If you didn't know, I heart stop mo.

I'm doing a whole presentation based on the character development within this animation short, due to this I've watched it endless amounts of times and I still love it.

Maquette, Set and the like.

Yeah so in the last brief I got all the armature/sculpting/mould making done and in this one we had to pad out and clothe the armature; build the set; and use the moulds to make latex versions of the hands and feet.

I'll try and keep the explanations short because, lets face it, if your not into animation/model making and the like your only here for the pictures, pictures which there shall now be an abundance of.

So, lets start with the boring stuff that I absolutely hated doing and didn't turn out right at all: latex casting. Using my plaster moulds I coated them with layer upon layer of latex, which I'd coloured with acrylic paint. This took an absolute age as it takes over half an hour at the least for each layer to dry. I then shoved my wire armature hands and feet into the moulds and here's what I was left with, these are my second attempts I might add.

Now we'll move swiftly away from my latex work, it's not the best so I'd prefer to brush it over and move on to something a bit more fun. When I say fun, I don't mean fun at all, I mean epic when it's finished but pure hell when doing. This is my armature all padded out and slowly being dressed, the pictures will be like a none sexy, backwards strip tease for you to enjoy.

I won't bore you any more with my explanations, the photo order should hopefully do all the explaining. If your interested in how I did anything just ask and I'd be happy to reply. I don't claim to be an expert and I've probably done some things wrong, I can just hear the sharp intakes of breath by professional model makers, but I get by.

Cat build.

Chair build.

Finished set.

Ignore the terrible photo quality, there's nothing wrong with your computer, I'm just that bad a photographer.

Armature Build & Sculpting

The best way I can show you what I've been doing to create this part of my build is through the medium of photographs...

After making my wire armature I had to sculpt hands and feet so that I could make plaster moulds for them. The feet mould was simple enough but the hand mould had to be a two part mould, which means double the pressure if even the slightest thing goes wrong with either half. Here are some of the steps it took to make the moulds, not incredibly interesting but fact filled none the less.

That last one is of my sculpts in their little wood piece boxes covered in plaster if you were wondering. Here are my final plaster moulds, they could be better but they should work well for this minor project.

Annnnnd finally, one of my favourite things to do is work with Plasticine, during the process of working though I can get pretty fed up when it doesn't work how I want it to but then the final product always makes up for it. It could be improved, like most of my work, but this is the head of my old lady character made from Plasticine and cotton wool, oh and some other materials thrown in for certain parts too.

Oh, and in case your wondering "Charlotte, how on earth are you going to get it to talk and fit the lip sync?!", which I just know you are, I've got two words for you: Detachable mouths.

Procrastination

So I'm in the process of making plaster moulds for the hands and feet of my armature but as usual I've left everything until the last minute which is never a good thing. Luckily I'm on top of the work and will upload some photos of the steps I took to make my moulds and my metal/wire armature as soon as.

In the mean time I've been sketching again, not that I haven't done it in a long time it's just in this case it's of thing that I wanted to draw not that I've had to draw, which is always pretty sweet.

Not my best work but I'm pleased with them none the less.

I found, I loved.

I came across this piece of stop motion animation by NFB.ca the other day. I absolutely loved it.

Don't judge me but it's my kind of thing.

Onto the building stage

So, if you remember my old lady character I posted the other week, well it's time to start building her ready for my animation. It's a lot like building a mini person, starting with the skeleton then fleshing it out and so on. If the armature (skeleton) isn't built right you can end up in a whole lot of trouble down the line. I'll give you a rough idea of what I need to do as the starting point for my final maquette, and I'll give it to you in picture form, the best kind of form.

This is just my construction page that I'll work from as guidance when building, in the process of my actual build I'll be taking pictures of each step so you can see how it's coming along.

The last time I built a working maquette was at the end of my first year for my character project, I made some mistakes during that build that I've definitely learnt from for this one already. Here is my final character build from my first year, this is Raymond the Mole and I'll post the animation that I made to go along with him as well.

Storyboarding

It's no secret that I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to things like comics and drawing comic strips, so when my brief was to storyboard an already existing advert I thought 'yeah that'll be fun', wrong, oh so wrong I was. It started off great but by the time I got into the 7th hour straight I just wanted to punch every single character in that bloody advert - and that was only the rough draft.

I'll put a link up to the advert I chose, and I hope you'll agree it's a classic, then I'll show you my final advert storyboard because, lets face it, the rough draft is practically the same thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SAbJjktk7E

While we're talking storyboards I suppose I'll let you know about the second half of the brief. We were each given a page from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle script and had to storyboard that page how we thought it should look/play out, so to speak. Again, sounded great, as a kid I loved the ninja turtles and I thought that this part of the brief would be a bit like making your own comic book (If any of you were "lucky" enough to have seen my previous comic book, that I made a few years ago, I must say I've progressed significantly since then!). I'm pleased with how my storyboard turned out but if I'd put maybe a bit more effort in and had more time it would have turned out far better in my opinion.