Masquerade

Ok, so this isn't in any way stop-motion related, but it is linked to costume-making of the full-scale variety.... sort of.

On Saturday night Daz and I went to a 'Masquerade Ball' for our friend Caroline's 20th birthday party at the Dog and Partridge, our favourite pub and the main hangout for Bolton's alternative musicians and arty types. It was a thoroughly fun night, with great live bands and a DJ outdoors. It was all a bit surreal, seeing the usually scruffy clientelle dressed up in suits, ball gowns and elaborate masks, and far too much alcohol was consumed by all (although that's nothing unusual on a Saturday night in Bolton).

Anyway, I got a bit carried away making my mask over the last few weeks. Whereas most people are happy with sequins and feathers, I decided I wanted to be a robot with working LEDs and circuits...

I put together one shop-bought blank moulded mask, the lenses from my old pair of prescription glasses, some epoxy putty, lots of PVA glue, acrylic based metallic model paints (Games Workshop), one 9V battery, two ultra-bright blue LEDs, red and black 7 strand equipment wire, one and a half packs of 5 minute epoxy resin, a few metres of silver plated copper jewellery wire, blue glass beads, aluminium wire, heat shrink tubing, lead free solder, brass rings, some small springs, a selection of sizes and types of copper, brass and stainless washers, assorted types of resistor, some solenoids taken from the inside of an old Xbox 360 console, nuts, bolts, heavy duty elastic, copydex, cushion foam, grey satin ribbon and some other bits and bobs, and made this:

It has prescription lenses so that, in theory, I'd be able to see (they actually kept fogging up, and the peripheral vision was terrible). I even wore some very geeky earrings that I made out of electronics components a while ago, to complete the look.

This is me and Daz (my fiance and muse - the original inspiration for all the woolly monsters) at the party. As you can see, looking smart is not in our nature - I personally think that wearing a military trenchcoat over a ball gown is a good look! Daz made his mask with prescription lenses too, and a spiral of tiny brass watch cogs round one eye and some swirly black iridescent fibres on the other side. Apparently it was inspired by the nature of time and entropy... I think. Here's photo of Daz looking like a very camp evil hypnotist, which gives a better view of his mask.

This photo was taken pretty late, when we were all pretty sloshed. I'm on the far left, with Daz clinging to me (probably for stability). Caz, the birthday girl and Wolve (her partner and one of our closest friends) are at the back in the middle, stood on the stage:

So, ummmm, yeah, sorry, not in any way stop-motion related...

Props, cheap LEDs and fuzzy boobs!

I just thought I'd post some photos of various props I've made over the last few weeks. Most of them are for the international animation co-operative set up by John Hankins (castlegardener).

The first few are some wooden toys made from wooden bits and bobs I had in my hoard of useful junk:

And this is my idea of what a Bubo (Clash of the Titans) bean-bag toy would look like. He's made of painted polymer clay:


And here's another silly stop-motion reference. Two plates with sheep on (ok, so I didn't 'make' them, I just drew on two plain doll's plates with Sharpie markers, then varnished them):

The other things I've been working on are some working table-lamps. I got an bargain on some ultra-bright LEDs in a variety of colours from a website called http://www.phenoptix.co.uk/ who even sell blue and white LEDs for less than 14p each! That's ridiculously cheap, especially for those colours... I remember back when I was doing AS-level electronics in the late 90s, blue LEDs cost about £3 each and white LEDs hadn't even been invented... ahhhh, so long ago...

The website also sells great value resistors, which you need to prevent the LEDs being destroyed by the 9V circuits I wire them into. Great service too - if you need LEDs, I highly recommend them (they ship internationally too). The LEDs are really powerful (especially the white ones) and give a narrow 20 degree beam of light. They are so bright that I think I could probably use them as small spot-lights for lighting areas of my sets, which is great because they run for ages on a 9V circuit, they come in loads of colours, they don't flicker and they don't heat up!

Anyway, I used yellow LEDs in these two table lamps, to be placed in a sunny yellow coloured set. The lamps are made from glass beads and hollow wooden bases all glued together with epoxy. I soldered a 3mm yellow LED with a resistor into a circuit with a PP3 clip for a 9V battery, then covered all the exposed wires with heat-shrink tubing, with more heat-shrink over the top of that to turn the two seperate wires into one cable going from the lamp (the batteries will be hidden, obviously). I glued the LED into the bottom of the hole through the centre of the lamp, and put a 'plug' of tin foil fixed with epoxy into the hole at the top of the lamp to act as a reflector bouncing light back into the lamp.

I also made this lamp, to go in a set with a blue colour scheme, using a 3mm white LED. Most white LEDs give off a blue tinged light, and this one looks extra blue because of the blue glass in the lamp. It gives out about 3 times as much light as the yellow lamps, so I hope it won't be too overpowering!

Oh, and one last completely unrelated picture:

Yup, that's what woolly alien glamour model looks like, just in case you ever wondered...

It's for the cover of a magazine prop in 'Monday to Friday'.

If it arouses you (and you aren't a woolly alien yourself) you should probably be concerned!

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!

A year of stop-motion and a new camera to celebrate!

I have been adventuring in the art form that is stop-motion animation for about a year now, so I've just treated myself to a factory refurbished Panasonic Lumix FZ50! Oooooh, shiny....
I can't shoot any animation with it at the moment because I'm waiting for an AV capture card for my laptop to turn up, but I am going to use it to take some photos of my industrial set and puppets later on. I'm also waiting for a full set of lens filters to turn up for it, so I can have some fun experimenting with those.

Twelve months ago, I'd been obsessively researching stop-motion 12 hours a day for a couple of weeks. I'd signed up to SMA, I'd ordered a webcam, but I hadn't yet pushed a puppet (that happened for the first time on the 17th March).

Anyway, I don't think it is an understatement to say that stop-motion has changed my life (sounds rather melodramatic, but it's true).
If you'd have told me 2 years ago that in 2009 I'd be alive, happy and relatively stable, I would never have believed you. I wouldn't have been able to even imagine that I could make a stop-motion animation. The idea of me actually thinking about a 'career' of any kind would have been laughable.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say, in a long-winded and inept way is thankyou to everyone who has encouraged me, given me advice and helped me build my confidence over the last year:

Everyone on SMA and everyone who has commented on my blog or my youtube channel - thankyou so much. Seriously, without all of you I'd have never even got started, let alone had the confidence and motivation to keep on animating.

Thanks to my partner Daz and my parents who have encouraged me and supported me completely during my stop-motion adventure.

Thanks also to Dr. Pradip Patel for teaching me that the only way I was going to learn to cope with the world was to accept my difficulties and focus on my strengths, and also for telling me that my brain isn't broken, it's unique.

When I started this adventure, I set myself a target of being able to produce professional standard stop-motion animation within a year. I never expected to reach the target, it was just something to aim for and keep me focused. 'Professional' does cover a wide spectrum, and I still have many years of work before I reach the standards of Nick Hilligoss and Ron Cole, but if we define 'professional' as whether people are willing to pay me to animate, then I have succeeded in my mission!

Thanks again everyone :)

EDIT: Thankyou also to my late grandmother Edna who left me the money with which I bought my new camera. She never got to see any of my animations, but I think she would approve. Thanks Grandma!

Treasure!

I have recently accumulated some interesting bits of 'treasure' (please note that my idea of treasure differs greatly from most people's).

First up - things I have been given. Daz, my main contributor of unusual junk has excelled himself recently. My favourite objects are the transparent electronic switch thingies (at least I think that's what they are - they came from an old 'plant room control board' apparently...) at the top left - perfect for monster technology! He has also brought home some little lightbulbs, the insides of an Xbox 360 (not pictured) and some kind of dial and switch arrangement (from the same plant room I think). I can't imagine many women get so excited by being given salvaged building site junk!

I also just rediscovered a jug full of crystal dangly things (removed from a hideous lamp) which my Mum kindly brought me from my late grandparents' house a few months ago, along with some vintage buttons.

I have also had a number of great pound shop finds recently. I'd been looking for something that I could turn into speakers for the alarm system in my technological set for ages, when I came across some fridge magnets with a black wire mesh front. I think the square ones or the round ones will work great with the stylized retro-industrial feel of the set.

I also managed to pick up a huge haul of iridescent semi-transparent glass beads from the pound shop, which I'm sure will come in useful for something. The necklaces are about 4ft long, so that's a heck of a lot of beads! There are so many that I can't get the lid onto the big plastic tub I put them in.

I also made another trip to Fairfield Yarns and got some wool/angora blend 2ply yarn for miniature crocheting in lilac, a burgundy purple colour and dark turquoise. I also got some lovely speckled pure wool DK yarn in blue and dark navy.

Getting the new yarns allowed me to finish off my mini-blanket too. I think I will give it to the samurai puppet that John Hankins made me when I finally get round to doing the animation with it that I've been planning for ages.

Coming soon: The long delayed photos of my completed alien technology set and lots and lots of house-plant props...

Phyllis Pamplemousse

I can now reveal my most recent woolly monster toy, as it is now safely with its new owner Helen Gibbons (aka Shine). Helen is a incredibly talented fibre-artist and was a fellow 'intellectual rebel' when we were at high school together ('intellectual rebel' sounds better than trying to explain the chaos that was TEKAYL... eh Helen!). I made her a monster in exchange for a fantastic pair of hand-knitted socks she made for me, which are currently keeping my feet toasty warm.

Her special monster requests were:

Fierceness

Colours you can see from space

Lots of legs/tentacles

Lots of eyes

The result is the very toothy, seven-legged monster, Phyllis Pamplemousse:

Phyllis is pretty big (I forgot to measure her before I put her in the post, but I'd guess she's about 14" diameter) and her main body is made of crimson acrylic doubleknit yarn crocheted together with bright scarlet mohair to make a thick fuzzy fabric. The rest of her is made of acrylic doubleknit in dark purple, light violet, a golden yellow colour and black. The eye buttons are just a selection of buttons I already had in my button boxes, but finding the perfect buttons for teeth was a bigger challenge!

I knew I needed some big toothy looking toggles for optimum fierceness and set about trying to find some of those shark-tooth shaped toggles that you used to find on duffle coats, only to find that they must be the most out of fashion buttons in the world. After trips to Bury, Chorley and Bolton markets, numerous habedashery shops and lots of internet button suppliers, I could only find some ugly dark grey ones - not toothy at all. In the end, ebay came to my rescue and I found some flat bottomed white toggles that were even more perfect for Phyllis than the shark-tooth ones I had originally imagined!

Here is Phyllis' story: