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February 3, 2006
stopmo puppet work: eye, feet, neck
by sven at 1:33 pm
When I was working on CG animation, I found myself getting stuck on the modeling -- not actually getting around to making things move. I worry that I may fall into the same pattern with puppet animation... Constantly striving to make the perfect puppet.
Worrying aside, though, I did some neat experiments yesterday. A few more details to work out, and then I'll begin construction on puppet #2 in earnest.
Eyes are one of the most expressive parts of the puppet -- I want them to be posable. The trick for this eye was figuring out how to embed it behind some eyelids. If I were using soft clay for animating, it wouldn't be a problem... But I'm working with baked Super Sculpey here; it requires a paint job.
What I did was to make the eyelids as separate pieces. Then, I glued little magnets on with Duco cement. The eyeball just sits in its socket, unglued; the magnetic eyelids hold it in place.
One thing to improve upon: When you stick a magnet to a magnet, the magenetic forces sometimes cause the connection to twist or jump. On the next iteration, I'll have the magnets coupled with snippets of tin instead.
The eyeball is a little wooden ball that I found at Craft Warehouse in Gresham -- you can buy bags of them at pretty much any craft store, e.g. Michael's. To make it easier to work with, I drilled a 1/16" hole in the back and stuck the sphere on a piece of wire. To paint the iris, I put the wire in an electric drill bit and had it slowly rotate while I held the paintbrush stationary. That's a trick that I picked up from Susannah Shaw's book, "Stop Motion: Craft Sklls for Model Animation".
After painting, I pressed a very tiny hole into the iris using a needle. This allows me to gently move the eye in its socket using a toothpick. I think that it would rotate even more smoothly if I put a little vaseline in the socket -- need to pick some up at the grocery store.
When you have puppets walking, you need a way to "tie down" their feet to the set. An easy way to do this is to have a nut in the foot of the puppet, and then have a screw come up into it from beneath the set. Getting the screw into the hole can be a little fussy, though.
Animator extraordinaire Nick Hilligoss has a tutorial on making "T-style" tie-downs on his site that I've wanted to try. Basically, what you do is take a bolt and file down its head until you have a "T". The "T" then fits through a slot in the puppet's foot, rotates 90 degrees, and comes to rest in a groove. Underneath the animating table you tighten a wing-nut, and -- voila! -- your puppet is tightly bolted to the floor.
I had to learn several new skills to pull this off...
First off, I had to find a vise that I could clamp to my work table. I thought I could use a drill press vise -- but that was a total failure. I wound up buying a little 3" vise at Home Depot for $20.
The feet are cut from a strip of aluminum. I first tried cutting it with a hacksaw. The saw blade kept binding up -- until I bought some wax for it, which acts as a lubricant. The cut worked then, but was sloppy. Next I tried using a cut-off wheel attachment with my dremel tool. That worked much better! The dremel tool made it easy to cut the feet off the strip, cut the slots, and make the grooves.
To grind down the heads of the bolts, first I tried using a bastard file. That worked well -- but it took about an hour just to do one bolt! Next, I tried using the dremel cut-off wheel to grind it down. Much faster... But also a very different experience. When I use the cut-off wheel, sparks shoot off like a Fourth of July sparkler, and the metal starts to glow orange! (I was careful to be wearing a dust mask, goggles, and apron this whole time.)
I'm feeling rather proud of myself: this is the first time I've ever done any sort of metal working. :-D
When you build a puppet with a wire armature, it's just a fact of life that the wire is going to eventually break. So, it can make a lot of sense to create armatures that allow you to replace joints when needed. ...Here I'm working on a system that will allow me to replace a puppet's neck. The head is where you do the most detailed sculpting work -- it could be tragic if there's no way to reattach it to the body after a break.
What you see above is two pieces of square-shaped brass tubing, one fitting inside of the other. The larger piece will eventually be epoxied into the head. The neck wire will be epoxied into the smaller tubing. Then you can slip the head onto and off of the neck at will. Once again, this is a design from Susannah Shaw's book.
To make sure the head won't fall off while you're animating, you need a way to keep the tubes fitted tightly together. A hole is drilled the larger piece of tubing, and a nut is attached over the hole. When the smaller tubing is inside the larger tubing, you tighten a screw into the nut, which should then lock the two pieces together.
I made one mistake here. I thought I could just super-glue the nut to the brass tubing. It didn't work. Rereading the book, I realized that you need to solder the nut in place. Soldering isn't a skill I have yet -- but I've looked into it, and think I can learn it within another week.
...Incidentally, the screw is a "grub screw". Rather than having a head, there's a hole in its middle, and you turn it with a hex key. You can see a hex key in the photo above.
posted by sven | February 3, 2006 1:33 PM | comments (5) | categories: stopmo
Comments
Would you be able to make a device to hold the puppet which stands on the background, a clamp stand of some sort, paint it green and remove it with your software? You're digital anyway. I don't know if it'd be faster than the foot bolts, but it'd make it much easier to have puppets leave the ground (jumps, running strides where both feet leave the ground, UFOs, would be useful) I'm working off vague memories of such devices from various making of features. Only one that comes to mind might be Jurrasic Park anamatics which was done stop-mo. Just watched it (Phil Tippett). I saw free standing, two types of devices to stand up the puppet, and wires in that piece (as it was fast and dirty work, they didn't bother hiding the stands or wires)
Posted by: Shield at February 4, 2006 7:11 AM
damn. ate my comment. trying again.
Have you tried other ways of holding the puppets besides the foot screws? I know I've seen stands/possibly clamps in various making of specials. First that comes to mind is on the Jurassic Park disc. I just rewatched it - it's a Phil Tippett animatic using stop-mo. I see two types of clamps, free standing, and wire held raptors.
Posted by: Shield at February 4, 2006 7:16 AM
Hey! (Shield, this sometimes 'eats' the comments, so you maybe need 2 or 3 tries in order to makes it...I copy my comment, so if it eats it, you paste it) About the tie-downs, I've discussed it many times in other forums, and there's no easy way out on them...You just have to do them traditional way. This is quite obvious if you think that all stopmo mega productions such as Corpse Bride are still using them! Plus it's not THAT annoying once you get used to it...the only bad part is to hide the holes on the ground....that really sucks! There's a Tutorial at stopmoshorts.com on that subject. See ya'
Posted by: Ale at February 4, 2006 8:50 AM
I haven't seen the Jurassic Park extras -- I'll have to check that out.
Foot screws are the standard in the U.S. In the U.K. they use "rare earth magnets" more often. If there are stands that attach to the back of the puppet, they're probably for flying rigs. Working in digital you certainly can erase stands... But one part of the point of doing puppet animation is that you can capture realistic shadows -- it's pretty hard to preserve those if you're using green screen or digitally erasing. But yes -- stands can work; most of the time you'll still want them in conjunction with something that locks the feet to the floor, though.
Posted by: sven at February 11, 2006 1:55 PM
The instructions I wrote about how to create a removable join for the neck are flawed. Instead of that zinc (?) nut, you neet to use a brass nut.
I've written a new and in-depth explanation here: "tutorial: how to make a puppet's limbs removable"
Posted by: sven at February 12, 2006 9:35 PM