Corpse Bride Photo Shoot

If you are like me you are a massive Stop Motion nut, so I fort it would be a good idea to share with you guys some Photos I took of my collection of these beautifully made Jun Planning dolls from Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. Based on the stunning Puppets made by Mackinnon and Saunders used in this visually inspirational Stop Motion film.

Made to the size of the real puppets, I know that these dolls are the closest thing I will ever get to animating and owning the puppets from this film. I have been privileged enough to hold and pose some of the puppets used in the Corpse Bride, and I have to say its uncanny just how much the Victor Doll feels like holding the Victor puppet.

I hope you enjoy looking at the photos and as always your comments and feedback are very welcome.

 

  

 

  

 

 

Viv & Mandy are now 2 time Award Winners

Way back in in May I found out that Viv & Mandy in the Big Clean up Part 1 is now a 2 time Award winning animation. It won in the categories of, The Best Stop Motion and over all second Place of the Staffordshire University Animation Bites society festival. Sadly I could not make the festival as I was on my way back from my first day working at CITV, but I did make the after show drinks, where I then got handed the awards. I would like to say a massive thank you to all who voted for my Film it means a lot to me and makes all the hours spent animating and editing worth it!

Here are Viv & Mandy posing with their Awards.

 “oooooo isn’t it lovely”

Surge (War of the worlds)

The last project I have been helping out on for my assistant animator brief is a stop motion trailer for ‘The War of the Worlds’ by Zeke Ares, but due to copyright it was changed to the new title of ‘Surge’. I have been very excited about this project for a long time. Zeke told me he wanted me to be working on this way back in 2011 as I am a big fan of War of the Worlds and I jumped on the chance to work on it. I was made the lead animator right away, so I knew I would not be doing much on this project until we came to animating, but as things were being built I could not keep way and helped.
 

As soon as Zeke had the first small tripod (core pod) puppet test made he handed it over to me so I could do a walking test and show how a stop motion tripod would move. I spent the rest of that day animating the test, taking my time so I could get the motion right. The end result was that the core pod did move very slowly but I was happy to get the motion of three legs right. And for the final animation we would speed up the moment of the legs.

Happy with the test, I wanted to do more tests as we had this idea of making the core pods jump and land on people. To make this jump test look more like a shot from the film I took Zeke's old War of the Worlds inspired diorama he made back in 2011. I spent two days animating this test as I had to work around the limitations of the set, mostly waiting for the glue and paint to dry. The puppet also had to be screwed to the sets and attached to a jumping rigged which was painted out in the editing.

When I showed Zeke the test he was over the moon with the test shots he turned round and told me he wanted to make me the Co-Director of the project. This would give me more of a creative input as to how some shots would look, as well as sharing story ideas, and to help out when doing the after FX and editing. I jumped at this chance and was so pleased that he had let me be such big part of his final film. 

I won’t go into too many details on how the shoot went as the film will not be released online until 2013, and there will be a more detailed post on the animating and editing side of the production then. But what I will tell you is that Zeke and I did the entire Stop motion shoot and we had a brilliant 2D and after FX team. There was also so one big shot that we shot using 3 cameras from 3 different angels all at the same time.

For more info Check out Zeke’s production blog here 

www.zekeares-animationcreation.blogspot.co.uk/

If you can’t Waite until 2013 here are the two test animations I did to give you guys a tees of what to expect. And as always your comments and feedback are welcome.

Assistant Animator

Back in January as part of my assistant animator brief for university I was allocated 25 hours to help out and assist on the 3rd year’s final films of my choice.

The Monster Picnic:

The first of thestop motion films I have been helping out on is called ‘The Monster Picnic’ by Lynda Barnes. After talking to Lynda about what she wanted me to help out on, we decided that my job on this production will be to sculpt the full size maquettes of the two main characters. The maquettes will not be used in the final film but will be used when building the sets and props so she has a scale to work to and from. These 2 sculpts are made in plastecine with a wire frame, using Lynda’s final designs as a reference for me to work from. These sculpts took roughly 4 days to make, and Lynda was very happy with them.

I very much enjoyed working on these maquettes, and really liked how the little guys turned out. Click below to watch the final film directed and animated by Lynda Barnes.

The Obsession:

The second 3rd year film I have been helping out on is called ‘The Obsession’ by Kyle Bennett. I had been talking to Kyle the year before about his project and we decided that my job on this film would be to help out with the puppet making. Starting off with the armatures for the two main characters. I told him that he would be better off investing in ball and socket armatures, instead of using wire, as theses puppets would be under a lot of wear and tear. 

Once the ball and socket armatures arrived and we measured out, cut and glued the metal pieces for the two armatures. With the pieces cut and the joints made, the armatures were very sturdy and now ready to apply the foam to.

 

I showed Kyle the simplest way to apply the foam to the armatures, by drawing out the outline of the puppet on to a sheet of foam, cutting it out, covering the armature in spray glue then applying the foam to the armature, holding still till the glue had dried. With the armature now covered we had to cut away the excess foam to get the required body shape. Myself and Kyle repeated this process for both characters. I found myself focusing on more on cutting the female's body shape out of the foam.

Due to other commitments and uni work going on at the same time that was all I had the time to help out with on this project. Click below to view the final film directed and animated by Kyle Bennett.

The Cobweb Hotel Update:

To see the first Cobweb Hotel related post click ‘here’

After the Christmas break a hand full of us spent a week caring on carving the wood from foam board making a wood pattern with a scalpel. Once done we glued down and covered the foam in aertex paint to give it a ruff texture to paint on. When this had dried me and two others started to apply the first coats of dark brown paint.  When this had dried we started to apply the lighter coats of brown and yellow paint to the set.  To get the required paint effect to the set the paint was applied by dry brushings. 

 When the set was finished we began to work on the props.  My task was to make a giant fountain pen that the flies use to attack the spider with.  I made the pen by having the inner cardboard tube from a roll of cling film which I covered with multiple layers of tin foil to get the shape needed for the pen.  Once I was happy with the shape I then went over it with a thin layer of Super Sculpey.  I painted this with multiple layers of acrylic paint to get it exactly the right tone to fit in with the animation style.  To make the pen nib I cut a thin slit in the end and used a shiny golden card to make the nib and glued it in place.  As this pen would be use by the flies, which would fly around with it, I drilled a hole in the side to place the K+S tubing into, so I can mount the pen on to a flying rig.

With the pen finished I was given the task of making of the stunt fly puppets. Using an original test  maquette made by a different student I remade it adding a few adjustments which would make it more of a textured puppet on the face, so it would appear more 3D and much less like a 2D painted sculpture.  The maquette took 3 days to make and once I was happy with it I took it into the plaster room to cast the mold from it.  It took a day to make the first half of the cast; I then removed the clay to make the second half.  When the plaster was dry I opened it to remove the clay sculpt and put it in the drying-out room for a week.

When the mould had dried out I started on making the armatures for the flies.  As the flies I am making are the stunt flies I have to make 3 identical puppets.  As these are the stunt flies they will not be used as much as much on screen as the two hero fly puppets.  This meant I could get away with making the armatures out of very basic wire, milliput for the joints and metal plates welded to K+S for the feet. 

With the three armatures now all made I handed them and the mould over to my tutor so he could cast the puppets up in foam latex. As he could only cast one puppet at a time, he would give me one finished puppet and started casting the next one. I would use this time to get the puppet ready for painting.  I did this by cutting off the extra foam with scissors and touching up the smaller parts with a soldering iron.

 With the puppets now cast in foam latex I started to paint them.  As these are the stunt flies and have a very basic colour scheme, I painted them with a half and half mix of acrylic paint and liquid latex.  I painted the body head, hands and feet of the flies, but, due to time restraints and setting up the set, camera and the light for animating, I did not have time to finish the faces of the flies for the Monday morning.  So I got a course mate to paint them with the main base colour for me, I then went over the black parts of the face again, adding the finishing rounded off look to the face.  The mouths and eye shapes will be made on the day, by whoever is animating them, out of painted card. 

With everything now all complete, it was time for me to start animating.  My scene was the first shot of the films where the spider sings the opening song.  This shot took me and my tutor a day to set up.  We had to set-up lights and camera as well as solving problems with puppet and the set flooring, as the magnets would not hold with the foam board under it.  Once this was done I had 2 and a half days to animate the 17 seconds-long song.  This was a tricky shot for me to animate as I had to time the body movements, hand gestures, and lip sync to the prerecorded song.  This was a tricky shot as the puppet was so big, had 6 legs that’s had to keep still, was very top heavy and would start to fall when in mid-shot, it took a lot longer for me to animate.  With the shot now finished I am very happy with the way it looks and I think I did a good job get the character across.  There are some things, if I could reshoot, I would like to change, mostly on the arms’ animation.  As I feel in some places you can see where it was getting close to 5am and I was rushing to get it finished!

The second shot I animated on was a scene where the spider tries to grab the male and female flies, as the full cast was used in these shots I animated the scene with my mate Joel.  This was the first time I got to animate with someone else. It was a very different animating experience for me but I had a lot of fun and it was great to have someone to help plan out the scene with.  We started off with me animating the female fly and Joel animating the male.  We took it in turns to move the spider.  After the spider had got hold of the female fly we changed to me animating the spider and Joel animating the male fly.  We animated this scene over 2 days and it was 14 seconds long.

Here are the final two shots edited together, I hope you enjoy it and as always your comments and feedback are very welcome!