Puppet Galore

Well after a long (and rather gluey) few weeks my little puppet is nearly finished, woop! Admittedly she still looks a bit terriying, but she now has hair and her decency is covered with some clothes I made out of some old clothes, so shes not too bad :)

After I had finished constructing the main bits of the armature, I got to work fashioning some hands made out of aluminium wire which proved to be a lot trickier than anticipated! The hands had to made from one long piece of wire to prevent separate parts coming loose, and it was extremely fiddly trying to twist the individual fingers. But after many attempts, lots of tea and an excessive amount of cursing I managed to make something that looked like hands...ish. Once I had attatched the hands to the forearms using araldite glue, I spent some time sticking pieces of sponge to the wire areas that were not going to be covered by clothes and to pad out thinner areas of the puppet.

By this point the armature was fully constructed and ready to be painted. I started off by giving the body a thin coat of a flesh coloured paint, including a wash on the foam sections, and then painted on the mouth to make her look a bit more human. If I had more time on this project, I would have liked to make replacement mouths to give more freedom with her expressions. But the deadline is looming, so I have just stuck with replacement eyes and possibly replacement eyebrows.

For the hair, I cut lengths of a reddish-brown thin wool and stuck it on strand by strand over a couple of layers so it didn't look too thin. I even gave her a cheeky lil fridge to give her a bit of character. Im pretty pleased with the results, but I was a bit messy with the glue so it looks like she has a bit of a crusty scalp!

To make my puppet feel a little less embarressed, I made her some clothes by cutting sections out of some old clothes and glued them together to make a simple top and skirt. I made sure I didn't glue the clothes directly onto her just incase I wanted to change them, but so far they are looking ok! The next step is some socks and shoes, not sure how I'm going to do them but I could always paint some on... hmm, we shall see. Here are some piccies of the puppet, sorry there are so many, I've been a bit over-enthusiastic with my camera! :s

Life Drawing 26/05/11

Ooo eck I have just realised my drawing skills have got pretty rusty recently, si I better kick myself up the backside and start doodling more! Here are my most recent life drawings of our burlesque dancer model, who has a rather gorgeous figure despite being 6 months pregnant!

Pitch Project- "The Foodal System!"

Rightio! we have been given another project this term, where we have to form groups and come up with an idea that we will have to pitch to an audiece in a dynamic and memorable way. I am in a group with Alice, Paddy, Sasha and Insa, and during the first week we all got together and started mind mapping some potential ideas and stories that would grab audiences attentions. I remembered watching sketches by certain comedians that poked fun at the contents of food cupboards, so I suggested that we could focus our idea around the 'lives' of items found in kitchen cupboards and call it "The Foodall System" which everyone seemed happy to work with. Although the idea isn't completely original, we all agreed that we could get some really good characters and stories out of it and make it original in our own way. We decided that the idea was going to either take the form of a series of short silly episodes, or possibly a group of web shorts, aimed at audiences aged between 16-25 to give us a bit more freedom to explore some more risquee storylines than a childrens series! The story revolves around the lives of condiments and food located in a kitchen food cupboard, and each episode will focus on one specific character and tell their own little story. The plots are going to be funny and a bit crude here and there but not too 'in your face,' so we want to keep it light hearted and very silly! During this week Alice and Paddy have worked like troopers to get all the characters drawn up which all look really cool, and I have been writing up some possible storylines for each episode and given them some rather cheesy titles! Here are a few examples :)

Episode 3-“Sell by Date”
Rumours have appeared amongst the food cupboard that when you reach old age, you are exiled to a frosty place that is cold and miserable (the fridge) to prolong your suffering , and during your final days you are locked in an icy fortress that suspends you in a frozen eternity (the freezer.) Recently the smelly and muddled Old man bread is looking particularly crusty and unusually blue, which sparks off gossip that soon he will be exiled to this fearful chilling prison, much to the delight of his fellow cupboardeers (especially Dunkan the Teabag, who has to put up with Old man bread’s constant moaning.) Will he face the same fate as the pitta breads, who were looking peaky before their mysterious disappearance?...

Episode 5-“The Forgotten clove”
The food cupboard is unusually subdued due to the recent strange noises coming from the dreaded ‘top shelf’ which leads to rumours of a ghoul gherkin paying a visit. After some deep discussions and fearful conclusions Majesto decides that something must be done, and Senor Salsa plucks up the courage to shimmy his way up to the top shelf to take a peek. But instead of finding a skulking ghoulie gherkin, Senor Salsa discovers a lonesome wizened garlic clove, whose siblings have been sacrificed to the latest bolognaise. The condiments take pity on such a pathetic creature, and embrace the clove as their new adopted family member. Will the clove cope with such a volatile noisy crowd after being alone for so long?...

Episdode 4-“Let me see the size of your rack?”
The nosy spices on their special rack have got themselves into a right old pickle for spreading the gossip concerning a controversial love triangle between Olly Oil, White Wine Vinegar and oo la la Betty balsamic which has resulted in whisperings about a vinaigrette love child. From the food cupboard’s point of view, Olly Oil and Betty balsamic have had a happy committed union, and have often been heard shaking things up when a salad is brought into the picture. However the spice rack has a better view of the happenings outside the restrictions of the cupboard, which leads to a distraught Olly Oil questioning his supposedly doting wife’s affections and her sudden weight increase. Has Betty been dressing more than just salad?...

Puppet Update

Hoorah my puppet is now standing! :D I have constructed the legs and also the feet, which have pieces of wire between the toes and the heel so that when the puppet walks it can step from each point which looks more realistic. I have also placed two nuts on the toe and heel area of each foot, so that the puppet can be attatched to a stage with tie-downs to prevent it falling over during animating. Here are some piccies of the puppet so far...

New Thighs!

My puppet now has thighs, wahaaay! Here are some piccie updates...

puppet-making ago go!

My puppet construction has begun, wahaay! We have now got all the materials we need for the project so we can get cracking, and so far its been great fun! Using my initial puppet designs, I have spent the last week sawing and sanding bits of balsa wood to get the initial body-part shapes sorted and I have had a go at putting the pieces together with twisted aluminium wire and araldite glue. So far I've managed to construct the basic torso, with the head and the pelvis attatched to the chest, and fingers crossed it wont topple over when I attatch the rest of the body parts! In our tutorials Ann mentioned that it would be nice to be able to move the eyes of the puppet to give it some character, and showed us an example of a puppet that she made which has detachable moulded eyes. So I have hollowed out eye holes in the head of my puppet (it looks terrifying at the mo!) and using fimo clay I moulded four sets of eye shapes using these holes as a guide. Once they were baked I painted on all the detail onto each eye, and if all goes well I will use tiny amounts of double-sided sticky tape in the holes to keep them in place. So far they look alright when put into the puppets sockets... that sounds pretty gruesome! Here are some piccies of what I have done so far...

Stop Motion Puppet Designs

Rightio! I have decided to make a stop-motion armature for my negotiated brief project, and hopefully have a go at animating a couple of short tests of the finished puppet, wahay! I will spend the next few weeks building an armature skeleton out of balsa wood, aluminium wire and possibly some fimo if I'm feeling daring! Me, Sash and Paddy are gonna split a big bundle of wire and wood, we have had a few problems trying to find the bloomin stuff but I've managed to get some balsa wood off sarah crombie and sash has found a good website to order the wire. Here are a few designs of my planned armature and puppet, they will pmost likely end up looking completely different because I haven't made one before and will probably be pretty shoddy at first! :S But I shall give it a go :)

Procrastination... we meet again

Eeeep I'm not sure where to start with any of the projects at the mo and seem to be spending most of my time finding silly things to do to avoid work, like washing up all the mugs in the house, re-reading all my magazine, painting polar bears... :P

stop-motion shenanigans!

We are now in our 3rd term.... eeeeep!! Cant believe how quick this year is going, tis a bit scary! But Im getting excited about our negotiated breif this term, we pretty much get to explore whatever we want so I've decided to have a go at stop-motion seeing as I have spend the last few months working on the 3rd year stop-motion film 'The Musician,' and its something I've always wanted to get into. Im kinda nervous about it because my past attempts at stop-motion have been a bit of a disastor, but we have a tutorial with Ann tomorrow so hopefully I'll pick up some handy tips :) I've been playing around with plastecine today, here is a little character I made that I may use to practise some basic animated movements (he's called Ernie, he says hi)

Life Drawing 5/5/11

Here are my latest naked creations, they are a bit on the dark side but I like the brown paper/ chalk combo :)