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!
