Two woolly monsters emigrate to Hawaii...

Here are some photos of the two woolly monster puppets I made to send to John Hankins (castlegardener) as part of the international animation co-op. They are provisionally called 'Dad' and 'Toddler'. I'm afraid the lighting and focus in the photos is not great - I took them in a hurry under yellowish a light with no flash.

The Dad is a little smaller than my usual puppets, and is about 10 inches tall, the Toddler is tiny, just over 4 inches tall, and had to be made using miniature crochet with a 1mm hook.

Both puppets have aluminium armature wire and epoxy putty armatures which I wrapped with polyfibre wadding stuck in place with Copydex latex glue (one of the most versatile mediums in the world). The skins are made of hand crocheted yarn, acrylic and wool/acrylic blend in the case of the Dad puppet, and very fine angora/lambswool blend for the Toddler. The armature for the father had to be completed in stages after certain parts of the woolly skin had been sewn into place, otherwise the hands would have been too big to pass through the 'sleeves' of the skin.

The mouths are felt replacements, and other details are made using buttons and fluffy pom-poms. As usual I used french knitting (done on a circular four-pin bobbin) for Dad's fingers, which are threaded over latex and wool wrapped wire fingers.

My other project - Walter Gloom

I've just started a new shared blog with writer/director/art director James Geard, which will document the production of a short film we are working on together - working title 'Walter Gloom'. At the moment James is working on the storyboards and designs, and I'll be starting work on the final sets and puppets in June when I've finished 'Monday to Friday'.

The blog is here: http://waltergloom.blogspot.com/

This project is completely different to my usual animations, and will give me a great opportunity to work with human puppets and also give me the experience of making someone elses ideas and designs come to life. To give you a taster, here is one of James' original character designs for Walter, the main character in the film:

And here is a photo of a prototype head I made for the puppet, to experiment with building up an old wrinkly face using liquid latex over a Fimo polymer clay head. I am currently experimenting with making replacement mouths and eyebrows for the puppet using Sculpey Bake & Bend clay, but to see more about that and more designs you'll have to follow the Walter Gloom blog!

Daz and I have just come back from London where I met up with James to discuss the film. We also visited as many museums and galleries as was humanly possible in the time we had, so we are now feeling exhausted but very content. I think if I lived closer to London I'd spend practically every day in the British Museum....

Unfortunately we ran out of time before we got to the Natural History Museum, so next time we go down I've promised Daz that the dinosaurs will take priority!

Finally, some alien industral set photos!

At last, here they are, some photos of my woolly monsters in their finished alien technology set, ready to animate! The photos were taken using my new FZ50 and you can click on them to see the BIG versions on flickr:











It's probably best not to ask what the heck is going on in the last photo!