Reshoots and Extensions:

The production of Viv & Mandy in the big clean up part 2 is coming along nicely. The First scene that IV animated are the in fact reshoots and extensions of the scenes that I worked on when I had finished part 1 and over my time at university on the hallway set. These were only 3 shots and did have some technical problems in them regarding the lighting and staging. 

      Original shot                                           reshot 

Once the reshoots were completed I carried on with the rest of the sequence, this scene will be in the middle of the film and shows a conversation between Mandy and Catherine. This is the first scene that I have completed in the film and last exactly 1minuet. 

Part 2 is going to look very different to part 1 animation wise, this is as because the FPS (frames per second)  have changed,  from been shot on ones at 12 FPS to being shot on ones and 25 FPS. This allows me to get allot more smooth and smaller movement in to the body language and lip sync of the characters.  I’m still getting used to working on 25 FPS  as when I first shot on them the puppets  looked so different to how they did in part 1. I kept on shooting more and more this way and I’m very happy with the way the animation is looking fare. 

That’s all for now guys, keep coming back for more news as I carry on with Part 2!!

Viv & Mandy in the Big Clean Up Part 2 is back in prodution!

I am now back home from uni for the summer witch means I'm now working on Viv & Mandy in the Big Clean Up Part 2 full time. To celebrate the completion of the opening shot and 30 seconds of animation for the film, i will show off the new poster for it. hope you all like it and keep an eye out for the more new and behind the seen photos in up coming blog posts.

New 2011 showreel

I fort it was about time I updated my showreel ,so here is my new 2011 showreel sowing the best parts of all the animations I have done this year. It also shows to new unseen scenes from Viv & Mandy in the big clean up Part 2, enjoy! 

Puppet updates Part 2

This is the second of my two updates for my new puppets and animations which I have done during my time at uni. In this update I will be focusing on the mythical creature puppet made out of foam latex.

Mythical creature puppet:

In my last post I had got to the stage of making the mould for the casting and getting ready to start on the armature. The puppet is now cast and completed and in this post I will show how it was made.

The first thing I did was to get the finished mould open and get the sculpture out. As I had not done this before, I got the tutor to this for me as I did not want to damage the mould itself. 

Once opened I had the long job of taking the sculpture out, but in doing so, the head, feet and arms were completely destroyed. I then had to go over the mould with my tools and get every last little bit of clay out, as any leftover clay and dirt in the mould will spoil the puppet when it is cast.

I then started working on the armature for puppet. This was made using different thicknesses of wire cut to the size of the mould, twisting and gluing them together. To make a grabbing point on the puppet for animating, I took a piece of foam, cut and sanded it down into shape of the bump and holding it in place with some glue and milliput.

I took some milliput and placed it around the wire on the chest, legs, finger-tips and the big ball at the top of the head. The purpose of this was for the same reason that I added the lollipop sticks on the steam punk armature. I then cut and glued metal plates for the feet so I can use magnets to hold the puppet in places when animating. I then took a small drill to the milliput on the head to make the holes for the jaw and forehead wire which I cut to shape and then glued. 

Now that the armature was complete, I had to stretch and bend the wire so it would line up perfectly to the mould. Once it was lined up, I then glued the feet plates in place to stop it from moving around when injecting the foam. Now that the armature and mould were set up, I took it over to the mixing and casting room. As I have never done any sort of foam rubber casting before, my tutor took over at this point and mixed and injected the foam in to the mould for me. Once the foam had being injected into the mould and set, it then had to go in the oven at 90 degrees, for a minimum of 6 hours, to cook the foam fully.

Due to a technical difficulty all the moulds only had 3 hours of cooking, then had to be put into the drying-out room in the clay department. While the moulds were in the drying-out room, the tutor had to work very hard with the plastic room technicians to allow access to their ovens and mixing rooms again. After almost two months of trying to get access we were finally allowed to use them again, but under new conditions.

My mould was one of the first to go back into the ovens as it only needed 3 more hours of cooking time. Once the 3 hours were up, I took the mould out of the oven and waited 20 minutes for it to cool down.  I had not opened a mould before so I got one of the third year students to help me with opening it. This took us over an hour to do and as we were opening it we ended up cracking in two.

Now that the mould was open, I then had to carefully peel away all the excess foam, pulling it free from the mould. Once all the extra foam was removed, I then had to work on slowly removing the puppet itself from the mould. Most of the puppet came away very well, but the hardest parts to remove were the tufts of hair and the front of the feet, as the hair went very far back into the mould, and the feet were glued in place.

Once fully removed, I took the final puppet home and spent the night slowly cutting away at the excess foam around the puppet until it was as close to the surface as I could get it. When that was completed I added the large yellow beads in for the eyes.

I wanted to start painting and adding colour to the skin, but as it had been such a long time in the making, my tutor told me not to bother adding colour and just get as many animations done as possible. To find a compromise, I took some black acrylic paint and painted the eye sockets and around the eyeline. To also show the tufts at the back of the head were hair, I took a grey marker pen and coloured them in. This was now my completed puppet, and after months of waiting I was finally ready to animate with it.

 Here are the set of animation tasks I did with this puppet. I am very happy with the way these have turned out as most of the animation in the video was animated on ones and was my first time getting it to look like smooth realistic movement.

Puppet updates Part 1

It’s been a while since I have posted any updates on my work. As I have left uni for the summer, I now think it is time to give you guys some news and images from my new puppets and new animations over this week.  In this update I will be focusing on my steam punk styled puppet. 

Steam Punk Puppet:

In my last post I had only got to the final A4 design stage of the steam punk puppet. The puppet is now completed and I this post will show how I made it.

To make a basic armature I took 3 metre length pieces of wire and twisted then together, looping the ends of the wire for the hands and feet. I then twisted a thinner wire it around the arms and legs to keep them in place. To give the puppet the look of human joints, I took some wooden lollipop sticks, cut them to size and glued them to the right arm and legs. Metal plates were also added to the feet so I could use magnets to hold the puppet to the set.

As this puppet is wearing real fabric clothing, I had to wrap the armature in pillow stuffing so the clothes will bulk out in a realistic way. To give me a grabbing point on the puppet when animating, I cut away the stuffing from the chest area and placed a block of foam there, holding it in place with milliput and glue.

I then started working on the long frock coat. To make this I drew the shape and cut it out, making sure to leave a half inch gap around the outline. I left this so I will have room to stitch in the wire all around the outline, in order for me to animate it. I then repeated this process to add the red lining to the inside of the coat. To add the sleeve I took a strip of fabric, sewed it into a tube shape and then stitched the red fabric and wire into the inside of the tube. 

I then stitched the sleeve to the inside of the coat using little tabs I cut in the top. To make the shoulder pads and the remaining part of the ripped off sleeve, I made the shapes out of a light cardboard and glued them on with PVA glue. Once the glue had dried, I took small strips of the fabric dipping them in PVA glue to cover the cardboard so two fabrics blend in.To make the trousers, I drew out a flat outline of them onto the fabric. I cut this shape out and using this shape re-drew around them on more fabric. I then cut that piece out and stitched the two halves of fabric together. Once the trousers were all sewed together I then turned them inside out and put them on the puppet.

The head is sculpted out of super sculpey, using my tools to add and smooth the details into the face. The face of this puppet is half normal and half burnt and damaged. To get the scaled look and burnt texture to that side of the face, I used the rough grip handles of my tools to roll over the sculpey to create it. The hair is made out of same the stuffing I used to wrap around the armature, coloured with chalk pastels, cut and glued it to the head. To give it that half burnt look, I used more PVA glue on the burnt side then the not burnt side to flatten the hair so it looks singed. 

The top hat was made in the same way as the shoulder pads were, first making it out of cardboard, then covering it in PVA glue and fabric.  The biggest difference was that when it had dried I went over it in permanent marker to add more texture to it.

I then started on the paintwork for all the sculpey and milliput parts. To paint the burnt half of the face I did a number of dry brush cotes of  the first one was a light orange with  small highlights of purple, red and yellow around the face. I went over all that side of the face very softly with a light cream to highlight the textures.

I moved on to the robotic arm and foot. I painted this arm with two different shades of brown. I used a dark brown first to paint the entire arm. The second was a lighter brown highlighting the different details of the arm. I repeated the same painting process on the robotic foot. 

The props were all made out of milliput and painted the same way as the robotic arm, then added to the puppet using PVA glue. The first prop added was the mechanical eyepiece with it string to the face. I then added backpack by slipped it over the puppets shoulder and covered the entire backpack with PVA to keep it in place.

When looking at the puppet the mechanical pieces on it did not have the appearance of copper and were not they steam punk. To help with this I got hold of some copper paint and gave all the mechanical pieces a light dry brush coat of copper. This gave all the parts a good copper metallic shine that completed the puppet.

Now that the puppet was complete the only thing left to do was to start animating with it. And here are the first set of animation tasks I did with this puppet.