Umaña - Thesis Blog

Andrea Umaña -- VCDM 475

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This week, I wrapped up my couch scene. I animated Arthur walking into the scene, sitting, falling asleep, to falling into a dream where he has a tail, then waking up to check if his dream was real. This scene was a lot of fun to shoot, and I am really proud of myself for how it turned out. I am excited to begin the next scene of him walking to the mirror to have a moment of self-reflection, then walking outside to meet Leo the dog.

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This week was spent having Arthur walk into frame and slowly sit back into his recliner. I spent a lot of time trying to make it perfect. It took some readjusting, but I am happy with how it turned out.

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This week, I began working on the scene of my short film, Tale of a Tail, where my main character, Arthur, walks to his recliner, takes a seat, turns his TV on, and falls asleep. For this sequence, I had to carefully plan out where my tie-down holes would be drilled into the floor, and make sure that his walk was crouched and slow to add to his age.

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This week’s scene features Arthur sighing, then turning and walking out of frame. To make the puppet’s walk look natural, I drilled tie-down holes into the set at each point where his feet make contact. This process required a lot of planning and precision.

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In addition to the flashback sequence, there’s also a dream sequence where Arthur falls asleep and dreams about the same moments from his past. In this dream, he has the tail of his neighbor’s dog, a symbol of his jealousy and inspiration for how freely the dog can express its emotions. The dog simply feels and reacts without hesitation, while Arthur has always struggled to show how he feels. In the dream, the tail becomes a way for him to express the happiness he wished he could have shown in those real-life moments.

For this scene, I added a tail to all three of my puppets. Attaching the tail to the older Arthur puppet was tricky; whenever I moved the tail, it pulled on his vest. To fix this, I decided to mount the tail on a rig and hold it behind him instead of attaching it directly, and the solution worked perfectly.

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This week, I began working on the flashback sequence for my short film. It introduces two new puppets alongside the main Arthur puppet, representing different stages of his life and illustrating his lifelong struggle to express emotions. One depicts Arthur as a middle-aged man holding his newborn daughter, with an “It’s a Girl” banner hanging in the background. The other shows him as a child wearing a birthday hat beneath a “Happy Birthday” banner.

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This week, I continued shooting my senior thesis. Shooting at 24 fps, it takes me roughly 1 hour to shoot one second of footage, depending on the complexity of the scene. I am proud of my work so far and the blinks in this animation. I created separate eyes, molded with clay, onto mini magnets to adhere to the magnets baked into my puppet's head. The blinks worked much better than I could have imagined. I am also really proud of how my blinds performed in this animation; they did exactly what I needed them to do.

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I began animating my stop motion short film this week! Day one was a success. I tied down my main character, Arthur's puppet, and began with the first scene where he opens the blinds. I filmed my own LAVs as a reference for timing out the scene. I am incredibly proud of how well the blinds worked out and how cooperative they were with the animation. I was concerned they would not hold their position long enough to take each picture, but it only took a bit of repositioning if they did close mid-shot. I also utilized the eyeballs I created out of clay that I molded onto magnets, then painted to be one set of eyes open, one mid-blink, and one shut to interchange them for the blinks. I am very happy with how things are going so far on this production, off to a good start.

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This week, I began putting my set together in my school's stop motion studio. I screwed down some 2x4s that I cut down to create a gap to be able to reach the tie downs that I attached to the floor of my set and the walls. I tied down all of my props with gorilla glue so they will not move, including all the books in the bookshelves, the bookshelves to the walls and floor, the couch, paintings, blinds, coffee table, front door, TV, and TV stand. I wanted to make sure this part of my production was done well to ensure that nothing would move around when I begin shooting. I also began to place the camera and lighting in the correct positions to decide where things would be before I start shooting next week.

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This week, I designed and built miniature blinds for my stop motion set, which was a new and exciting challenge for me. I created three sets of blinds, two measured 5 1/4" x 4.5", and the larger one was 7" x 5". I was very pleased with the final results, as they added a realistic and functional detail to the interior of the main character’s house.

To construct the blinds, I cut thin strips of cardstock to 1/4" and carefully poked three small holes in each strip using a sewing pin, one hole 1/4" from each end and one in the center. I threaded sewing thread through these holes to allow the strips to lie at a natural angled position. Using a bent piece of wire as a precision tool, I applied small amounts of Gorilla Glue at each intersection of the thread and blind to hold them securely in place.

For the opening scene, where the main character peeks through the blinds at his neighbor and her dog, I created a set of five animatable blind strips. These strips were rigged with hidden wires, concealed between two glued layers of paper. I placed the blinds at the precise height to align with the character’s eye level, carefully leaving the middle intersections unglued to allow subtle shifting during animation. The ends were glued to provide stability while still enabling natural movement as the character interacts with them.

This process involved both technical problem-solving and attention to visual storytelling. The finished blinds contribute not only to the realism of the set but also to the narrative, emphasizing the character’s observational perspective and adding depth to his environment.

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For the decorations of the inside of my stop motion set, I decided to create some original artwork to hang inside my main character's house. I painted three scenes, all depicting isolation and that evoke no strong or overtly happy emotions. I plan to have the lighthouse and single tree paintings show during the first half of the short film, and the brighter scenic painting during the last few shots, once he has accepted expressing his true emotions, which represents the new beginning and doors he's opened for himself by allowing himself to be true to his feelings. For these paintings, I used acrylic paint, and they range from 1.5x2 inches to 3x4.5 inches.

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For the floors of my interior stop-motion set, I created a hardwood floor using 400+ popsicle sticks that I hand-cut, sanded, glued, and stained onto a sheet of pegboard that I cut to size. I had previous experience making something using this technique when I created a pier for an older stop motion short I filmed (Image 1). I applied these techniques on a larger scale to create the hardwood floors. I went through 3 rounds of staining and painting to achieve the desired color of the floors. I used RIT powder dye in cocoa brown, mixed with a few splashes of black for the initial stain. Then I went in with some acrylic paint and darkened some floorboards to make it look worn down. Lastly, I did a few final passes with a thin paint "white wash" using unbleached titanium acrylic paint and brown, diluted with a lot of water to make the colors more cohesive and bring the whole look together. I intend to use the floor for the main scenes in my stop motion short, and I will drill holes in it to make tie downs as needed.

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During the dream sequence of my short film, the main character, Arthur, has a dream that he has a tail. To do this, I wanted to create a removable tail that I could use for each of the three characters for the three scenes rather than create three separate tails. I brainstormed ways to create the armature for this tail, as well as whether I should create “bones” for the armature using epoxy. Ultimately, I decided to use two different types of wire and sew that base onto a strip of velcro to attach around each puppet's waist. I then needle-felted the tail using a combination of hemp and wool to create the thickness and shape of the tail to my liking. I also needed it to be animatable, so I made sure not to make it too compact so it can still be moved. This step in the process took a lot of planning, and I had to redo the tail’s coat once before getting the desired result.

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The hair for these puppets is made of wool for the male puppets, and Hemp fiber for the female puppet. For the male puppets, I dyed to wool, and I added white wool to the older male puppet's fibers to resemble the grey/white hairs. I curled the hair around toothpicks and used a hair straightener to heat the curls and hold them in their new shape. I then cut them into smaller sections and planned out where to add them to the head before placing them on the head. I alternated between using Gorilla glue and tacky glue to attach the hairs.

For the female puppet, I dyed hemp fibers and combed them out with a makeshift comb I created using 3 needles I taped together. I then mixed together water, hair gel, and tacky glue to create a watery paste that held together small "wefts" of hair that I sectioned out and smoothed on a glass plate. I then cut these pieces of hair down into strips and sandwiched them with a piece of wire between them and glued them so that each piece of hair would be animatable.

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For my senior thesis, I created a dog puppet. For this process, I made the armature out of wire, epoxy, and oven-bake clay. I then needle-felted the armature to create the fur. I based the design of the dog on my own dog and used pictures of him as a reference. To make the eyes, I molded clay onto small magnets and baked them, and painted them black. I also glued magnets to his head so I can easily interchange each set of eyes for blinks. I created a collar for him using embroidery string. I made the ears adjustable as well as the mouth, so it can open and close to animate any barking if I decide to do so. Some challenges I faced were making sure the wool lay in the way I wanted it to, since it was my first time needle felting.