design to work on the shape of the body and a first try at how i want the clothes to look

Character reference

2010-03-16T20:54:00.001Z

Here is some of the pictures I have managed to find of old lighthouse keepers. They all seem to have the same kind of hat which I presume is to show a kind of status indicating there job position.

Character design part 1

2010-03-16T17:56:00.001Z

I have been researching lighthouse keepers with not much joy, especially on what kind of clothes they wear. I would like the look of the character to be set in the early 1900's.

With the images I could find I got to work with some designs. Click the pics to view them bigger

I'm actually really not happy with these so I am going to try and find some more inspiration from somewhere. I'll Maybe look at some actors or musicians.

Slacker...kind of

2010-03-14T17:56:00.001Z

I have been quite busy getting on with my new short film, resulting in a severe lack of posts.

Basically I have had trouble writing my story and with the deadline coming up on the 28th May and my booked time to start filming on the 19th April I am going to have to finish writing the story while making the set and puppets.

So thats whats been going on.
Prepare for a barrage of updates with pictures of everything I have done so far.

The lonely Pianist

2010-02-18T08:55:00.000Z

This was for a previous story idea that I had couldn't develop. I thought I would post it up as I quite like it

Mo the mortician

2010-01-31T03:17:00.000Z

A character design to help me with visualizing my next idea. Inspired by the periwig maker from...The periwig maker and Victor from Corpse bride.

Incredible

2010-01-22T01:22:00.000Z

Just came across this person's youtube page via animateclays favourites. Shocking work, very creepy.

Check out a lot more of their videos HERE You can see how much work goes in to puppets.

Sweeet

Snow

2009-12-20T17:15:00.000Z

Well it seems to be snowing hard everywhere in the UK but Birmingham. I want to be snowed in!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's something I did today while watching Christmas films.

Click to view bigger

In with the old out with the new Finished film

2009-12-11T10:05:00.000Z

I have posted the vimeo vid and youtube link just in case your on an Iphone and what not

In with the old out with the new from ben whitehouse on Vimeo.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE

Various photos

2009-12-10T05:39:00.000Z

I'm still quite glad that even during shooting I still found time for a bit of photography

The amazing Mr Cusworth doing his thing

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Bits and bobs

2009-12-09T05:21:00.000Z

I thought I would post up a few photo's of the little details from the set. I am also including the poster designs I made as I am happy they way they turned out.

The tiny bell

Pin board with a miniature version of my brothers calendar

Please note the amazingly detailed light switch

Mad Mike sings nursery ryhmes

Cyber Dudes!

Blink tests

2009-12-08T22:04:00.000Z

I did a few blink tests during post production to see if I could get what I had in mind to work. These were done using the liquify tool in after effects and key framing the effect in and out. They really didn't look very good, so I had to wait until filming so I had some footage to try it on.

I tried it out while I had a spare moment this week and it actually worked nicely but it was using vector paint effect so I was literally drawing in the blinks frame by frame. I will definitely put these in if I get time too.

Personal meaning and life goals

2009-12-07T21:07:00.000Z

Before shooting the film the story didn't really mean much to me, it was just a nice story. But during filming I have realised that it has a personal meaning. I think it is almost a dedication to my Dad as when I was a wee boy I could take any of my broken toys to him and he was guaranteed able to fix it whether it was just a broken rubber band in an action force figure or a broken limb of a Thundercat, he could fix it.
And I'm sure there were times that as soon as he had fixed one I would bring him another in a worse state.

So even though the story could of been more refined I'm happy it stayed the way it has.

Also I have been thinking that i am pretty damn proud of myself for pulling this production off, as 5 years ago I would never had dreamed of actually doing something that I so longed to do. I think that has made me even more determined to push harder and and break some personal boundaries.

The next project is going to a big one. But I am confident that it will be good. With my newely formed crew made up of my family and new friends, things can only evolve in to something that is going to be very special.

Learning outcomes

2009-12-05T01:36:00.000Z

I would like the outcome of my project to be uniquely my style and look as professional as possible with the limited resources that I have.
I also hope to gain an insight as to what it might be like to work with a team on a production.

Im sure that I will definitely learn a lot during this module and will come out at the end with a wider knowledge base on how to develop and create what I will need to further a career in stop motion animation.

I also hope to learn more about film language and lighting for film with the help of Matt Cusworth.

In with the old out with the new. short summary

2009-12-05T01:23:00.000Z

In with the old out with the new is a story about an old man with a vintage toy shop. He is struggling with business being in the midst of a road full of bigger and better competition. He is given hope by a boy with a small problem that he thinks the old man can fix.

Revised Aim

2009-12-05T01:07:00.000Z

I am to produce a stop motion animation short film with the target audience being the flip festival and potential new comers to BCU's animation course.

This will showcase what is possible to achieve with the university's facilities.

As stop motion is my specialized study I will get to put all of my knowledge and research into practice and also try to utilize it accordingly.

I will try to achieve the look of the film to have professional sets and puppets with the limited resources I have and will be unique and fairly stylised.

Phew...

2009-12-02T05:21:00.000Z

Well what an evening last night/this morning was. I managed to make some new heads and they look a lot better. I even made a new pattern for the boys hat as the other one was far to big for the new version. The set was painted and completed on time and the puppets are fully functional. At least i know that I can get things done on a tight schedule.

I pretty much spent the day at uni showcasing the set and puppets off as my tutors sent in people after people to have a look. We also set up for the first shot. I am working with Matt Cusworth who has had 8 years experience in TV and film as a camera man and Director of photography, the man know his stuff. He is fully trained to operate the milo as well. So he is going to have a very boring time while the actual shooting is going on as he has to press a button to move the milo on a frame every time I have taken a frame.
Just in case you don't know what a milo is, its a tv/film motion control rig. It has been used on many movies and music videos. It is a very hi tech piece of equipment and has been used quite a few times by Aardman on the latest wallace and gromit titles, you can see them shooting with it on the making of curse of the were rabbit.
This showcases one of the ways stop motion has not really changed in the way its done but more in the way technology is improving the way it is shot. I feel very privileged that I am getting the chance to use this and it will also be a valued piece of work on my cv and showreel.

Tomorrow we will be filming the first shot.

So anyway, here's how things are looking now

The puppets and set with there new look

The guys with the milo

Me and Matt discussing the shot. By Matt's face it looks like I just said something inappropriate...again

Me demonstrating the removable sides

Rosy and a first year student having a wee look

Heads are done

2009-12-01T01:51:00.000Z

The heads of the puppets have come out okay and I fixed them to the body's. now I have come across a new problem. I am really not happy with how they look. The design looked good on paper but do not look good in the flesh. The heads remind me of Bertie the Trebor bassett man

This has really upset me as tomorrow is the first day of shooting. So to add to the stress of trying to get everything ready, I am going to attempt to make some new head and hands out of super sculpy as that is all that I have that is a flesh colour, unless I want them green faced.

The set is being painted and the clothes are finished and sewn to the puppets. This is looking like its not going to happen.

Anyway here is what they look like at the moment

Hopefully if all goes well then I will post tomorrow with how thing went.

Coming a long nicely

2009-11-29T22:25:00.000Z

Well the set is coming a long nicely. We have all the major furniture built and everything to dress it up with. Also the clothing is nearly finished and the heads are about to come out of the molds. My mum has knitted a great little hat for my boy, it should look cute. She has done an amazing job with the clothing. Thanks mam!

Silicone suprise

2009-11-29T21:52:00.000Z

Well its time to cast my puppets heads in silicon, which i have just done. I will have to wait until this time tomorrow to crack them open and see if they are a success or not. It will be an exciting wait but also a very nervous one. Also i posted up a question on stopmotionanimation.com to see if anyone had used RTV molding silicone before for casting puppets with and to see if anyone knew how to go about painting it. I think its pretty much a no go as the silicone will be coloured already when adding the additive. I will have to work round this as time is running out.

Here's the thread as it goes of into a very interesting read about Ron Cole's (a very very talented chappy) experience with a silicone called platsil 10, which is what I think I will try for my next project although the only places that sell it in the UK don't seem to put prices on there websites for any of there stock which makes me think that they only sell in bulk. Click me to read the thread

Set it up

2009-11-27T23:47:00.000Z

We have started making the set. I went and spent a silly amount of money on the wood for the shell of the set. Not because I wanted too but because I had too. I got what was needed and based on the research I did on set building it was the right choice. I pretty much read all of the post's on stopmotionanimation.com's set section which is Here
and Here

I should also mention that I got a lot of information from the amazing Nick Hilligoss's post about the set he is currently building. Nick is not shy about sharing all the information he has learned and experienced in stop motion and is definitely a big inspiration to me and a lot of other people. Here's the thread about his set.

Based on the size of the mock up we prepared a cutting list from two 4ft by 2 ft sheets of wood. I went for a hard chipboard as it is very easy to drill through for the actual construction and for when I need to drill a hole to tie the puppets down and due to the size of the pieces needed it was a bit more cheaper than MDF and a bit easier to carry from Homebase back home.

I was watching all of the wallace and Gromit films again and got the idea of putting up some posters around the room to fill space so there aren't any bare walls. I will post them up when they have been designed.

Handy disaster

2009-11-27T21:36:00.000Z

A big mess up with the molding of my hands. In the rush to complete the mold I must of left a gap somewhere around the edge of the sculpt as it was encased in the plaster leaving it completely ruined. I'm going to have to figure what I can do as I dont have time to re-sculpt and re-mold. Bugger...

Going well

Not going so well

Hobbycraft

2009-11-27T03:49:00.000Z

I forgot to blog about the trip to hobby craft, so I will do that now. We went to Hobby craft in Solihull last weekend to get all the materials to flesh out the set. When we first walked in the I was getting very worried as the only thing I could find in there was the beads for the puppets eyes. I went around hunting for stuff while my mum disappeared into a hunt of her own for all things card making and beading. Just as I was about to abandon all hope, I bumped into mum and said "they only have tiny crappy packets of card and the over priced beads" to which she replied "you need to go upstairs then" Shocked that there actually was an upstairs she pointed me in the direction and I shot off in pursuit of all things useful. Upstairs was like heaven! Everything I could possibly need was up there. I ended up spending a near £100. So I highly suggest if your a crafty/arty person, give hobby craft a chance as there pretty bad ass!

This film is costing me too much money!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh well :)

Success....kind of

2009-11-27T03:28:00.000Z

The foam casting went quite well apart from the skin that the foam creates set to the mold instead of the rest of the foam. But they still will work fine as the look of them really does not matter as they will be fully clothed. I think it was a good choice to use the foam as I dont have much silicone left. I could of used mattress foam and glued it around the armature but I had a bit of trouble finding where to get some locally and quickly. I think I will try this in future.

Also a pretty cool technique I found on Joshua Mosley's website. His technique is too use a latex glove and pull it up around the armature then fill it with cotton. A pretty cool way of doing it and also non destructive to your armature. His website

--------Click an image to view large-----

Foam party

2009-11-26T22:21:00.000Z

Well I'm just waiting for the foam to cure and it seems to have gone quite well. to foam that's has poured on to the table has gone very nice. I can only hope that the same has happened inside the molds. Will be back shortly to show the result

Heads up

2009-11-26T20:35:00.000Z

The heads have now been molded. I will be casting them in polyurethane foam a little later today. I will post the results when there done if nothing extremely bad has not happend and I'm too frustrated to speak. hopefully all will go well. If it doesent then I will have to try and strip the foam from the armatures or make some new ones. fingers crossed.

Moldy molds

2009-11-25T02:13:00.000Z

I have made the molds for the 2 body's now, next up the heads and hands. The usual process, no epic disasters this time round.

Armatures are done

2009-11-25T01:34:00.000Z

I designed the armatures based on a few sources which are from Susannah Shaw's book Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation and Anthony Scott's www.stopmotionanimation.com which I think is the best place to learn about everything stop motion related. They have a great handbook for beginners and if you cant find what you need in there then ask a question on the forum and your guaranteed a pretty damn good answer. Also there are a lot of professionals and generally very talented people on there. An endless resource.

I have made the armatures with 2mm Aluminium wire, rubber cork, aluminium tubing and white putty.

They are very sturdy and have confidence that they will last the duration of filming.

Playing with light

2009-11-24T09:27:00.000Z

I've been experimenting with light on the mock up to see what kind of shadows I can get on the set. I'm quite happy with the outcome. It will be much better when the set is built and have some proper lighting to try and reproduce the light in the reference pictures, which I blogged in a previous post.

The mock up is complete!

2009-11-24T01:19:00.000Z

Here is some photos of the finished mock up. I have also been playing with colouring the set to see what will work. It's a lot harder then I thought it was going to be.

Put your hands in the air! This is a mock up

2009-11-21T18:53:00.000Z

We ( me and my Dad) have made a mock up for the set. We found some images through google by searching for minature sets and stop motion sets. We finally found some pictures for good reference. These are a couple that gave us the most inspiration.

These are the main inspiration for how we are going to make the shops windows and door. The lighting in these shots are great. Very natural.

I also looked at Trapdoor and paddington for an idea of just using flat 2d backgrounds. I think has a nice look to it but I dont think it's right for this story.

And here is the start of the mock up.

Bodys

2009-11-20T19:21:00.000Z

I have made up all the parts that I will need to cast. There made with super sculpey and have been baked. I have decided to cast the head and hands separately just in case any problems come up they can be replaced, as long as I have enough silicone. For the feet I will just leave them as hard super sculpey with a nut set in for tie downs.
These were made to the scale we produced. The armatures will also be built using these sheets.

Sizes and scales

2009-11-16T18:46:00.000Z

When deciding on the dimensions of the full size Puppets, I had to restrict them according to my printing facilities, that is A4. From my concept sketches of the Characters I decided on a full size figure that would fit onto an A4 sheet so I could scale this up and therefore also develop the props and fittings for the Set. I did this by assuming an accepted height of 5’ 9” [1750mm] for the Shopkeeper then after printing my design for him on an A4 sheet, I put this onto my drawing board and developed a scale by drawing a line from the base line at 60 degrees, marking six equal divisions along this line [to represent 6 feet, then sub divided these into 3, 6 and 9 inch sections. I then drew a vertical line at the side of my figure drawing and put a line across from the top of his head, cutting across this line which I call the “headline’. This represented a height of 5’ 9’’. I guessed a height of 6’ just above this then drew a line from this point to the 60 degree line at the 6th division point. It was then a matter of using a set square to draw parallel lines from the 60 degree line across to the vertical line creating a scale with feet and inches [ 0-3-6-9-1foot]. The scale worked out roughly to 1to7.
This development is illustrated on SHEET 1.

I will produce a small Mock-up of the Set, approximately half the scale size at 1to15. This will probably be made up of melamine faced chipboard that we have in our garage. I will need to make up a card scale ruler to be able to size up the fittings and to allow me to print off two card characters to plan out the story movements.

Sheet 1

Panic and a change in character design

2009-11-16T18:13:00.000Z

Over the weekend I had a big panic that I wasn't going to be able to complete the film in time. I emailed my tutor and stressed to him my concerns, but with some encourigning words he conviced me other wise. So I have decided to simplify the characters heads and design so I can get to work saaright away on making the puppets. this wouldnt of been possible with the original designs as I was still needing to create an armature for the heads. So now they are going to have big block heads and replaceable mouths. I think this can be achieved after watching Elmer Kaan's "Mac & Roe" This has inspired me that you can get a great performance out of a very simple puppet. Heres the short film as it is outstanding and i feel it needs to be seen by all.

Mac and Roe from Elmer on Vimeo.

Also Heres a link to his flickr page with a load of photos of making the puppets.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/animatingadventures/

Success!!!!

2009-11-09T11:28:00.000Z

The silicone test was a success! I left it till today to split the mold open and the head came out great. All I have to do now is order some more and find out what I need to paint it. I also could do with doing another quick test to see how it bonds with my armature wire, I can do this with my old hand mold.

Silicone

2009-11-08T03:17:00.000Z

Well at least there was one good thing about yesterday, my silicone was delivered!!!!!

My mold came out ok even after the disaster that was making it. There was a few chunks broken away on the inside but it is still usable as a practice mold. Which is what I did with the silicone. It was a very messy and long event. The mix was very thick and I ended up being hunched over the mold for an hour pouring it in slowly as the pour hole on it was so tiny. Anyway this was accomplished but the down side to it is that I have to wait 24 hours for it to cure. This is ok as I will be out all day tomorrow doing my first photo shoot with my friends band.

Epic disaster

2009-11-08T02:54:00.000Z

Well Yesterday was a complete and utter disaster. I decided I would make the mold for my new head, this was the start of the bad things to come.

I did my usual process of building up a clay bed around the sculpture adding in keys so the two half's fit together nicely. I tried a different way of straightening up the base. I squared it of as this seemed the most logical thing to do. I then made a cardboard wall around it and fixed very tightly around the clay. This is all my usual process apart from squaring it off.

After all this was done I mixed up my plaster and poured it in. All was fine until I nearly walked away to leave it to set and being stopped by hearing the sound of dripping. To my surprise the plaster was leaking out of the mold and had gone all over the table and on the floor. It had gone everywhere and even more worrying was the fact that this plaster cures in 15-30 minutes. I spent the next 2 hours cleaning up the mess. Also while I was scrubbing at the floor I realised that my mold was pretty messed up and ended up using the plaster I had scooped of the table and just pouring it in the mold. This was not enough so I had to wait for that to cue and add a bit more. The whole thing was very stressful. After cleaning up, I mixed up some more plaster and finished the side of the mold off.
I decided I deserved a break and left doing the second half till later in the afternoon.

The mold was eventually completed.

Little boy concept

2009-11-07T22:36:00.000Z

I have gotten a lot of inspiration for my little boy character as I'm gearing up for the festive season as most of it has come from christmas films.

An unknown film in the UK called 'A christmas story' and everyones favourite "Home alone" have provided the inspiration and reference for the character. The children have the right clothing for what I need, especially in A Christmas story as this is set in the 1950's and goes well with how I have designed the character for the old mender, which I cant find when it is supposed to be set in but they both have the vintage look I am after.

Here is a few shots that I have been working from

A Christmas Story

I also found a chap on deviantart who does some great illustrations for old 80's classic movies and amazingly he had done some from A Christmas story too, which have helped me a lot. Here's his page, he is sooooo good

And here's one of his illustrations. I think you can tell he is an animator :)

Home Alone

About a boy

So here are some of my designs

A few different nose variations

And I think this maybe the final design

Finished head scuplture

2009-11-07T02:23:00.000Z

I finished the head. The next step is making the mold, I will do this with great care from what happened last time. Also I am very happy with the sculpt. If all goes well I may even use this mold for the final puppets head. Hopefully my silicone will arrive tomorrow so I can test that out.

New head

2009-11-06T01:31:00.000Z

I have started to sculpt a new head based on my final design. I will post up the final sculpt before I make a mold of it.

In with the old out with the new

2009-11-05T15:14:00.000Z

I wasn't happy with the way my story was turning out so I went back to the very first storyboard and re-did it. I am quite happy with it but am sure that there will be some good constructive criticism to be had at the next tutorial we have at uni.

In with the old out with the new from ben whitehouse on Vimeo.

Character design for the old mender

2009-11-04T11:06:00.000Z

I have got my final design for the old mender. He is pretty much based on the character Albert Arkwright from the classic 1970's series 'Open All Hours'. He has such a great personality and so many great features.

I just have to make up a model sheet for him and also decide whether I am going to make his clothes or sculpt them straight on to the body so it's all the same piece.

A very quick drawing to get the feel off the shape and detail in his face.

First draft for final

Final design

Disaster

2009-11-01T13:50:00.000Z

I had a bit of a disaster. I made the mold for the practice casting of a head and when it came to split the two halves up, the sculpture inside also split in two and was stuck in the mold. I spent a few hours trying to get the stuck sculpture out but had no luck and had to bin it. I will have to take this as a 'Live and Learn' moment.

Head sculpture 1

2009-10-30T23:22:00.000Z

I have decided I need a new mold to try something with a thicker depth to it, so I have sculpted a head that's based on this concept drawing

I then changed the sculpt a bit bit

I will be making the mold for this later on today or tomorrow