flux

Check out this impressive student animation from Denmark. “Elk Hair Caddis” is Peter Smith’s graduation film, and it just makes me eager to see what he’ll come up with next. Granted, it’s inspired (and he lists his inspirations on the vimeo page for the film); but he’s drawing inspiration from the right places and it’s [...]

Two things I’m a sucker for: Stop-motion, and old proto-animation toys like the Zoetrope. The two come together neatly in this recent commercial:

Here’s a neat little capture stand you can make at home using simple, cheap materials. I based it on the photography light box tutorial at this page. It uses a regular cardboard box, two lamps (one on each side) and some tracing paper to diffuse the light. The original tutorial uses halogen lamps, but desk [...]

Just finished animating a walk test for the Jekyll puppet. Here’s how it went down: Planning: I started by blocking out the walk in 2D using Flipbook. For this character, I wanted a somewhat stiff, serious attitude in the body, combined with a heavy step. Here’s the result (animated on 2s at 24 fps): I [...]

He’s done! After I put the head on the neck, I just smoothed out the neck area with my fingers. The hands are made of plasticene, just like the head. I also remade the pants entirely, as I decided his belt line needed to be higher. Finally, I added lines under the eyes so that [...]

He’s got a face! Plus a vintage 40s fedora hat (a must-have accessory for any respectable film noir cliché). I used Van Aken plasticine for the head and hair, painted beads for the eyes, and super sculpey (baked) for the eyelids. The hat is made from the same fabric as the pants, and the hatband [...]

Did I say in my last post that making the puppet’s clothes took a long time? Scratch that! It was nothing compared to his shoes. I like how they turned out, though. But first: a little breakdown for those interested: Since the feet of the armature are continuous with the legs, I had to handle [...]

He’s got clothes now! It took a while and a lot of care, but it was fun! Here’s a short breakdown for those interested: I bought some cheap scraps of different materials from the nearest fabric chain store. For the designs, I used the puppet clothing templates graciously shared by Nick Hilligoss on his gallery. [...]

Here’s the WIP Jekyll puppet, with his basic shape built up using upholstery foam on top of the wire armature I made earlier. In these pictures you can also see a bit of the stage, which is basically two pieces of masonite pegboard nailed to sections of a two-by-four. The stage area is 2 feet [...]

Here are some shots of the finished armature for the Jekyll puppet, and an armature diagram I made as a template for matching the armature to the character design. I’m using a slightly simplified version of the armature process described by Kathi Zung in her neat DVD, “Foam Latex Puppet Making 101“. Comments welcome, as [...]