Smaller and smaller....

Well I've managed it! I can now crochet with a 0.6mm hook (usually used for fine lace-making) and single thread wool yarn (more commonly used for weaving cloth). It's mainly my poor eyesight that makes it tricky, the actual action of crocheting is exactly the same as on a normal scale.

I made a tiny woolly bobble hat! It is about 19mm in diameter (60mm circumference) and 15mm tall (not including bobble). I used double crochet stitch (that's single crochet if you're American) for most of it and treble crochet (double crochet if you are American) to give it a ridged edging. It is 38 stitches around at the widest point. The tip of my (slightly scarred) index finger is in the photos for scale.

Here it is actual size (assuming you are viewing this the same size as I am).

I've worked out that if it is supposed to be an adult sized hat then it is between 1:10 and 1:9 scale. To be honest I think this is as small as I can go - once the stitches get smaller than 1mm square, my eyes can't cope anymore!

Yarn heaven and mini crocheting...

Inspired by Emmyymme's recent miniature knitting exploits (plus the fact that I just treated myself to a full range of 21 crochet hooks ranging from 0.6mm -10mm), I decided to have a go at some miniature crochet. The first thing I made was a mini blanket. I used 2ply woollen yarn and a 1mm crochet hook.

So far it is about 13 cm square (about 5 inches) and I am going to finish it off by edging it in another shade of blue. I'm also going to make a mini 'granny square' patchwork blanket as soon as I get some more 2ply wool in different colours.



Next, I decided to make a miniature crochet monster:



She is 9cm / 3.5 inches tall (not including tufty bits) and her name is Delilah Axolotl (on account of her tufty 'gills' and the fact that axolotls are my new favourite creature after seeing one on QI last night). My usual woolly monster puppets are about 10-14 inches tall, so Delilah is small enough to be a doll for one of them.

I have not tried crocheting with single ply yarn and a 0.6mm hook yet. To be honest I'm not sure whether it's really necessary to go that small for my purposes - I'm never likely to work at 1:12 scale or smaller!

I have also discovered possibly the most amazing discount yarn supplier in the world. For anyone who likes doing any kind of needlecraft or textile work and can feasibly travel to Heywood (near Bury/Bolton in Lancashire, northwest England) - it is essential that you visit this place!
The shop is only open to the public on Fridays 10am - 5pm (other times by arrangement).

http://www.fairfieldyarns.co.uk/

They have an old Co-operative store which has two rooms literally full, from floor to ceiling, of thousands and thousands of part-cones and balls of surplus yarn in every variety imaginable. Wool, cotton, linen, silk, synthetic, metallic, mohair, cashmere, alpaca all in every thickness and colour you could imagine. I'd estimate that most of the cones have 200g-1kg of yarn left on them, and you pay for them by weight. At least half of the yarns are priced as low as 99p/100g!
They have even supplied Cosgrove Hall with yarn for mini-knitting of puppet costumes.

I bought a ball of black and a ball of white acrylic doubleknit (always handy), a cone of turquoise mohair (great for fuzzy monsters), a huge cone of burgundy pure wool doubleknit (or four-ply, it's hard to tell) and some periwinkle blue 2ply and single ply green wool for mini crocheting. The can of 7up is there for scale. I am going back again next Friday to get more colours!

Bleurgh...

I do not operate well in winter, hence my general lack of activity here recently. I should be working on 'Monday to Friday' but due to the season sapping every ounce of my motivation and energy... I'm not. I have mainly been crocheting woolly hats for baby Mya (my fiance Daz's niece) for the fast approaching Christmas-type celebrations, and sleeping.

I am longing for spring and the usual period of manic excitement and hyperactivity it usually brings me, then I'll probably finish 'Monday to Friday' at lightening speed. In fact it was during my spring euphoria last year that I spontaneously decided that I was going to make stop-motion animations (despite knowing nothing about the process) which remarkably seems to have been one of my more successful ideas (much more successful than the farming invisible llamas and building multi-coloured yurts 'inspired idea' of 2006 anyway). Funny how things work out...

Anyway, my applications for funding were turned down, not that I'm surprised. I put in the applications mainly for the experience of putting together a film proposal, knowing that I'd be up against lots of much more experienced animators.

Oh, and the big commission I mentioned in the previous post fell through, but the maketing agency have said they will consider me for future jobs. Still, it is very encouraging to know that a genuine London marketing agency (with clients like MTV) has even seen my work, let alone liked it enough to contact me!

So, er, yeah... rest of winter will be spent working v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y on 'Monday to Friday'.
When that is finished, I have plans to make 'Loose Yarn', the film I applied for the funding for. I will have to make it on a much smaller budget than I would have done with the funding, but it will still be the most ambitious (and expensive!) thing I have ever attempted.

Oh well, roll on spring...

Exciting times....

There hasn't been much time for blog updating over the last few weeks... very very busy.

For a start I've been working on a short film proposal for funding from the 4mations scheme (run by channel 4). Being my usual self, I got a bit carried away trying to get it perfect so I ended up not sleeping a great deal over the last few weeks. Anyway, now it's just a case of wait and see.

On top of that, I may (fingers crossed) have a big commission (about 2 months worth of animating) but I can't really say much more about that at the moment...
'Monday to Friday' (the short I've been working on with the monsters in the factory) may have to be put on hold for quite a while!

These truly are exciting times for me!

Also, if anyone is interested, I have a temporary website up (until I have the time to build a proper one), but it does have a gallery full of my woolly monster artist-toys:

www.ceriwatling.co.uk

You can also see a selection of my woolly creations on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30223082@N04/sets/72157608794258117/

I'm in the HAFFTube final 50!

HAFFTube is a web based competition being held as part of the Holland Animation Film Festival, where animators had to submit their youtube short films to be voted out by the public. I entered three, and now voting has ended and 'Grey Heights Guesthouse' is in the final top 50 (and is the shortest film in the running)! Woohoo!
You can see it by going to the first page of 'Favourites' on the HAFFTube site.

Now the 50 remaining animations will be judged by a panel made up of filmmakers selected for the main film festival. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Bacup Film Festival

Two of my 10 second long animations (the Teleporter one and the Grim Guesthouse one) are going to be shown at the Bacup Film Festival, one on the 24th and the other on the 25th of October. That means free film festival tickets for me and Daz! Thanks Steeeeeee!

In the unlikely event that anyone reading this blog is going to be in the Rossendale area of East Lancashire next weekend, come along to the Horse and Bamboo Theatre in Waterfoot on either night and see my 10 seconds of glory (and stay to watch lots of other interesting films of course).

The theatre it is being held at sounds really interesting, and has a big emphasis on puppetry and masks. I had never even heard of it before, but apparently it is quite famous.

Alien Technology - constructing my new set

My industrial looking alien set is almost finished - just a few details to add, a few wires to tidy up, then glue everything down and it's done. I'll be posting some good photos of the finished set very soon. Until then, here are some photos of how it was made and how it looks so far. Sorry about the horrid shiny flash lighting in the photos, I will light the photos of the finished set properly, I promise!

The set is the workplace of the two monsters I posted a photo of a while back. I've indulged a lot of my obsessions with this set - electronics, 'alien' alphabets, technological looking stuff...
My main inspirations for the design of the set are the spaceship interiors you see in science fiction (Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey etc.). I've always loved the fact that there are so many important looking buttons and dials and lights and screens, yet none of them actually do anything - they are just designed to look important by the set designer.
The other visual influence on this project was 1950/60s machinery - the huge broken machines you find abandoned outside college metalwork departments, the disconnected 'mystery' boxes you find on the walls of school basements that once controlled heating systems that were removed decades ago... I think I just like machines which serve no purpose. Anyway, I've built one of my own.


Here is a photo of some, but not all, of the things I used to build this set (one or two things that I didn't use managed to sneak into this photo too).

The materials I used included: a sheet of MDF, a sheet of foamboard, woodscrews, lots of metal washers of assorted sizes, upholstery nails, flat wooden shapes with holes drilled round the edges (from the Arnold Basketry Kit!), those plastic cap things for covering the heads of screws in silver and white, brass rings, brass panel pins, brass picture turns, paper-mache craft boxes, old bits of meccano, different coloured electricians tape, lots of PVA glue, acrylic paint, sandpaper, some tubes from a duplo set (like big lego), nyloc nuts, a fine point Sharpie marker, LEDs (light emitting diodes) of different sizes and colours, lots of resistors of different values, heatshrink tubing, insulated wire, lead free solder, aluminium wire and probably quite a few things I've forgotten.....

So, er, yeah, lots of random stuff. Most of the fixings are available from any good hardware store and the electronics components I ordered from Maplin.

This shows some of the bits and bobs arranged on the piece of MDF that will become the back wall of the set so I could get an idea of how things should look. I then glued down all the bits I wanted to be painted with the background colour, using PVA glue. I used upholstery nails to look like rivets, wooden shapes too look like metal panels and metal washers to add detail. I also drilled a line of holes across the board where a row of LEDs will be.

Once the glued was dry, I painted over the entire background with a specially mixed 'steel' colour. I mixed two small pots of Games Workshop 'Boltgun Metal' paint with a large amount of cheap white craft acrylic paint and a little black and blue acrylic. This made the paint slightly metallic looking. I applied it using a sponge to avoid brushmarks.

The strip at the top is made using black and red electricians tape over the row of holes for the LED. I added details using washers and some plastic tile-spacers that I had already painted black. Everything was coated in a layer of PVA glue to protect it and make it shiny like metal (as opposed to the matte wood it is actually made of).

This is the floor of my set. I made it by sticking rectangular panels of sandpaper in a grid pattern with small gaps between them, onto a large piece of wood using PVA glue. I then painted the sandpaper with a mixture of PVA and grey acrylic. I used a darker grey acrylic to paint the 'grout' between the tiles, then before it dried I smudged it about with a sponge. I then used a large piece of bubble-wrap to print a spotty texture onto the tiles, first light grey paint, then dark grey - hopefully this texture will help to disguise tie-down holes. I then went over the grout again with a fine brush and a very dark grey paint.

If you look to the left of the photo there is a little black box with wires coming out of it and LEDs on the front. I used lots and lots of these in this project. They are made from those tiny brown paper-mache gift boxes you can buy in craft stores. I painted boxes and lids with acrylic paint then PVA to strengthen them. Then I poked little holes in the boxes with a pin so I could push the 'legs' of LEDs through. I also sometimes pushed resistors through to decorate the boxes. Then I wired up the LEDs.

This is what is inside the little boxes - messy but functional. I think made 12 of them in all. Some of the LEDs on the other side are not wired up - I cut the 'legs' of these LEDs and cover them in hot glue to hold them in place and insulate them (don't want to short out my circuits!). Then I solder the LEDs together in series with a resistor (the value of the resistor depends on the type and number of LEDs) being very careful not to burn a hole in the cardboard with the soldering iron. The wires are all colour coded so I know which terminal of the battery they need to go to. I will be running the LEDs in the set on three seperate 9V circuits.

Obvious Warning: if you are going to mess with electronics never use mains electricity, you'll end up killing yourself and/or burning your house down, and don't leave your creation switched on unattended in case it catches fire!

This is the front and back of the (almost) finished back panel of the set. Lots of LEDs, lots of buttons and lots and lots of wires... good job I quite enjoy soldering!

This is a front and back view of my console. It was made from a Christmas gift box and some upholstery nails. The buttons are all plastic screw-covers (with the backs snipped off) with symbols drawn on them with a fine marker, then covered in a thin layer of PVA to stop it rubbing off.
The 'big red button' is a safety nose for stuffed-toys!


This is roughly how it will all fit together - at the moment things are still propped up instead of glued in place and there are still loose wires and a few details missing, but you get the idea.

There will be photos of the finished set next time, along with close-ups of some of the details and descriptions of how I made them.

Until next time, have fun. Oh, and if you haven't already seen it, watch Michel Gondry's 'The Science of Sleep' - cardboard stop-motion cities, celophane water, tin-foil time machines and huge hands - brilliant film in my opinion.