6 September - 13 September

I have spent 7 hours at the tin shed and I have 10 puppet arms (minus the latex) and burning eyes. My problem currently is that I don't think all the arms I made are all usable. This is mainly due to the fact some of the arms are too long and some hands are too large, some half again the size I was aiming for. I can salvage some of this by cutting down the arms to make them shorter and using the larger of the usable arms for the more bulky police men.

The stage scene is starting to take form and Liam and I have started putting together the cardboard buildings for the street scene. We really don't want to be spending too much time on the rest of the sets.

Arms and stage as of Tuesday 6 September

On Friday and Sunday, I spent 4 - 5 hours working on various parts of the stop motion. While Liam was there on Friday, I worked on the bases of the puppet head (tin foil lollypops) while Liam prepared the last parts of the audience seating. On Sunday I put together the beginnings of the hill scene, put coats of paint over polystere boards that will serve as out backgrounds and grabbed a bunch of new material that I will use to finish off the stage. 

The stage has caused a another problem, the 45 degree angle cut off corners cause large holes at the back of the stage.

Hill scene base

Hill scene base

Puppet head bases

Red cloth for the stage

Puppet head bases/ Tin lollypops

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I have started working on the heads for our puppets and I am finding the working rather "interesting". The fact that the heads are so small means that working on the smaller details with my hands is out of the question. Tools are the only reasonable means I have to do this work. The head in the picture above is the first one I have made, constructed for Dr Lache, the magician and protagonist. Because I'm stupid I worked with the clay after using black paint. The little bits of paint fused with the clay and has given it a slightly darker tone. This should be a deal breaker however as the Doctor's looks don't really affect the story. I might make another if I have the time, but I want to get other things done first. 

The hill scene is coming along nicely, but I get the feeling that was the easy parts, I still need to create a grass layer for the outer coating and twist a tree out of wire and other materials. Liam brought in a sack cloth the would work as the grass layer and we have found some green and brown spray paint to give the sack a earthen  look. 

Stop motion research

- Stop motion animation goes high tech at Laika = https://youtu.be/plXmbLAUTRg
- Credited as :Stop motion Animator = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij3IbplMisA
- Behind the scenes of Kubo and the two strings: Montage = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHyTYL1Z1aM
- Inside Pixar studio with Monsters University = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gAlsk9t950
- Boxtroll's Puppets - Behind the Scenes Video from MSMFF = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbiXdYNwpog

Making the sets

We have started work on the stage, street and hill sets for our stop motion short film. While I am enjoying the work, I am really anxious to get the sets do asap. We have been working for two weeks now and we have only gotten part of the way through making the stage set. With two/ three more to sets to go and characters to make, I am starting to feel the pinch already.

This time constraint is made a bit worse by the fact Liam lives out of town. Although he has said he will be there during the break week. I would like to be finished with the set and character by the end of that week with time during that week to work on 2D and comic. As such I am probably going to try to spend extra time in the Tin shed to get some more progress done. Whether this be after class or during the weekend is yet to be seen.

For the street scene we are planning to use cardboard to create the buildings as it as a lightweight material that we have a lot of. Making the buildings out of wood would be impractical. Liam is going to create the buildings at home and bring them.

For the last two weeks, Liam and I have been working only on the stage scene. This is because the material for the characters still has not arrived and the stage is one of two complex scenes to construct, the other being the street scene. Liam has been working on the audience and seating while I have been building the stage its self. The once aspect of the stage we still haven't figured out is how we are going to get the curtains to move when the show has ended. Liam wants to the something similar to a real stage or a shower curtain but I feel like that might be a bit too much work for something that should be simple and insignificant. I lucked out with making the stage as I was able to find several pieces that suited my purposes and required little to no cutting.

The hill is going to be made of polystyrene shavings/ cutoffs, papermasha and foam. Liam is talking about making the hill hollow, but I'm not sure that it be stable if it were hollow.

I have done a number of t pose drawings, one for each character. These drawings are simply to allow Liam and I to work on the sets while the puppet material is still in the mail and to give us a rough idea of what the final characters will look like. The drawings are around the size I would like the characters to be, 20 cm tall, give or take.

Claire: The Magician's Assistant

The Police men

Dr Lache

Character construction research

http://www.stopmotionworks.com/articles/artofSMchpt7.pdf

- Credited as: Head of puppetery  = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kll7aLqgDpE

- Academy Originals - YouTube channel = https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzuwS1ll2HuQ1wV-tqf43KQ