First MonsterJam entry complete!

I've just finished editing my first entry for the TAIS MonsterJam. It features two alien monsters being let down by their super-advanced technology. I decided to really utilise the properties of clay in this animation.

I made a special clay blend for the bodies of the aliens so that it would be exactly the colour and consistency I needed. I thoroughly kneaded about 2 parts Flair Plasticine into 3 parts Newplast, so that the end result was easily workable, but would remain fairly solid under hot lights. The features and decorations on the aliens are Flair Plasticine.

The set was made out of an A1 sheet of grey cardboard painted with household emulsion paint and acrylic paint in a range of browns and greens. I dabbed on some splotches of watered down PVA glue, then a random scattering of short dark green flock, some lighter green fake grass type flock and some gravel (all Games Workshop modelling stuff). I followed this with a few blobs of dyed green moss (usually used for flower arranging) soaked in watered down PVA to make them more rigid. I then glued the board to the top of my animation table (which is a sheet of particle board).

The sky is a sheet of white foam board painted with blue and white household emulsion, then glued to the table and supported by a couple of L shaped metal brackets. The trees in the background are grey card painted with a blotchy range of green paints, then I glued on several layers of the dyed moss with plenty of PVA glue. For the different trees I followed this either with some light long green flock, some mixed greek herbs (yes really) or some splodges of coloured paint. When they were dry I fixed the trees to the set with blue tack and more metal L brackets.

During the animation I added the clay in thin layers and smoothed it down to make the aliens gradually grow. It was a lot of fun to make - more 'hands on' than my previous animations.

This is my first animation with my new camcorder and studio set-up. I no longer have to reach OVER the camera and animate animate sideways. Woohoo! Plus the 3CCD and Leica lens means I get a nice picture. The only thing that is worse with my new 'tripod on floor' set-up is that it is very obvious if the animation set moves, whereas when I had the webcam fixed to the same table as the set, table movement mattered less. This was also the first time I've shot at 30fps which was interesting.

The hard part was editing the animation frame by frame to add the teleport beam and the end credit. It truly was mind numbing. I'm sure there are much quicker and easier ways of doing it, but I can't afford the fancy software!

Puppet from Hawaii!

I am getting a puppet from Hawaii! Woohoo! Animator John Hankins is sending me a specially made ball-joint armatured puppet. A few weeks back I had an insomnia induced idea for an puppet foreign exchange scheme. I mentioned the idea on the http://www.stopmotionanimation.com/ forum and people seemed to like it, so now I am going to be the first recipient of a puppet.

As soon as I'm finished with my TAIS Monster Jam animations I'm going to make John a puppet in return and send it to him. I am quite jealous of my as yet unmade puppet - I'd like to go to Hawaii too!

Behind the scenes stuff on my Monster Jam entries, plus new animations coming very soon!

My first human puppet

I've just finished the first puppet for my monster short. It is my first human puppet, and the first time I've used the latex build-up method, which I have now become a big fan of. I'm looking forward to experimenting some more with the technique because It'll be great for making elaborate monsters with slimy looking skin.

I changed the story for my short after realising the first idea was too derivative. The short will now be set in a grim guesthouse bedroom. I had to make a puppet to play the role of the guest, complete with pyjamas and fluffy slippers. Here she is finished:

Her proportions are way off - her hands, head and boobs are too big, her body is too long, legs too short, her feet are tiny (compared with her hands) and she has very narrow hips and no bottom (oops!). She's also very pale, but that is intentional. I quite like her, but whether she'll stand up to animation is another matter.

Here is how I made her:

First I made an armature out of 1/16" aluminium armature wire twisted together and Milliput epoxy putty. The feet are epoxy putty over looped wire and M6 sized nuts for the tie-downs. If I made her again I'd use 4 strands of wire for the legs to make them stiffer, but unfortunately I only used 2 strands. She was fine until I put the heavy head on, then the legs became a bit too springy under the extra weight. I think I'll be able to animate her ok, although she might have to shuffle when she walks because she wobbles about too much if she lifts up one leg (doesn't everyone shuffle in slippers anyway?). I made her bones from tightly wound zinc oxide tape (the fabric adhesive tape you buy in chemists). They are slightly flexible, so don't put as much strain on the joints as epoxy putty bones would.

I padded the armature with polyester wadding (from a sewing shop) glued to the tape bones with Copydex (from any craft shop or stationers) then secured it with more tape.

I sculpted the head of the puppet from flesh coloured Fimo Soft, which is a polymer clay. I made sure the eye sockets fitted the beads I was going to use as eyeballs, and made a hole in the base of the head for the neck loop of my armature to go in. When I was happy with it I baked the head in the oven to harden it. Once it had cooled I glued the head onto the neck loop with strong glue (Bostick to be precise) and fixed the eyeball beads temporarily in their sockets with a little plasticine.

I then started building up thin layers of Copydex (which is liquid latex) on the hands and head, brushing on a coat before waiting for it to dry and repeating the process. After four or five coats of plain liquid latex, which dries clear and yellowish, I made a batch of tinted latex. I coloured the latex with a tiny amount of Games Workshop model paint (white mixed with flesh colour) which are ideal because they are high pigment low viscosity acrylic paints, plus Daz has bottles and bottles of the stuff in every colour imaginable for painting his miniatures. I made sure I mixed a large enough quantity to finish the hands and head, then stored the tinted liquid latex in an air-tight container

I applied layers of the tinted liquid latex to the hands, paying plenty of attention to the fingers, until the colour was uniform and they were roughly hand shaped. Then I applied smaller blobs of latex to build up the fleshy parts of the palm and the knuckles.

This photo shows the hardened head without latex and the partially completed latex build-up hands.

I continued to build-up the front of the head with layers of the tinted latex, making sure I didn't block the nostrils. I built up eyelids over the eyeballs, because the eyeballs can be peeled out of the stretchy dried latex eyelids afterwards, then painted and talced so they will move. The back of the head I covered in 6ply embroidery silk in two shades of brown, snipped into 1-2cm lengths and stuck to the head with plain liquid latex. Then I covered this with another layer of plain liquid latex and added more 'hair'. After four layers I added a last coat of latex on top of the hair so it became sort of rubberised and would stay still during animation.

The head of the puppet half-way through the latex build-up process.

When I was happy with the result of the latex build-up, I added freckles with a little watered down acrylic paint. If you use acrylic paint over latex in a flexible area of the puppet, the paint will crack and flake, but I reckon I can get away with a few freckles on the cheeks (which don't move). I gave the head and hands a light dusting of talc to make them a bit less shiny and to stop things sticking to them, then put dark shadows rounds her eyes with a little powder eyeshadow (I've never come across this method in my research, but it did the trick). I carefully peeled out the eye beads which was tricky, painted on some pupils and talced the beads before pushing them back into their sockets with a little extra plasticine behind them to bring them further forward.

Next thing to do was dress the puppet. I bought a set of huge and hideous knickers from a pound shop, some in plain pastels, some patterned, because the patterns were small enough to work on a small scale and they were perfect pyjama material. My first approach was to hand sew a pair of pyjamas, which looked great, but were impossible to get on to the puppet due to the big head, hands and feet. Instead I opted for gluing the clothes onto the puppet piece by piece. Not very professional, but it was the only way I could see of doing it (if I had sewn the clothes onto the puppet, the seams would be on the outside and look awful). The slippers were made from pink microfibre cloth (multipack from the pound shop) glued to the feet with copydex, then trimmed to fit.

The eyebrows and mouth are a very cheap plasticine-type modelling clay (pound shop again!) which is medium hardness and came in a pack of 30 really unusual colours. This is so the mouth and brows can be moved and replaced to change the puppet's expression. The colour does transfer to the latex a little. but can be removed with a damp finger. Eventually the oil content in the clay will degrade the latex, but for a 10 second short I'm not too worried about that.

And that's it. One finished puppet.

New 'MONSTER' Project

I am just starting work on my first 'proper' stop-motion animation project (the first two shorts were really just glorified tests). The plan is to enter it into a Toronto based animation competition. Yes, I know I'm not Canadian, but the competition is open to all, and all the selected shorts will be edited together and shown at the summer animation showcase at the National Film Board cinema in Toronto, which sounds terribly impressive. Thankyou to Grant Dix who told me about this competition - he's a Canadian animator and you can see his work here: http://grantsanimation.blogspot.com/

The brief is to create a 10 second animated short which features monsters in some way (ha ha, this brief could have been written for me!). I'll have to shoot it at 30fps, which is what video runs at in Canada. I've not decided whether to shoot on ones or twos yet. 30fps seems like a ridiculous amount and will call for such tiny movements... I might do some tests to see which feels and looks better.

I have a story worked out. Well it isn't really a story, more of a 'build-up followed by punchline', but I can't really do much more than that in 10 seconds! The gag is slightly ripped off from Monsters Inc. and any number of children's books, but I suppose nothing is ever truly original.

I need to build the set, some trees, one human puppet, one big woolly monster puppet, one basic flying rig and possibly a simple dolly set-up if I have time. Then I need to shoot it, edit it and send it to Canada. All in less than two months... argh!

Oh yes, I bought a camcorder! A Panasonic NV-GS330, which is supposed to be about the best camcorder for under £400. I spent the cash that was supposed to be going into my 'postgraduate study' fund, but as my Mum pointed out, I'll never even get on a postgrad course if I keep shooting with a terrible camera!

Behind the scenes

For the benefit of Hazel (my sister who lives in Belgium), who wants to see how I'd made my first two animations, I am going to do a 'behind-the-scenes' look at the processes involved. I learned all the techniques and information I used, from three fantastic websites : http://www.stopmotionanimation.com/, http://www.stopmoshorts.com/, and http://www.stopmotionworks.com/.

The first thing I did was make the puppets. My first puppet was short, sturdy and going to stay still, so he was made solely from clay.

For my clay puppets I used Lewis' Newplast (hard, slightly dull range of colours, used by professional animators), Tallon Fun Plastic (quite soft, cheap, ok colours, aimed at kids) and Flair Plasticine (soft, good range of bright colours, aimed at kids). I used the harder Newplast to make the main bodies of the puppets, and used the softer clays for adding features and detail and building the removable mouths. In retrospect, the soft clays were a little too soft for this, especially under hot lights, and the Newplast was a little to stiff for easy movement, so in future I plan to make my puppets from Newplast and Plasticine blended together to the right consistency.

The second puppet was taller and I needed to move it's legs and tentacles, so I made a wire armature to support the clay and allow the puppet to be tied-down. I used 1/16" aluminium armature wire (available on the internet from specialist art suppliers), Milliput two-part epoxy putty and two M6 size nuts. I twisted two strands of the wire together before making the basic armature shape, then covered all the parts of the armature that needed to be rigid in epoxy putty (I did use a bit too much epoxy putty). For the feet I made loops in the wire, put a nut in the centre of each foot and covered it in epoxy putty, leaving the nut holes clear on the underside of the feet.

After the epoxy putty had hardened completely (4-6 hours), I covered the armature in clay to make my monster.

The next step is making eyes and mouths. The eyes are just white plastic beads with the pupils and the inside of the holes painted with acrylic model paint. They sit in sockets made of soft clay, so the eyes can be moved around with a pin.

The mouths are trickier, I made ten replacement mouths for the first puppet and thirteen for the second. The mouths are based on the Preston Blair phoneme series which shows the mouth shapes people use to make different sounds. I made a different mouth for each phoneme shape, plus a rest shape and a smile shape. The mouths are all made from black card mouth shapes, white card teeth and the lips are made from plasticine. They are fixed to the puppet with a tiny blob of white-tack.

I also had to prepare my set and work area. I blocked out all natural light by taping cardboard to the windows. The set was made entirely from things I had lying around. I fixed a carpet tile to my work-table with two mini G-clamps, the rest of the set was made of a cork notice board (the frame provided the skirting board in the set) covered in coloured paper and foam letters. This was then white-tacked to the wall behind the carpet tile. I used an angle-poise lamp clamped to the table, with a 100watt daylight simulation bulb, to light the set.

The first animation did not have proper tie-downs, but for the second one I had to drill two holes through the carpet tile and table to fix the puppets feet to the set floor. I use an adjustable trestle table to work on, so I can drill as many holes in the top as I want, then just replace the sheet of wood! To fix the puppet to the table using tie-downs, I push a long M6 bolt with a wing nut on it, up through the hole in the table. I screw it into the nut in the foot of the puppet, then tighten the wing nut under the table to secure the puppet.

Before I started animating I recorded the audio tracks, and edited them to make the voice sound like a child's. I used software called JLipSync to work out the sequence of mouth shapes, then made a 'dope-sheet' which told me exactly what the puppet should be doing in each frame.

I used a webcam fixed to the table, my laptop and a frame-grabbing programme called Monkey Jam to shoot the animation. The first animation was shot at 24 frames-per-second (the same rate as traditional film), the second was shot at 25fps (European video rate). The set up was far from ideal, as I sometimes had to reach over the webcam to adjust the puppet which had disasterous consequences on a few occassions. In future I will attach the camera to a full sized tripod further from the set, to avoid knocking it mid-animation.

Then it was time for the animating. The replacing of mouths is straight forward, but you have to check that the top teeth line up with the previous mouth, otherwise the mouth bounces around the face and it just looks odd. The body movements were trickier, and working with tie-downs took a bit of getting used to. The first animation was about 600 frames long, the second was slightly less. Each animation took about eight hours to shoot, althought I'm sure I'll get quicker with practice.

Edit it all together with sound in Windows Movie Maker, and ta-daaaa, a finished stop-motion animation!

So that's it I think. That is how to make a stop-motion animation in your spare bedroom with no special equipment. Have a go, it's tons of fun!

Animation number two...

This is 'My hobbies', it's the follow-up to my first animation.



I've finally been able to make my second stop-motion animation. I'd waited days until Daz was working away for the night. I can't have him turning on electrical appliances whilst I'm animating because it makes the light dim which makes the video flicker.

Well it turned out that I may have well animated with him in the house, because my animation ended up being plagued by flicker anyway! First I thought it might be because the sun had begun to come up towards the end of shooting (I shoot at night because I work better) and my room isn't 100% light proof, but it had also begun to get light towards the end of the first film, and there's no flicker there.

I think the flicker is partly down to working with high winds and lashing rain outside causing the power to surge and dip. The most flickery part of the video (close to the end) was shot between 6.30 and 8am, and I think that every person in the area turning on toasters and boiling kettles might have caused some havoc with the electricity supply.

I also had trouble with my webcam, which seemed to develop a mind of it's own half way through, and increase the colour saturation. It doesn't even have a funtion to change saturation so I couldn't correct it! It also seems to 'bleed' darker colours into lighter ones if they are put next to each other. There is probably a technical term for this but I don't know what it is.

Making this animation was much more of a challenge than the first one, and although I don't feel it is as successful as the first, I did learn far more whilst making it.

The first and most important thing I learned:
lip-syncing an animation to a recorded soundtrack - EASY
giving a puppet natural looking body movement - HARD
I need to spend a lot of time looking at the way humans and animals move before I do it again.

The other things I learned:

Don't animate at breakfast time.
Don't cover circular epoxy putty feet (with tie-downs) in a thick layer of plasticine. When you try to screw in the tie-down bolts, the foot rotates and the wire leg twists inside the clay instead of tightening the nut.
Don't animate on a wobbly table.
I need to concentrate on being less clumsy.
Don't wear a baggy sweater when animating. Loose sleeves cause havoc.
I need a better set up, because currently I have to animate side-ways on, and I have to reach over the camera to adjust the puppets. I found out how impossible it is to line up a camera again after knocking it mid animation.
I need a better camera.
I need an angle poise lamp which doesn't gradually droop as it warms up.
I might need to find a way to keep the light level constant. Dimmer switch and a lux meter maybe?

I can't wait to animate something that isn't made of plasticine. I enjoy working with it, but it has so many bad points, mainly to do with maintainence of puppets. Plasticine gets dirty, hairs seem to be magnetically drawn to it's surface, the colour from the mouths transfers to the body and you have to scrape it off and smooth it over, bits drop off under the hot lights and it's impossible to get them back in the same place, the armature wire comes to the surface if you aren't careful, some brands are rock hard and refuse to bend, other brands go too squishy under hot lights, you catch the puppet with a fingernail and it takes five minutes to repair the surface.

I can't wait to animate something woolly!

The camcorder had to go back...

Boo hoo. The camcorder had to go back. I'd go so excited by finding a 3CCD camera at such a low price, that I forgot to check one vital feature - was it possible to get live DV streamed from the camcorder to my laptop. With most of the similar models of panasonic DVD camcorder it is possible. With the one I bought it wasn't. It had to go back to the shop, so I'm still using my cheap and cheerful chinese webcam for the forseeable future.

I'm still on the look out for a 3CCD panasonic camcorder, but I'm going to go with miniDV format because apparently the picture is better, although this might be down to the compression used for the recording format, which I don't think matters if you are using it to transfer live DV. The other advantage is that most of them have a webcam function (live DV out). Problem is, good 3CCD miniDV panasonic camcorders are pretty expensive (by my standards), even secondhand. I am going to be saving up for some time.