Category: Puppet Animation

I used my plasticine puppet for the chosen lip sync task. This will be part of a collaborative film with some of my course mates which is a prison lineup. I put my best voice acting to work for my patriarchy dismantling drag queen!

Again with this being my first experience of claymation I made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot from them. One thing I learned soon was that a the time I spent perfecting the details of this puppet was a waste! I had imagined the arms looking a certain way when I had my final sculpture but the shapes didn’t really translate when I was manipulating them and they look a bit deformed in places. I think it would have been better to keep them as more of a tube shape. The blinks also ended up being a bit messy because of the way I sculpted them.

I am very happy with the lip sync, the mouth shapes worked well and even though the words in the audio are quite complex the lip sync is convincing. I didn’t end up using all of the mouth shapes that I made but at least I have them for the future! I think I managed to animate some nice movement which fit into the rhythm of the audio without having too much go on. I would have liked the beginning to have more of a pause when the character touches their head so it looked like they were contemplating more.

I made this rough comp for the purpose of the assignment but it definitely needs some improvement! I enjoyed creating this lip sync but didn’t particularly get on with the plasticine puppet because it wasn’t as sturdy as my other ones.

A new puppet means a new character design so I decided to make an older character with some strong facial features. I find designing side profiles a little tricky as it takes me a while to understand the skull structure.

The idea of this puppet is to have facial features that move and can be easily animated. We started off by creating armature from wire set with Milliput for the base, I decided to create wires for the eyebrows, mouth and ears. We then built up a head in plasticine.

This sculpture was such an improvement from my first attempt at Sasha which shows how much I learned from just one puppet. I used the method of using a lot of clay and then sculpting into it which was much easier.

We then created a mould for the latex puppet using our sculptures. We did this by placing the back of the head into soft clay, making sure that the seam was always at the widest point of the head, before pouring plaster over the face. This gave us our first half of the mould. We then coated this half of the mould with natural soap (so the two halves wouldn’t stick together) before placing the head inside again and covering the back of the head in plaster. Once this had set we had a reusable mould.

I forgot to take pictures but the next step was to coat both sides of the mould with latex to create a skin and make sure the details would come out in the final puppet. After a few coats, we taped the mould together and poured in more latex and swirled it around to get the skin coated. Finally we poured in some expandable foam and birthed our puppets!

I think my puppet came out looking really good but unfortunately the armature inside doesn’t work because it hasn’t clung onto the latex, and the foam didn’t seem to set properly inside. I will soon be attempting this again using the same mould but a slightly different technique for the mechanics, and hopefully it will work out!

I was so happy with this puppet I couldn’t wait to animate it. The first exercise I tried with it was for the body acting assignment – having a character react to something using body language. For this one I wanted to just focus on getting to grips with the process of stop motion animation and not worry about facial expression or set details. Because Snotty is quite a melancholy guy the first thing that came to mind was to have him be scared of something.

I animated this with the help of Steph – who suggested to record a reference of ourselves acting the scene out and then importing it into Dragonframe so we had a guide to follow for the timing and movement. I found this really helpful and got this one done in a short amount of time. I would like to try this again because although I am happy with the overall performance, I think I could make it a lot more fluid and interesting now that I have more understanding of the process.

Facial Animation

I decided to also use Snotty for the facial acting exercise. I was anxious to go straight into animation so I thought it would be a good idea to experiment with creating some different expressions and take pictures to use as a reference. I had initially painted on the mouth and eyebrows which allowed for no movement in these areas, so I painted over them and replaced them with plasticine that I was able to manipulate.

I had planned on making separate eyebrows and mouths for different expressions but once I had tried out the expressions I thought it would be easier to mould them as I went (I was wrong).

I shot some reference footage of myself and I also thought it would be useful to draw out a reference so I could work out the timing of the action.

I hadn’t really thought about the set before I went into animating so I had to improvise with this make-shift table which was impractically wobbly. I tried to stick it down with plasticine and tape but it didn’t really work – I think something magnetic would be much better in the future. It also wasn’t really long enough for the spider to crawl out of shot, so I had to manipulate it to create the illusion of it crawling off instead. Here is the animation:

This scene took me a very long time because of the many different elements involved, but I really think it was worth my time because it turned out even better than I imagined! I think the timing could be better with the first reaction but overall I’m really happy with the acting and the way the scene loops. I began to animate by following my reference footage but my timing charts became redundant quite quickly as I realised it was better to just use my intuition.

The puppet armature itself was very nice to animate with – it was easy to manipulate and nothing felt like it would break. The hands were a little bit stiff and weren’t quite doing what I wanted which I found more difficult. I also wasn’t able to do the blocking that I wanted to with him ducking under the table – I tried but the body just wasn’t supple enough to have him bend down. I think my solution of just having him lean back was effective enough though.

The animation of the face was very time consuming. I was taking a lot of time in-between frames to sculpt the expressions where I hadn’t pre-made them. This allowed me to get nice transitions between the expressions but it was quite inconvenient when animating. I think next time I should do a few versions of the same features so I have some that I can manipulate and some to replace them.

Something that was very inconvenient was the way the hat would move every time I touched the puppets head – which I was doing a lot in order to animate it. I had to match the hat to the previous shot almost every time I touched it – which was another unnecessary consumption of time. Gluing the hat down would have made things a lot easier.

The other inconvenience I had was with the wobbly table and camera set up. You can see the table is moving around in the shot but I think I just about got away with it after taking time to match the table up with the previous frame a lot of times. I also learned the importance of having a stable camera and being very careful so as not to knock it (which I did quite a few times!) which results in having to match up the shot again.

It was also quite a challenge to have 2 animations going on at the same time with the spider and character. There were times when I would get too focussed on the character and forget about the spider so the timing is a little off – but I wasn’t being too fussy since this wasn’t the main point of the assignment.

I have a little bit of knowledge in VFX so I put something together in After Effects for the purpose of the assignment – I do want to try and get a better composite done for my portfolio.

I really loved this exercise, it felt like my first piece of proper animation and I am really proud of what I did. I’m especially glad I took the extra time to make the animation loop because it makes it feel very complete. This was a very useful exercise because I made lots of mistakes and learned so much from it – I will feel more confident going into my next stop motion animation.

Our next puppet project was to make a new model with plasticine. I decided to create a character based on one of my favourite drag artists, creating a punk look which would give them lots of personality. I had a bit of a rocky start with this one as I tried to understand the best method of sculpting. I intuitively created a base and then added details on top of this, but I now realise it is better to sculpt the details out of the clay.

I really felt I could do a lot better with this model, and as I was creating a character based on a real person I wanted to do them justice. I decided to restart the head and face to make it neater and more drag-like and was so much happier with the result. I also added details like jewellery, a braid and some elf ears (because why not?) and fixed the body so it would stand better.

Once I was happy with the design of the model I began to think about practicalities for animating. I wanted to use this puppet for a lip sync animation so I needed to create hands and various mouth shapes. When creating the mouth shapes I realised that the oversized lips I had created were difficult to mould into different shapes, so I adapted more of an Aardman style for the more extreme shapes.

For the hands and arms, I decided to make the puppet more butch to give it more substance. I really wanted to create more muscular arms but ended up being a bit pressed for time so this was my final result:

I made the hands using the same method as I did previously – wire, hot glue and then the plasticine on top. I attached them using Milliput placed so the arms would bend in the right places.

I added some more colour into the hair to make it stand out more and I am now ready for animation! Even though I spent a long time creating this model there was still more I wanted to perfect – I have had to make myself come away from this one because I might have gone on forever! I think this is because I found the plasticine quite frustrating to work with because things can get messed up so easily and don’t stay put! But overall I still really enjoyed creating Sasha.

It’s been a while since I updated this blog and a lot has been done in that time! In this post I will show the rest of my process of making my first puppet who has now been named ‘Snotty’.

After creating armature, padding out the body and carving out a foam head for the puppet, the next step was to add hands and facial features. I made the hands out of wire covered with hot glue which made them flexible before painting over them with colour. I then used paint to add lots of nice colour to Snotty’s face and stuck on some elements like eyebrows and eyelids to give him more character. The idea is that he is congested and fed up with having a cold.

The next step was to make some clothes for my character so I went to the costume store on campus and found some material to create a jumper with. I have no experience in sewing and have never made clothes before but by following a YouTube tutorial I was able to create exactly what I had wanted! I cut out a pattern and used hot glue to fit it to the puppet’s body, then I created the turtle neck and cuffs for added detail.

I made trousers following the same method. I was so pleased with how the outfit turned out, and I really loved the process of making it! I also fashioned the shoes out of foam which was probably the trickiest thing to do out of everything and took several attempts. I painted them with some latex to give them texture.

Finally I made this little beanie hat out of felt. Again, I followed a YouTube tutorial to make this and it was very easy. I sewed the top part of the hat to create a bobble and glued the hem around the bottom. I had to try a couple of times to get the right fit but it came out looking perfect.

And here is the final result! The final details included painting the shoes black and painting the fingers with an ombre effect to simulate cold hands! Even though I had made eyebrows, I found that just the way in which the hat was positioned could show different emotions which was fun to play around with.

Overall, I absolutely loved my first puppet-making experience and I look forward to this class every week. I’m really happy with the character I made and think he already has a lot of personality so I can’t wait to animate him.

This week we visited the CSM costume store and got inducted on how to use their facilities. I was a little nervous to use a sewing machine for the first time but it was much easier than I thought! We also used the overlocker (and learned what an overlocker is!).

Looking forward to learning how to make tiny outfits for my puppets!

We then went back to the studio to carve out heads for our characters. At first I found it difficult to figure out how to make a head shape out of a block of foam but it came together as I understood more.

Really pleased with my work on this! There are some more details to be added such as a nose, mouth and eyebrows and eyelids before painting. Again really enjoyed this class.

I’m so delighted to be making puppets and doing stop motion animation as it is something I have wanted to do ever since starting my BA. I was a little worried I wouldn’t enjoy the hands-on aspect of puppet making and the mess that comes with it but I actually loved this lesson so much.

This week we focussed on making the skeleton for the puppet before padding it out with sponge.

I decided to make my character a bit larger than he is in my design as I imagine him being a little more short, stout and grumpy. Super happy with my puppet so far and can’t wait to make him a head next week!

I have wanted to try out puppet animation for so long so this gave me a lot of joy! At first, being meticulous was making me feel frustrated as I was trying to make the animation so perfect, but I felt this was holding me back. With it being my first try, I eventually decided to just go for it and see what happened – I think the result turned out just fine! I did rush the ending so the puppet is making very large movements – something to keep in mind if I want to redo this piece.

Would really like to keep practicing puppet animation as it is my personal favourite animation technique and I would love to make my own stop motion piece.