BA1B-Stop-Motion

Stop Motion Project Blog for Animation at Norwich University of the Arts 

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Andy A & Raj KS - Final Stop Motion Animation 2016

This is Raj and I’s final animation  on vimeo with both clips edited together, some video transitions and sound applied from freesound.org

Looking at this I now realize that the sound applied to Raj’s character’s footsteps are too loud, but it is unfortunately too late to change this, so this is one improvement I would point out. There are a few unwanted objects such as pins in frames here and there but overall I’ve really enjoyed the stop motion experience, and am pleased to say that I feel as though I have created a puppet that I am delighted with, despite it not fitting exactly to my original character sheet.

 I also feel as though our final stop motion animation is an overall success, with some nice comedy timing and a simple narrative that communicates well from start to finish, the animation can be a bitty jittery at times such as when Ritz is rummaging through the garbage, but that was because this was a hard section to animate without accidentally nudging pieces of trash with my hands and arms here and there. If I could go back and do this again I would almost certainly pin or glue the pieces of garbage to the set when they need to stay still. Other than this, I really like the animation Raj and I have created, and have enjoyed stop motion, but I do not think it is likely that I will be coming back to it in future projects, as it is not my main interest and I prefer other mediums over it. 

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After Effects Tutorial - Keying, Using Layers and removing Screens

In another after effects tutorial, we learned how to edit out footage further in a professional manner and apply effects that enhance the visuals, such as blur for depth. Using yet again the cup asset, this time with a sky backdrop, skyline and grass foreground, we implemented our images and layered/keyed them to get some movement. 

The first thing we used was an asset of a sky backdrop scaled up that we keyed with a very slight horizontal movement that gave the impression that the clouds were shifting across the sky. This was created on the very back layer.

The skyline was on the layer just in-front of this, and would remain static, but we applied a relatively intense Gaussian blur to the asset to give the impression that it was out of focus and in the distant background. 

The grass was actually 3 seperate assets, one behind the centre focus (the cup) and two infront of it.  They were all blurred at different levels (except for one - they weren’t blurred as much as the skyline however) to give more of a sense of depth and focus. The grass was also used to hide some blu tac that keeps the cup held in frame for the shots where it needs to jump up slightly to move.

Finally, the cup itself was an image sequence filmed on a bright green screen. The film was at a high quality and had a very flat screen with no smudges or marks that would make editing it out difficult. We edited out the screen using a tool known as “keylight”, but there are many other ways to do this. The tool we used had a series of sliders and a colour selection dropper that allows the user to slowly remove a specific colour in shot - these have to be experimented with until the result is as good as it can be, because otherwise there can still be a hint of green in the background or the assets in shot focus can begin to appear transparent. 

^ Before and after playing around with “Keylight” (this can be seen in the top left of the second image along with the colour selection and sliders) to edit out the green screen.

In the final section of the session Sam also demonstrated how to use the eraser tool in a separate paint window to take out unwanted objects in shot - This is only possible to do if you have an empty background layer that you can use to replace sections of the erased content, which stop-motion and CG students especially should always do before starting to film. This technique is invaluable for editing out rigs, small smudges, pins, hands and any other small issues in a shot, which are all very common nuisances.

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The camera we used shot at 1080p and captured the details of the set in well focused high definition. Raj’s character’s individual seams and stitches as well as my character’s fur material could be seen in high quality with great colour contrast even in the zoom. 

As seen in this frame, there is also a sense of depth created in camera through focus. Establishing a focus check in dragonframe before shooting and ensuring it was in focus allows the camera to automatically adjust to what’s in shot - Therefore there is more focus on the characters and the bin, where the lid in the background (which is not a primary focus) is slightly blurred. 

Looking back at the animation after adding some sound from freesound.org, I now realize that the footsteps applied to Raj’s character are too loud, but it is too late to fix this unfortunately

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Stop Motion Filming Session Two (Vimeo Link)

The video above is from my animation vimeo page. It shows the completed film from Raj and I’s collaborative second filming session for the Stop-Motion animation project at NUA. The film starts directly after the first animated short ends (the one posted prior to this), as the camera will cut or transition straight into this film because Raj couldn’t make it to the first and our plans were delayed. 

All the filming was completed in one afternoon on the 7th of March 2016. Raj brought in his puppet which was a very impressive model of scarecrow girl, and began filming his walk cycle which I let him get on with whilst I sketched outside. We then collaborated for the main section of the film in which the two interact -

Raj’s character sees Ritz the Raccoon making a mess and confronts him, waiting for him to clear it up. In response Ritz looks at what he has done and back at the scarecrow girl in a comedically timed interaction, before running off, leaving her to clean it up. 

What’s good about it? What worked well?

Raj’s character’s individual section/walk cycle was very successful and flows well, with clear attentiveness to the number of frames of each step in the walk and the movement of the head, making for an animated segment that looks professional

Though the timing could use ever so slightly longer pauses (as Helen and Barry suggested upon giving feedback), the use of comedy timing communicates effectively and works well - particularly when Raj’s character crosses her arms

What could be improved?

As before, there’s a few unwanted pins in shot and sometimes objects appear to move on their own accord where we might have knocked them - Using some editing software could clear this up but it won’t look quite as good as simply pinning objects down and making sure no unwanted objects were in shot , which we should have done

Ritz the Raccoon is supposed to be rummaging through the garbage excitedly when Raj’s character walks into shot, but somehow the movement just feels unnatural and too fast

The exposure, in comparison to my previous film, is not that same. My character’s individual section is over-exposed and the transition looks odd as result. I was told this could be fixed in post-production, which I tried. The result worked fairly well, and helped balance the exposures slightly, but it also darkens the character and the bin prop - a perfect balance isn't possible and if I had done this again I would have ensured both films (which need to be stranded together) were equally exposed.

Overall, however, I and Raj are both really happy with the film we have, and look forward to editing it and potentially adding sounds (perhaps recorded ourselves, perhaps not)

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First Filming Session - The Film

This is the result of my final session that I posted about. I am pleased with the result and really enjoyed creating it, I am particularly happy with the pauses and comedic timing as I’ve stated before, and think the running sequence and tipping over of the bin prop stand out as particularly great sections.

There are a few issues I have with it, and things that have been brought up from feedback, such as the fact that when he looks in the opposite direction of the bin with his hand on his head, the pause should be longer to accentuate his excitement when he sees the garbage bin. Additionally, when the garbage spills out, the crisp packet moves on its own accord, this was a mistake during filming as I must have knocked it with my arm. 

However, overall, I’m very happy with what I have created as it is only my fourth time working with stop motion - I am still a beginner!

Note: The film also gained the most attention of any post on my facebook page, as I decided to share it as part of a larger portfolio and it gained the largest reach of any of my posts so far! A total of about 625 people have seen the post and 231 have viewed it entirely as of late 2016

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After Effects Tutorial 

Our after effects tutorial a couple of weeks ago taught us some of the fundamentals of Adobe After Effects CC, and industry standard post-production software that allows for complex editing, visual effects, motion graphics and compositing. I am already familiar with Premiere, which has its similarities, so I found some aspects easy to grasp, however Premiere is used mainly just for editing and fairly basic effects, so I had to learn a lot of new content. 

Our initial tutorial gave us some basic assets, which were frames of coffee cups moving as though they were running, and a backdrop of a track for them to appear on. We simply combined the frames and played them in sequence, duplicated them to make it look like a competition, did some simple recolouring in the effects window, and added some sound effects to top it off.

 The session taught me some fundamentals of after effects from basic effects and layering to using the timeline and how to properly export our videos (the video above is only a segment of the clip I made as the file size was too large for tumblr), all principles that I will certainly consider using in the stop-motion project during the post-production stage!

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First Filming Session - 02/03/2016

The week after our final puppet building workshops I began to film my stop motion animation with Ritz the Raccoon. Raj, my partner for the animation and the project overall, was ill on the morning and couldn't make it, so we made a plan for me to film one section, and Raj and I would come in next week to add the next with his character, also, his character was not yet finished, so this would have been the most appropriate way of doing it anyway.

Overall the filming went well, it took a while for me to get used to the way my character moved, especially since it was very hard to gauge exactly where the wire skeleton pieces were underneath the thick material I had used. But once I had gotten used to how he moved and where the tie downs were needed, the walk cycle and first double take/action was finished. 

The hardest part of the filming process was working with tie downs, and if I had done this project again I would have certainly made the holes in the feet more noticeable. The black feet and the fur covering the holes in areas made it very time consuming to identify where the pins could go and appropriately tie the character down, and the first section of filming took about 4 hours as a result.  I actually ended up covering the holes with a small piece of parcel tape so that I could identify them easier. At times in the film, pins and other small objects can be seen in shot for two frames (I shot in twos), so I may consider editing these out in post-production!

^ An example of a shot where many pins and other small objects can be seen, shots like these could be edited in after effects to remove these and make the film look generally more professional

The establishing shot - Sam (one of the media techinicians), Barry and Helen all advised getting a shot like this, which is largely blank, in order to be used in post-production to layer/mask over unwanted material in other shots such as the pins

In shots where Ritz would tip the lid off of the bin prop, and interact with the bin by tipping it over, I managed to hold the props in awkward poses in shot (such as when they are at 45 degrees) and stop them from falling by pinning the bin lid to the bin base, and pinning the bin to Ritz himself

Keeping the trash from moving on it’s own accord when it was all spread out was tough, and this exact thing happens a few times in the film because I might have accidentally hit it with my arm, breathed on it etc. The same goes for the bin itself at times

One thing I AM happy about with my film is the pauses, and the comedic timing, which you should hopefully be able to see when I post the finalized video soon!

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Final Model Photographs with completed head and accessory!

In my final afternoon of puppet making with Barry Leith, I made the necessary construction and final touches to Ritz the Raccoon. After ensuring the head was facing the right direction in relation to the neck hole and facial features, I began to cut out eye/snout holes in the fur fabric material I was using for the exterior, and then wrapped the wooden core, securing it with impact adhesive.

Once the wooden ball was completely wrapped (with the knot to hold it all together noticeably at the back of the head) and stuck down, all I had to do was simply push the facial features (eyes and snout), connected to small pieces of aluminium wire, through the holes in the material and securely into the holes drilled in the head. The result was a character that looked slightly funny and goofy, but I was really pleased with this, as it gave him character and (in my opinion) made him overly likeable, which is what I wanted to go for from the very beginning. The ears are small pieces of triangular fur material, facing the opposite direction (exposing the undercoat material) to give the impression of an ear with depth, and fastened inside of the near finished head by small pieces of wire. 

Once dried, I was really happy with how my character was looking, and needed only to give him his final feature - the red tie. 

The red tie is made from ribbon bought at the Norwich market, it is tied and cut where needed to make the loop and triangular end section, and sketched on roughly with a marker to give it a pattern on the blade (the lower section of necktie) 

http://www.ties.com/blog/tie-anatomy

One thing to note about how my character has changed is the removal of the white highlights on the face, as these were difficult to pull off, the fabric I had for use didn't match or work with the grey fur material, and I felt like they unnecessarily complicated my model. The final character looked goofier and overly wider and chubbier than my finished design on the model sheet, which I assume is common amongst many stop motion characters as it is sometimes difficult to bring a character effectively into the real world without any necessary changes due to real world challenges and issues. As a result I plan to eventually update my character  model sheet, making small changes to each of the models in the turnaround so that it matches my character more closely for submission!

At this point I am ready to film, and just want to reglue the character in places (such as on the facial features, which are still a bit wobbly and loose) to ensure my character will remain sturdy and consistent throughout the day or two long shooting process.

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Building the Prop

The prop for Raj and I’s film is a garbage bin made from grey card with patterns sketched in black marker and fine liner. After getting a cup from subway, I managed to take my card templates (made in the previous puppet building workshop) and fit them around the container and the lid to create a sturdy set prop that can stand by itself (unlike before). 

The card is fixed to the cup and lid by hot glue and impact adhesive, and is filled to the top with various pieces of trash and leftover materials found around the puppet building workshop during the day. Ritz the Raccoon is going to interact with this by walking into shot, identifying it, running over to it excitedly and tipping it over - spilling the contents onto the ground. After rummaging through the trash, Raj’s character is going to confront Ritz and eventually the mess will be cleared up and put back into the bin.

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Final Puppet Building Session

In my final puppet building workshop session with Barry Leith, Barry helped me to finalize my character, building the bulk of the body and beginning to take shape with the face. Once the limbs were finished and the adhesive was tried, we took a large part of the fur and lined it around the body, making cuts for the tail section and stretching it around the chest to hide the outer rim of the felt belly (which has a little belly button drawn on with black marker). The result can be seen in Figures 1-5.

I then began working on some smaller pieces to be used as facial features. At this point, I had some beads to be used as eyes, a snout with a fitted nose made from milliputt (now dried) and the sanded wooden ball for the core of the head, but was unsure as to how they could fit and how I would paint them. Barry suggested that I wrap the head in the fur material FIRST, and apply the facial features afterwards so that they are layered on top, fixed to the wooden core using a small piece of wire fitted inside of the facial pieces (via smalls holes that we could drill into them and the wooden core). I liked this idea, as I would be able to move the facial features separately from the head by curving the wire - It’s worth noting that I was not too concerned with how the puppet might blink, as I don’t consider this to be all that necessary for what now was beginning to look like a goofy character.

The beads for the eyes (seen in the image above) and the snout were both painted using white and black acrylic paint from the fine art department. They were drilled into with a very fine drill-bit and had small wire cut offs glued to them with hot glue, which will eventually fit inside of the slots in the wooden ball head. I dipped the beads in the white paint for an even coating, and used the holes on the opposite side with a circle of black paint for the pupils. 

At the end of the day, though I hadn't glued the fur wrapping for the head on yet, I did a test to make sure that the dried facial parts fitted to the wooden core through the material, and also to test that they looked okay, which I thought they did! I was very happy with the outcome, I thought he looked quite cute and goofy. Additionally, I added a small darker piece from the fur scarf near the groin area where some of the foam was exposed. At this point I am very close to finishing my puppet, and just need to finish constructing the head and build the tie accessory. I plan for the head to be entirely detachable, just like the plasticine figures in Aardman’s “Wallace & Gromit”.

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Stop Motion Puppet Building Workshop - Pt.3

Over the course of this week, I have been doing the bulk of my puppet building, and have even started work on a prop so that I am ready to film starting in March. My partner Raj is working on his at the same time, a scarecrow who is going to confront the Ritz the Raccoon after he spills over some trash in another shot. I’m going to document my process step by step, going into as much detail as I can about how it was built.

The images above illustrate my step by step process

I began by cutting foam in Room 54 of the St.Georges Street building, the puppet building workshop was closed for the afternoon so I started my exterior in there. Using a black marker, a scalpel and some nail scissors I had bought, I started marking where I wanted to cut the foam to shape Ritz’s body, and started to cut out sections for the body, arms, and feet. The body was created using a thick piece of square foam cut down the middle and hollowed out, so that it could fit on either side of the torso and stick together at the edges with impact adhesive. I also cut the foam smooth with the nail scissors and trimmed it down as it was originally to thick and bulky - Figure 1

The hands and tail were layered with foam in a similar fashion, where I measured what I needed, cut it out in identical sections, and stuck them together over the top of the wire. 

I then measured and cut out a piece of felt for the belly, which I stuck to the front of the body. I used more grey felt than I actually needed, as Barry suggested it would be a good idea to layer some of the fur on top of this (around the sides), revealing the belly underneath, giving the sense of varied fur thickness - because my original intention was to stick the belly on top of the fur as illustrated in a test in Figure 3, which didn’t work out too well as the felt was moving around too much - Figures 2 & 3

The first pieces of fur I began to cut out and apply to my character were for the tail and feet. One important thing to note was the the foam and fur combined was much too thick and bulky, weighing down the character and not giving a very good balance either, as it was too heavy for the wire-frame. So I ended up removing the foam underneath on the tail (which I eventually did on the arms too) so that I could simply apply the fur directly to the wire. The tail was quite simple to cover in the coat, as I just used a rectangular piece of faux fur, wrapped it around the wire (ensuring it curved nicely over the tip) and gradually cut away stripes in the material revealing the darker undercoat to give the impression of the Raccoon tail. At this point it really started to take form. I did the same with the feet, curving it around the wire and attaching it with impact - Figure 4

One issue I had with the tail was that it looked much better on one side than the other, it had a dark seam on the right side that I had to cover by stretching the grey fur section and sticking it down, giving a sharp, not so soft and furry texture.

The arms were created in almost the same way, but I had to push the wire coils (the Raccoon’s claws) through the material. Cutting sections out of the fur material really made a mess and even ended up getting on other people’s characters! - Figures 5 & 6

Earlier on in the week I had bought one of the wooden balls I needed for my character’s head, it costed about £2 but wasn’t hollow, and was the perfect size for the core. I marked roughly where the face would be on the ball, and Barry drilled a hole where it needed to be fitted to the neck wire. At this point it fitted to the neck nicely. Helen asked me about how I would fit the facial features to this, to which I responded with my idea of glueing them on and layering the fur over. Helen said that she had something I could use to sand down dips for where the eyes need to go - a power tool with a sanding bit at the end to get precise sanding on the wooden exterior. Using this, I made dents in the wooden ball for the eyes to be easily fitted - Figures 7 & 8

At the end of the week, once I was happy with my character’s progress and let it set and dry, I started to think about building a prop for the filming set. The bin is made from a grey card, sketched on with a H pencil and a black marker to give it a cel shaded ‘cartoony’ appearance. At first I was not too happy with the result - Figures 7 & 8

A friend of mine (Ryan) then suggested using a cup and lid from a fast food restaurant, as the card I had built was the perfect size for fitting directly onto it - This would also allow the lid to fit perfectly onto the base. I did this by hot glueing the card to the cup and keeping it in place with an elastic band, and I am now happy with the result! During our workshop sessions we had collectively gathered a large amount of of excess material and trash, of which I actually took gladly and put inside of my new prop so that I could use it in the film! This included pieces of cotton/paper and other materials, as well as some leftover beads and a crisp packet.

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PARANORMAN Set Visit Video Blog from ColliderVideos on Vimeo.

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Stop Motion Puppet Building Workshop - Pt.2

For our second and third sessions of puppet building with Barry Leith & now Helen, I managed to get hold of some materials to work with on the bulk of my character:

I managed to get hold of some free foam cut offs from a small stall in the Norwich marketplace, the man working the stall offered me whatever I wanted from his leftover pieces! I took as many as I could and let some of the other students share too.

I managed to get hold of some materials that could be useful for the fur from a charity shop not far from Duke St. The Salvation Army had a grey faux fur scarf and a collection of soft toys that I could cut pieces from to lay onto the foam on the exterior of my character. They both came to around £3

I also bought some grey A4 felt from Hobbycraft, which I could use for the softer, less hairy belly of the Raccoon; this costed about £1.50

First of all, in a review with Helen, she told me that the wire for the tail was hanging too low down and would make adding material over the top complicated, so to fix this we simply curved it over the hip piece (of Milliputt) and fastened it down with another, smaller piece of Milliputt (which can be seen in the first two images above).

In this review with Helen, she also expressed some concern that the material of the teddy bear that I had bought from the charity shop might not fit the same texture as the grey fur scarf:

The bear was soft and had a very thin layer of fur on the outside, which did not fit well with the grey faux fur scarf as the textures did not match. I had hoped to use the outer material of the bear to depict the white facial highlights of my raccoon character (shown on the face below), but after testing the two pieces of material together, it was evident that this was not going to work...

The scarf itself, on the other hand, was much more useful, and admittedly was a very lucky find for the greater part of my character’s soft and furry appearance. Helen and I identified the main advantages of using this piece of material, which were:

It was thick and had a lot of weight to it, making for something that effectively expressed the main coat of the character. My main concern with this was that during the production of the animation it might get moved and brushed in a certain direction accidentally in shot, making for unrealistic and chaotic motion in the fur - but Barry (who told me he had experienced a similar issue on “The Wombles”) and Helen assured me that this can be avoided by simply brushing the fur downwards once I had positioned the character for a shot.

It had a grey overcoat, and a dark black undercoat when the overcoat was cut away - this made for a bit of mess of hairs but would be extremely useful to express the darker sections of the Raccoon, such as the stripes on the tail and facial mask! Helen identified this as an advantage of the material when she experimented with it but testing it’s possibilities on a stray piece.

Underneath the fur material was a much silkier lining where the scarf would have sit on the wearer’s neck. This was making the fur material that I needed much too thick to be applied to the character, so we tested whether it could be cut away, which it could! Using some small nail scissors, we could easily cut off the stitching which separated the lining from the fur, leaving us with a nice fur coat with knitted cotton underneath that could easily be applied to the character with adhesives such as impact or hot glue.

The stray piece of the scarf that we tested on to identify the possibilities of the material - We simply cut this off and it has been used several times so far to test it’s practicability and limitations such as how effectively the material can stick to other materials

Here we can see the fur coat on top of the lining it is stitched to - This is where the wearer would have worn the scarf around their neck. We were able to easily separate the two, giving us only the material we needed (the faux fur)

I was now almost ready to start building the bulk of my character’s exterior on top of the wire-frame skeleton, but just needed a few more materials to ensure I had everything I needed, this included:

Materials for the eyes, I originally thought about using marbles, which Helen thought would be too heavy - she suggested getting beads and simply painting in the pupils (this is how Aardman made eyes for their characters)

A core for the head, Barry suggested a small wooden ball , as this would be strong and sturdy, and would also be easy to drill into and sand down so that it can fit into the wire neck piece and can have facial features applied - I could buy this at Thorns DIY opposite the Jarrolds down Exchange Street

A material to make my character’s necktie accessory with, a simple red ribbon or piece of felt from the Norwich market would suffice, as long as I am able to sketch directly onto it to create the pattern I want

And finally, some paint, white and black acrylic preferably. This is so I can paint my character’s feet (which have now been shaped with Milliputt in the heel and toe and drilled into with a needle drill so the pin tie downs can be pushed through) as well as his eyes and snout (the snout will also be made with milliput). I plan to borrow this from the fine art department for a day rather than buy it myself, as I won’t need very much of it at all

Additional objects and materials for building a prop that I want in our film - A garbage can filled with small pieces of trash of which the Raccoon will interact with

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Stop Motion Puppet Building Workshop - Pt.1

(click pictures to enlarge)

Our first puppet building workshop with animator Barry Leith sought for us to create our puppet wire-frame skeleton ready to begin adding the exterior materials and fabric. 

To begin with, Barry & Robin Fuller looked at my design and gave me some feedback on how I might want to go about building it. I was sceptical about the small legs and large upper body on my Raccoon character, which Barry assured me would be fine with the combination of large feet and large amounts of foam in the torso. He suggested that instead of using Milliputt for the head, I use a wooden ball, as this would be easier to work with and could be drilled directly into to fit directly onto the centre wire. Robin suggested some places to get the materials I need to shape the exterior, and started to get me thinking about how I might want to create features such as the tail, ears, eyes and claws.

After coiling the wire with 3 strands of aluminium, we began to shape the skeleton on top of my model sheet. We always use more wire than we actually need, so that we can just cut off excess wire, as it is much easier to do this if we need to than to extend it. We then rolled the putty together so that it was ready to fit and mould (by turning over the putty and rolling it around several times) and fitted it to the wire. The way we did this was by using two identical pieces, laying one below the wire and one on top, ensuring the putty covered all of the coils and openings, preventing it from falling out. We let the putty dry on a thin sheet of blue plastic, as the epoxy does not stick to the material and can be separated from it with ease when it is dried out.

The next day, when it was dried, we focused on some of the more key features including the arms, legs and tail. The arms and legs had their wire coils unravled to give the impression of hands and feet, also allowing it to stand with the tail as support. The tail was a single strand piece of thick aluminium wire fitted to the hip piece of putty, which I unravelled when the frame was dry - At this point the figure really started to take shape, and already looked promising!

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Stop Motion Animation Puppet Building Class with BARRY LEITH

http://www.animatormag.com/archive/issue-03/issue-3-page-23/

http://www.chrisbeetles.com/artists/leith-barry-born-1943.html - A History and Overview of Barry’s Life & Career (click “read more” on the site)

Barry Leith (born 1945), is a distinguished stop-motion animator, working on such projects as Paddington Bear & The Wombles. Due to his experience in such a specific field of industry animation, and his knowledge of the inner workings to achieve successful film, the university were lucky enough to bring Barry in for a lecture and a series of workshops to help us build our own puppets!

Barry animates Paddington Bear (TV Series: 1975-1986)

Barry first of all demonstrated how to build the wire skeleton using coiled aluminium wire strands and milliputt. Setting up a camera on his desk so we could see what he was doing more clearly, he shaped the skeleton of his character over the top of a model sheet (to scale) as reference, he made it clear that the wire is easily breakable, and showed us various techniques of making sure that it would fasten into the adhesive epoxy efficiently.

The adhesive we use to hold the wire in place is an epoxy putty called “Milliputt”. Barry explained that when the putty was being shaped, bent, curved and fitted, it was like clay, easily mould-able and flexible. But once it was left for around a day to dry out it is as hard as rock, so it was important that when we fixed it to our wire we make sure that all areas have been covered and we have done it correctly, for changes to the wire are difficult once inside the dried putty. Some of the tips from Barry included using single long strands of wire that pass through the putty (as shown in the arms and legs doodles), “hooking” the wire inside of the putty so it doesn't accidentally slide out, and uncoiling the wire strands to give the impression of fingers. 

We use coiled wire for a majority of our character skeletons, as it is stronger, but some parts may need a single strand thick wire, such as a character’s tail or details such as ears, as these need to be more flexible. We were finally asked to consider our character’s weight distribution - we were not necessarily encouraged to make a character that is balanced and upright, as an interesting design might be asymmetrical and unique in it’s height, weight and figure (we are always encouraged to be creative and experimental), so therefore it might be necessary to use stronger tie downs and/or a rig to keep them in a pose in shot, which can be edited out in post-production. 

Once the lecture was over, we were let go to design our character model sheets and get feedback before our first building workshop...

My first character model sketch in my sketchbook, before our lecture with Barry, notice how the head is fairly large and I didn't have a very good understanding of how the wire frames work.

My updated character model sheet/wire frame concept in relation to Barry’s lecture, notice how (wire highlighted in red, epoxy in blue) I’ve extended the hips for better support, curved the wire rather than using seperate pieces and have a generally better understanding of how the epoxy putty works. A smaller side view can be seen in the top right corner.

Students working on their ideas for their character model sheets after Barry’s lecture, ready for a workshop on puppet building for the skeleton in the next week, where we will also develop our designs in accordance to Barry’s feedback.

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Ritz the Raccoon Animated Turnaround

[ba1b-stop-motion]

Final Character Turnaround

Using my original front on image as reference, I began to colour each of the turnaround sections until I was happy with them. I then exported each of the turnaround images as png files in their own separate Photoshop documents, reversing them where necessary in order to develop a working turnaround film using any video editing software available to me - This was not particularly important as I just wanted to animate the turnaround to make it more engaging. 

One issue I had at first was that reversing the images did not give an accurate turnaround, as the tail changed direction and did not end in the place it started in, this meant redrawing the tail on the reversed frames, but this did not take too long and the resulting animated turnaround was worth it.

>The film will be posted after this post