'Hard' part is over!

The mold making process really tires me out. I've been using WED-clay to make the walls for the mold and by the second time around I knew it was the wrong material to go with. I just had this giant block of it now so I'm using it. My little niece loves playing around with water and combined with this clay does miracles in creating a mess - which my niece also loves doing. At least she's getting a kick out of it :) Next time I'm gonna go with Klean? or Kleen Klay as recommended by Ron Cole (Isomer) in his badass mold making tutorial videos! It looks easy to handle and is re-usable so an investment is well worth it.

Over the course of making the initial wall as Kathi did in her video, my energy just gets zapped to hell and by the plaster stage I was really cutting corners which is a huge mistake. I just hope I didn't do too much to create a faulty mold - would be heartbreaking. Normally I have over an inch on all sides of the sculpt but this time parts of it came in just under an inch -.-! All the important details are still intact as far as I know. We'll see later today - I like to let it dry for at least half a day to put my mind at ease.

So I was reading up on the handbook at SMA.com getting some insight on urethane foam and puppetmaking in general and came across this message that I think Mike (Strider) posted:

"Working with foam latex requires a considerable set of skills that must be developed over time... such as sculpting and moldmaking. Before diving in head first and investing in the expensive equipment and materials, it would be wise to develop these skills and familiarize yourself with some of the various techniques and materials involved."

Hah, maybe I should have heeded that warning :) The reason I jumped into Foam Latex was because of Gerald's Last Day. When I saw how capable Foam Latex was I bit the bait and was reeled in. Of course most of it is the animator, I was just impressed how much movement there was and I wanted a piece of it. But I'm pretty lucky I've gotten anywhere with this process. I feel like I didn't have to spend the crazy amounts I had anticipated and I've learned so much throughout - I'm very thankful for all of the info at that site.

Sidenote: Got my whole camera set up bought and paid for. Webcam -> Angle Viewfinder -> Nikon D70 -> Laptop -> Nikon Capture -> Camera Control Pro -> Me. Feels very nice to have the whole set :) Only thing left is the lighting and the immense process of LEARNING lighting.

Relief...

Finally. Done with the sculpt. It pays off to have a design beforehand. Cause if you're like me and you don't - sculpting on the fly can make your face cry. And I'm not going to lie, I had a few tears to dry.

Here he is:



I'm very happy how the hands turned out. Just gotta put in beads for his eyes before making his mold as well as do another once-over to check for any details. Other than that, DONE!

Moe's Progress

Morning:
Tried a lot of ways to get finer detail with him. Ended up taping a twisted wire (with loop at end) taped to a pen. 2 more days to finish (I lied before hehe)

Sculpting is really growing on me! Quite fun :)
Starting details:


Left Hand:
Or round fingers better?

Maybe somewhere inbetween?

Now thats 'Moe' like it!

First off, my father and I were talking about the dolly and he had insulation foam in his hand. He said he had tons of it and would make the camera tray move smoother and more quiet. He was right - but because the design of it all is so cheap it isn't PERFECT although with the foam it runs pretty darn smoothly now. But, he wants to make another one - we might be able to re-use half of the stuff we've already built. He wants a thicker drive shaft, bearings for the drive shaft to remain steady, and possibly foam in a couple of places to try and make the rumble of the dolly almost nil. He likes doing this stuff and it shows. We've always had a hard time getting along but since this whole stop motion turn we've been working together really often - its quite nice.

I guess I take after my dad some senses. I'm reworking Moe - this time with everything I've learned put into action. Moe 1.0 I thought had too skinny of limbs - it wasn't true. His limbs were fine I should have just used 1/16" armature wire. However I did cut off his mouth - which I shouldn't have done either. His design was also very rubberhose-y. No curves except for his dome haha. So this time I've shrunken his head and gave him some more style. He'll be a little bit more dashing this time around. On top of that I was looking up preppy clothing images and Ryan Seacrest came up all over the place. One of the images really worked - Sweater vest!



Here's the progress:

Building it up.

Forming it out.


So what I've come to want:

Long limbs / extremities for better motion control.
Not to work with super sculpey heads if I can avoid it.
More detail.
Facial expressions (brows, mouth, eyes). Clay brows, flapper jaw for mouth, beads for eyes.

I may elongate his legs a centimeter or so - his fingertips can almost touch his toes with his arms just dangling down :D

He'll be wearing a sweater vest on dress shirt with tie and brown or black slacks with fancy shoes courtesy of Ryan Seacrest. He'll also be wearing a much smaller head on his shoulders. I imagine it will take me 2 days to finish this sculpt in full detail. 1/16" wire for the upper body is the key! This time I'm getting it right :)

*Also found out that my sis put the shutter settings on her point/shoot camera for 1 sec - thats why they kept blurring. See the diff between the first and second picture!*

Vanni's Power Drink / Camera Dolly Built

Man with the failure I had last night and the heat still sweatin' me I would have never thought I'd have the willpower to do another test animation today. But then I did. I saw these grey bricks in the front yard lined up and it looked so much like Justin Rasch's Flea test animation that I was going to do a spoof of it with Vanni. I sketched it out on paper but it got so hot that from the first step I just decided to do a straight ahead animation and get it done with. There were only 3 bricks though haha so I had to use the 55mm and shoot up real close.



The movement is pretty crude at parts and I really need to find a garage to live in so I can animate there - the carpet is just a no-no :)

Feels nice to finally animate my own puppet. Vanni has tons of problems with range of motion but I'll be prepared next time when making another character.

Edit: Fixed my entire blog width to fit the wide embeded video :) Much roomier!

Update: I walked downstairs and my dad comes in:

Dad: You do it yet?
Me: Do what?
Dad: The thing, you finish?
Me: What thing?
Dad: *points to garage*
Me: Oh you mean the camera thing? The wood is still where you left it.
Dad: *walks away*
Dad: *comes back 5 seconds later* Ok let's go.
Me: Alright.

*click pictures to enlarge*




We used a lot of stuff sitting around the house. Pipes, all the wood, screws, washers. I bought that threaded rod + circular casings + coupling nut + regular nuts. It cost about 10 bucks since we had all the wood at home. Pretty amazing. It isn't perfect and we didn't expect it to be perfect - but its way better than I thought it was going to turn out. Towards the last inch on one side it stiffens up (and we found out why).

If you're building a camera track here are things to remember:

-Don't bend your threaded rod (I did haha)
-Don't be fancy and try to make a closed end at each head where the pipe doesn't follow all the way through (Dad really liked the closed look) It caused the most trouble and ultimately lead to that last inch stiffening. Does look nice though :)
-Make sure you know where your screws are going and how thick the wood they are going into are. Buy screw lengths accordingly.
-Sometimes simplest things give the best results.

I'm very happy with it and my dad says he'll make an even better / simpler / prettier one later after learning some mistakes here. He's actually a little ashamed of it and didn't even like that I'm putting pictures of it here. I'm just glad this is one part of stop motion that didn't take me weeks to learn and if it comes to it we can build another one in 2-3 hours.