Armature Planning & Mrs Shoug Maquette

Now I have to get my making hat on! Lots of things to make, with a big range of materials! Here are a couple of my planning sheets of how I am going to go about starting to make the puppet and also some photos of a maquette that I made in a day to use as reference for the puppet.  

So after deciding (finally!) how I will be going about making the armature which would allow me to involve a replaceable tail for movement, I decided to make a maquette to help me get a 3D view of Mrs Shoug, here are the final images of that...

Now onto making the final puppet...

"Every child is an artist, the problem is how we remain an artist when we grow up." - Pablo Picasso

It's the start of second year! After two small projects to ease us gently back into the chaos of Uni projects, we got a project titled; "Minor Project - Character Performance."

We were each given a drawing of a character by a child that they had designed whilst listening to a specific sound clip. Shannon did a great character design which I was assigned. We each then had to re-design our given character, keeping as close to the original as possible! Here's Shannon's Mrs Shoug character...

Using this as my starting point, I did a lot of development and initial concepts of how to go about creating my final character design. I also did some research into existing slug characters in animation just to start looking into how I would go about creating poses, movement and different facial expressions.

After a lot of development I came up with my final design of Shannon's character... 

This was my final design for Mrs Shoug I kept with the colour scheme that Shannon had decided on, gave more detailing to the labcoat with two pockets, added more of a style to the glasses using red beads in the glasses and emphasised her hair style. I exaggerated her jowls to give more of an elderly look to the character as the sound clip suggests an older womans voice. I gave my character arms also as it would be hard to create a character with posing and expressions without arms or legs, just a tail. 

Here are two sheets of expressions and poses that helped bring the character to a life!

For the next project I have to make this character as a working puppet complete with a set and props! More posts to follow...

Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!

I thought I'd celebrate the end of first year by doing a blog post showing some sketches animals and birds - my favourite type of life drawing!

For our second visual studies project we had a section on drawing animals & birds, which I thought was amazing as I took trips to Perriswood Falconry, Cardiff Museum, Bristol Zoo & Folly Farm to do some observational studies. Win win, it's all work!

"Toucan Play At This Game"

Quick studies in black fineliner, pencil sketches, pen and washes, watercolour and coloured pencil studies.

"Cows make noise only when they're in the mood"

Studies in acrylic and watercolour paints, fineliner pen sketches, soft pastels, studies on coloured paper, etc. 

The making of; Glammies Stings

So I made/provided the two sets for the stings. One set was for the corn and had to be a stove top with a frying pan that will be the stage for him. Another set for the tomato which I will have to replicate a kitchen counter top. 

So I used MDF for the base of each of the sets, timber for a frame under each and for the legs, another small piece of MDF to cover the front of the sets, a thinner MDF for the sides and chipboard for the backs of each.

To cover the kitchen counter top I used Fablon which is a sticky vinyl to give the look of a kitchen counter and a wallpaper for the sides, both from B&Q.

Then I bought a utensil holder and used some of my own utensils to give the idea of proportion so the audience can compare the tomato's size to objects they are familiar with.

                        

I did the exact same method for building the base of the stove as I did the kitchen top, the only differences being that the stove needed a replaceable back and needed a hole through the base so Nicki was able to animate the corn through the frying pan. 

I used the same wallpaper as its the same kitchen that these fruit and vegetables come to life! And used aluminium paint on one side of the back board and the other was painted acrylic black. 

For the stove rings I sprayed the underneath of 4 china plates with black spray paint and then painted silver around the edges. I used caps to attach the front panel so the screws wouldn't be seen. For the knobs I used spare cupboard handles that I had around the house. I attached the frying pan with mastic. 

From the offcuts of the timber and MDF I made a stand for the eggbox/audience seats so the eggbox could be attached to it for easier animation. 

Then the Cornstar was born, abs, bum and all! Nicole did a great job on this guy!

And here's the eager and excited audience!

Nicki made our very own one of a kind Glammies Ketchup!

So here they are, our final stings! Enjoy!

Tomato's Dream

Cornstar

Glammies Prep!

I had an amazing time at the Glammies 2014! So much talent in Screen 8 yesterday! Well done to all of the winners, their work was incredible. But as first years, we had the important job of creating the stings for the show, we had to make funny little videos that played in between the main parts of the show - whilst keeping the audience entertained and laughing! I can definitely say we were successful.

So Team Stop-Mo, the "Good Eggs!" were obviously one team. We had the themes of 'Growth, Fusion, Flourish' so that was interesting. So we threw some ideas about and suddenly were weak with laughter when we thought of our final idea! 

We planned out who would do what so we could work effectively as a team and get the job done quickly and efficiently! 2 week deadline! But our idea literally 'blossomed!' So we decided each of our roles...

Sophie Lewis - Props & Sets

Bailie Lovell - Storyboarding & 2D Drawings

Nicole Brookes - Felting Character Puppets, Animatics & Editing

Sarah Trigg - Felting Character Puppets

Nicola Bilbie - Animating 

We have to give credit to my friend Amy Thomas in third year, as she did her Final Major Project film with felted puppets, scenery and props. We wouldn't have thought about using that technique if it wasn't for her! Check out her blog here; http://amytanimation.blogspot.co.uk Thanks Amy!

Above: I did some planning sheets to give myself an idea of how the two sets would look and work, but firstly! Here's some of Bailie's initial storyboards...

So we went down the route of using fruit and vegetables, in a... well, strange way!

Our first idea was Corn Star. A corn that has a profession of being a stripper! And our other idea was Dreaming Tomato. A tomato that has lots of thoughts of how is life is going to turn out but unfortunately things don't go exactly to plan!

Check out my next blog update for felted characters, building sets, Photoshop sheets and final stings!