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February 10, 2006
puppet #2: construction notes
by sven at 11:05 pm
I've been studying, studying, studying the puppet designs of Mike Brent, Nick Hilligoss, and Susannah Shaw. Finally it was time to stop studying and just make something. Because my head is so full of new techniques, though, this puppet has had rather confused beginnings.
I'm saying that I began this puppet last Sunday (Feb 5); that's the day I assembled the wire for the armature. Simultaneously, I was working on making a set of Nick's T-style tie-downs, learning how to solder the replacable joints that Susannah describes, and developing my own design for hollow heads. Initially, this puppet was pretty much just another experiment: the goal was to construct a wire armature that's 10" tall. [My first puppet was only 5" tall, and I wanted to get a sense of how the bigger scale would feel.]
...Once I had the beginnings of an armature, though, it was clear that I was actually making a puppet. I needed a better plan. I decided that much of my mental chaos was the result of trying to use bits and pieces of three designs (plus my own) all at the same time. New plan: as an exercise, do each design just as the author has described. Do a Mike Brent. Do a Nick Hilligoss. Do a Susannah Shaw.
This puppet is supposed to be a Mike Brent... Except that Moon Baby (puppet #1) was already a Mike Brent. So I've been letting myself experiment a little bit in areas that I covered according-to-blueprint last time. I don't think I've done myself a favor, though.
The wire of the armature is composed of three pieces: the legs, the spine, and the arms. The legs and spine are each made of three strands; the arms are made of two strands. I twisted the wires by hand this time, rather than using a drill. Twisting always makes the lengths shorter; I must remember next time to start with longer strands than I actually need. I have the shoulders go up and then down, to help lessen stress on that joint. The wires are joined with 20-minute plumber's epoxy putty that I bought at Ace Hardware in the plumbing section.
[Note: You can see that when I took this picture I was still planning on attaching aluminum feet. Each of the foot wires would have been glued horizontally into separate holes.]
One aspect of Mike's design that I copied faithfully was the feet. On my previous puppet, I used the design for feet described by Kathi Zung in her "DIY - Foam Latex Puppetmaking 101" video: a hex nut epoxied on top of a loop of wire. The problem for me with Kathi's design was that the feet weren't really flat on the bottom. Mike's wooden design should solve this problem nicely.
For a while I'd been thinking that the best design for feet must be the aluminum feet and T-style tie-downs that Nick uses. However, last week I discovered that Nick has added a new puppet making tutorial to the StopMoShorts.com tutorial section... In it he uses plain screws and hex nuts! I have a pair of aluminum feet all ready to go on the next puppet -- but seeing that Nick doesn't entirely shun the simpler screw-and-bolt strategy made me feel a lot better about using it here.
I added more epoxy putty "bones" to the basic wire armature. I attached the feet using two-part epoxy glue (gel). I tried a quick little test with epoxy glue a few days beforehand -- but this is my first time actually using the stuff on a project. I also used the epoxy glue to add on 1/2" sections of K&S (square brass tubing) at the neck and wrists. The K&S is so I can have detachable hands and a detachable head. [I hope to give a tutorial on K&S pretty soon.]
Mike did an improptu tutorial on making hands over at StopMotionAnimation.com. Since I'm trying to do a Mike Brent puppet, I figured I should use his technique. However, since I'd already added the K&S, I sort of botched my attempt.
In his tutorial, Mike uses three wires from the arm to make three fingers, and then uses a loop of wire to add two more. I twisted three new pieces of wire together, added a loop, and then epoxied this big wad to the brass tubing. It's very bulky, and kinda misses the point... But then again, my last puppet didn't have fingers that move -- so I guess I'm still going in the right direction.
I'm very excited about Susannah Shaw's system for replacable parts. I'm using the tiniest brass hex nuts I can buy, and socket set screws that are only 1/8" tall -- the screws don't even poke out of the nut when they're in! In the picture above, you can see a spare piece of tubing extending from a ball of epoxy putty that will be the "skull" over which I build a head. Inside that "skull" there's a slightly larger piece of brass tubing, which forms a sheath around the smaller. The nut and screw allow me to clamp the sheath to the tubing. [Look closely at the base of the "skull" -- you can just make out the tiny hole for the hex key.]
One of the catastrophic failures with the Moon Baby puppet had to do with its foam "musculature". I used foam weather-stripping tape for MB; it hardly allowed the limbs to move at all. For this puppet I'm using blocks of cushion foam, instead. It's not what Mike uses in his tutorial (although he uses it on his later puppet, "Buster") -- but it's standard for most puppet makers, so I feel fine about this choice. I also made sure to draw up a plan in advance showing where I would add the blocks of foam -- I wanted to intentonally leave gaps, so joints could twist without fighting the cushion material.
I bought my cushion foam at Michael's. I've also seen it for sale at JoAnne's Fabric, and at the local store Fabric Depot. It seems to be sold mainly for people who are sewing and doing up cushions for kitchen chairs.
I snipped the foam into blocks and sandwhiched the armature between them. I glued all this together a bit at a time using Elmer's brand spray glue. I've used 3M in the past; this was half the price and available at Ace Hardware, so I figured I'd give it a try. The blocks of foam had to be squeezed together for one or two minutes before they adhered adequately.
I've been sculpting the foam blocks using rounded cuticle scizzors. I'm not done with this step yet. In the photo above, you can see that I've screwed on the "skull" and hands to see how things are coming along.
I didn't have a clear idea about what I wanted to do for the head when I began this puppet. I had been working on a scary bird-like head -- but it really looked wrong on this zaftig body. [More about the bird monster to come in a future post!] I decided that what I wanted was a fairly sweet, sympathetic, "everyman" character. This turned out to be more difficult to achieve than I'd expected. My 2D sketches got me nowhere -- so I did a series of rough 3D sculpts, exploring the possibilities.
My "ah-ha!" moment for the head was realizing that the basic form I was looking for was sort of like a mushroom cap. Often in the world of 2D animation you see diagrams where characters are broken down into their basic component shapes... I feel like I'm really just beginning to learn that the same is true for 3D characters, too -- if you look, you can see that complex forms are made up of simple solids. The photo above is where the head first begins to take shape.
Having the K&S tubing bolted into the "skull" proved very useful when it came time to bake the Super Sculpey. I clamped the tubing with a metal C-clamp that I could use as a stand in the oven. After reading a bunch more online about the chemistry of Super Sculpey, I decided to bake at the prescribed 275 degrees (rather than 200 degrees for a longer period, as smellybug has suggested). I baked the head for 30 minutes. I removed the delicate ears and eyelids -- they'll be done in a second pass. The eyes are wooden balls that sit loosely in their sockets.
Unfortunately, when I tried the head on the body after baking, it was too heavy. When I tried to lean the character forward on one foot, he'd totally bend in half. Arg! This is exactly why I've been working on a strategy for hollow heads...
I think this can be salvaged, though. I cut the back of the head off with a hobby saw, and have begun hollowing it out. At first I used an electric drill to get things started. Then I started working at it with some woodcarving tools. I tried to be careful, but it was awkward to handle, and not too surprisingly I wound up cutting myself. Not badly, luckily; but it was enough to prompt me to quit for the evening and rethink how I'm going about this.
If you look carefully, you can see the hole above the eye socket where the tool poked through and got me...
What's left at this point? Finish hollowing the head. Add ears and magnetic eyelids. Paint the eyes. Wrap the fingers in thread and tip them in liquid latex (Richard Svensson's technique). Make the clothing out of cotton gloves (this is one of Mike's unique tips that I really want to try). Paint all the exposed skin.
...And animate it!
posted by sven | February 10, 2006 11:05 PM | comments (4) | categories: stopmo
Comments
It's always great to pop in here and see this posts! I've talk to many people having this 'too much reading and learning but no making' syndrome...It's hard to stop checking info and tutorials, but you get to a point where you say: 'That's it, for godsake!!! I gotta make my own things!!' and I also think that you REALLY learn a lesson when you learn it through an error you make... So good luck with that heavy head!
Posted by: Ale at February 11, 2006 3:18 PM
Thanks, Ale!
Posted by: sven at February 11, 2006 3:26 PM
Hey, that's a pretty darn good Mike Brent you got going there! Congrats on already being able to make the replacement armature... something I'll be copying off you. A few random things that come to mind....
Sounds like you need more wires in there. My puppets (about 6" tall usually) can easily hold up a solid sculpey head. But I also usually make a silicone mold and cast a copy in resin, sometimes adding lightweight Microbulb filler. The filler isn't necessary, resin alone is much lighter than sculpey, carves and works much better, and of course it's nice to have a mold so you can make copies if you want. Another way to go would be a core of wood and just sculpt over that in sculpey.
Also, my puppet from the Simple Puppet Tutorial is something i wanted to do to demonstrate how easy it can be, using simple materials many people have lying around... I wouldn't normally use the polyfil material. Cushion foam is much much better. The new tuts Nick posted are also simple designs he came up with for a class he's going to be teaching soon, designed so kids can make them without too much trouble. Both good staerting points though, and you develop the skills and experience for making better puppets later on (which in your case probably means next week!).
You said you made some feet with nuts over wire loops and the bottom wasn't flat - the solution to that is to make soles from epoxy putty. That's how I made Buster's feet. Next time I try for flexible feet with 2 tie-downs in each one.
I would recommend making your chest and pelvis blacks bigger, almost the full size of the body, so they're easy to grab through the foam without having to mash through a lot of foam. It also helos you to feel the orientation of the two major forms of the torso, and exactly how they're turned/tilted in relation to each other. That's why it's a good idea IMO to keep them rectilinear, with definite front/back planes. Might not be everybody's cup of tea though.
With foam like you're using here, I don't think it's necessary to cut at the joints or leave gaps there like I did for that Simple Puppet... that was only needed because the polyfil material doesn't stretch the way foam does. I also cut through at the joints on ahab, but only because I had too much Barge cement gumming up the joints and he couldn't move freely. You should definitely make one without cutting through at the joints and see how that works in comparison. Maybe on your Nick puppet.
Nice head sculpts! What I especially like about the final one is the way you defined the plane of the face... that's good solid form there. I like to have a single light source, usually directly overhead, and squint at the sculpt while I turn it around, watching what the shadows are doing to see how well the form is developing. Tryu to also keep in mind... about the head but also the entire puppet - the shape should be strong enough to read even in silhouette, like if the puppet is just a dark shape against a light area. And with heads, I TRY to find a way so when you tilt it or light it from a different angle the expression seems to change... happy to sad or whatever. It's a Trnka trick.
Not much else I can tell you. You're well on your way to being a master puppetsmith. And I completely agree about learning to make puppets and sets first. Once you've got a decent or halfway decent puppet and a set you just play around, and that's your introduction to what works onscreen and what doesn't. That's how you learn how to write for stopmo. My idea is to build up... first just brief tests, then longer shots, up to scenes, and finally complete sequences. From there it's only a step to making complete films.
Keep up the good work my friend.
Posted by: Darkstrider at February 13, 2006 5:42 AM
Re: copying the replacement armature
Having replacement joins in the hands is turning out to be problematic -- they're a good deal more bulbous than they ought to be. It might make more sense to have the connection happen in the forearm. The head seems to be working out OK. Having a little socket at the base of the skull is really kinda intriguing, symbolically: like its the socket in Neo's neck in "The Matrix" -- or the band-aid on the back of the fella's neck in "Pulp FIction" that is supposed to tell you he's traded his soul to the devil. [Wow -- those are two movies I really didn't expect to be citing...]
Re: casting heads in resin
I'm very intrigued. Resin is another one of those materials that seems really scary to me... But I'm working up the courage to try it. Some of Mike Bates' (http://www.skullwell.com/) photos seem to show him doing casting in resin. Anything additional you have to say about resin would be very welcome.
For the silicone mold, are you using something from the hardware store, or professional silicone? I've been eyeing the stuff they carry at Georgie's Clays and Ceramics, but it's $170 for a kit. ...Youch.
Re: feet
Your suggestion to put epoxy putty on the bottom of the soles of the feet -- I smack myself on the forehead; it's so obvious! Thank you.
...You say you're making feet with two tie-downs each -- I bet that's so the puppet can stand on its toes. I've read that it makes a big difference in terms of realism to be able to make the puppet walk "heel-toe, toe-heel" instead of just landing on flat feet. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. :-D
Re: bigger chest and pelvis
Oh, that is a good idea -- to make body blocks that you can feel through the foam and that keep the orientation clear. That will definitely be integrated into future designs.
Re: cutting joints in the foam
For this puppet, there's a cut in the foam where the knee joints are -- but no cut in the foam for the elbows. comparing the two, it does indeed look like the arm bends just fine without a cut. I caught that on Buster you pierced a hole through the foam using an Exacto-knife -- no glue involved. I'm thinking that I'll probably try that out when I get to the Nick puppet.
Re: the head sculpt
Thanks! After having sawn the head in half and hollowed it out, I've managed to get the thing back together again without noticeable damage. I used Duco glue to put the back of the head on again, filled the crack with an infinitesimal scraping of Sculpey, and then baked it again. This is my first time trying putting a piece through multiple bakings -- and it worked like a charm. I put ears on while doing the second bake, too... I'll probably do a third bake to take care of some tiny nicks that I couldn't get rid of with sanding.
...Hey, funny that you mention Trnka! I was just watching his stuff Friday night! I've recently acquired the DVD of "The Puppet Films of Jiri Trnka" -- If you know where to find more of his work, I'd love to hear recommendations. The clips you have at darkstrider.net are such a resource and inspiration... I've just ordered Karel Zeman's "The Fabulous World of Jules Verne", based on what I saw there. (Speaking of classic stopmo: Boy, the StopMoShorts prize for this round has my mouth watering...)
Thank you for the praise and encouragement. Thank you for the goldmine of tips!
Posted by: sven at February 15, 2006 10:55 PM