My New Animated Films

This past spring, I finished two stop motion shorts.

The first is called True Family Story, and I've blogged about it quite a bit since I started it nearly two years ago. I'm proud of it, especially the pacing and tone, both of which I feel are light and energetic.

I've only had the energy to send to exactly ONE festival, and that's Ottawa. They turned it down.

I will send it to more fests just as soon as I can gather the energy. It's my own fault- all this energy spent to create the film... then no energy left to send it out there. But it's a solid little film (despite what the Ottawa fest thinks), and I think it will have a pretty good shelf life, so I'll get it out there asap.

Here's a couple of pics of the DVD jacket. The jacket was largely designed by the every-talented Carla Veldman, who was a remarkable assistant through the entire production.






The second little film is called Rise of The Living Corpse. Who doesn't like zombies? Who doesn't like zombie stop motion films?

It's just 30 seconds long, and for THIS film I've actually sent it out to quite a few festivals. It's interesting- because it's a genre film (horror, obviously) that sort of "doubles" the number of fests I can reasonably send it to: horror fests, and animation fests.

And- since most horror fests get live action stuff, and "serious" stuff at that, a 30 second animated comedy stands out to programmers. As a result, I'm happy to say that of the 5 festivals I've heard back from so far, it's been accepted at 4 (with Toronto's After Dark Festival being the silly monkeys that turned it down).

The wise festivals so far include: Fantastic Fest in Austin, Oklahoma Horror Film Festival, Fright Night Festival in Kentucky, and the Chicago Horror Film Festival.

Oh, Ottawa also turned THIS film down as well.

Here's a few pics of the DVD (again, with design tackled by Carla Veldman).





I'm being pretty stingy on posting clips from either film. I kind of like the idea of being exclusive for a little while, with the films only going to fests. I'll post clips (and perhaps eventually the whole films) in the future.

I'll also probably look for some formal distribution, not to make money through, but in my experience it just adds to one's professional reputation to have a 3rd party handle the film.

Or- I'll keep them to myself for distribution and promote it myself exclusively so I can use the films to push my own "brand".

Time will tell...

TFS- Camera,Lighting and Puppets Video

Here's a little behind the scenes video from my film, dealing with cameras, camera moves, lighting, and puppets.

Puppet Making Part 5- Feet and Legs

One of the most important things you need to consider is, quite simply, how will your puppet stand up?! The battle against gravity is a huge factor in stop mo (a fact that becomes very apparent when you try to walk a puppet). You have to ensure that your creation will stay on its feet, while it performs.

The easier way to achieve this is tried and true. You embed a "rare earth" magnet in the foot of the puppet. Then you build a set that has a thin surface, which you can access from underneath. From underneath, you apply a second rare earth magnet, and shaboom- your puppet is standing up.

These rare earth magnets are not your typical fridge magnet. Go get them at specialty stores. In Canada, look to Lee Valley Tools.

Often, the magnet from underneath is dropped into a metal cup, which intensifies its powers, and is also secured on to a short piece of dowel. This is what's known as a "magnet wand" (in the biz), and it just makes it easier to manipulate the magnet from under the set.

To embed the magnet in puppet's foot, you first go from your trusty scale drawing. You create a loop of armature wire that is ever-so-slightly bigger than the magnet (they magnets come in different sizes, find the right one for the size of your puppet). Then you braid your wire upward, as you would with an arm. Make sure you've used lots of armature wire, so you can trim the excess to the length you need for the leg.

Then angle the foot's loop at 90 degrees. You now have the foot armature, and the leg armature. "But I want a toe, too!" you say? Go for it. But this method gets you a nice foot/leg combo, and you have a heel joint, and you can do great animation. If having a floppy toe is essential, then do it. But in general, if your audience is focused on the toe flapping in what should be an overall engaging animated story, you've got problems. The last thing Joe or Jane average will be paying attention to is whether you have an animated toe. But, if you NEED that toe, you can fabricate a foot that has a magnet in the rear and a toe that can be animated. Design it, test it, and build it, you'll be fine. But I recommend doing it this way, first.

You will use epoxy (see earlier postings) to embed the magnet into this loop. Be sure to keep the ankle part of the wire free and clear of epoxy, so it can move. Another tip- be sure to keep the base of the magnet that will rest on the set level and smooth, and free from epoxy "gunk". You want a perfect surface between set and bottom of foot, so the magnets can do their thing. If there's gunk on the sole of the foot, you'll get wibble-wobble in your puppet. Not good.

After you've embedded the magnet, you can continue to build up the foot into the shape of the shoe you want. Of course, this technique (of embedding a big magnet) leads to, you guessed it, BIG shoes. If that offends your design senses, there's other options.

But back to the leg/foot at hand. With the foot done, just use your scale drawing to figure out where the leg bones will go, and where the square brass stock will go.

As with the other parts that have brass at their ends, that can slide in and out of armature blocks (hips, torsos), the fit will be a bit loose. That means as you walk that puppet, a leg will want to actually fall out! Eeek. So use a thin layer of contact cement to bond the leg into the hip block. Not too much, or you'll never get it out if it breaks.




For legs that will have pants or long skirts, you just need to bulk it up with some foam. If you will actually see skin, you need to use the latex build up process, as discussed earlier. Again, costume means a great deal to puppet making. A long skirt means easy legs to make. A short skirt means a lot of skin that needs to be made (tricky). Below is an image of the Mom puppet's legs. She has a fairly long skirt, tha shows a bit of skin at the bottom. As you can see, there's latex skin built up to where the skirt will, but not much further.



So let's say you want dainty, "Tintin" style feet. Feet that are far too tiny to embed a big honking magnet. You can use tie-downs.

This entails embedding a tiny nut instead of a magnet in the foot. Then you put holes in your set where you need them, and feed a bolt of the right size up and into the nut. There you go, a sturdy puppet with tiny feet. The trick is that it's now tough to move that puppet around, as you must drill holes in the set for each step that puppet takes.

Good with the bad- magnet feet are pretty easy to make, and easy to move around on the set, but your design might suffer.

Tie-down feet look elegant and beautiful. But they are trickier to make (those tiny nuts are tricky to embed) and are trickier to move around on the set.

You get to choose, lucky puppet-maker.

As with all these approaches, you will have worked hard to create a part that just might break. So since legs/feet take time to make, I recommend a story that doesn't involve millions of shots of puppets walking. The less stress you put on the legs/feet, the less chance they will break.

If your story insists on lots of walking, so be it, but go into your production planning knowing you need to take time to make extra legs, cause odds are they will break.

Also, extreme animation in terms of lots of jumping, deep bending will stress your leg/feet wires a lot. So again, either create a story that doesn't require this (and you won't break your legs) or if it's essential to the story, make yourself extra legs.

It's much easier to make extra parts in advance of shooting so that during animation, if you break a part, you can just swap in a new one. If you have to stop everything, pull out all the puppet making materials, start working with epoxy, latex... it really slow things down. Have extra pieces made during the puppet making stage of things... you'll thank yourself during animation.

How many extra parts to make- spines, arms, legs, feet, necks?... it completely depends on your story, and on YOU as an animator. Some animators are tough on puppets, they stress the puppet a lot to get a performance, and thus break a lot of parts.

Other animators have a lighter touch, and puppet parts last longer for them.

I didn't break a single puppet part on TFS, but I had extras of parts standing by. The animation was fairly limited to some walking, running, (each puppet only have to do a bit of each), then facial animation, basic weight shifts... some throwing, general hand acting... so nothing MASSIVE in terms of stresses.

Plus, I made the parts well. And I am an experienced animator that can get a performance out of the puppet without snapping things. I also animated in what you'd generally call a "Good Enough For TV" style. It's pretty limited, abbreviated, conservative. It let me get lots of shots done quickly, got the point of the story across, but didn't take super long, since I didn't have much time scheduled to animate. All these factors worked together so that I didn't break any parts.

Only experience will really tell you how many extra parts you need. So get making puppets and puppet films... it's the only way to learn.

TFS- Studio Tour

Here's a vid that gives an overview of how I organized the shoot, in terms paperwork and studio space:

TFS-Finished Puppets

After all these puppet making entries, here's the finished deal. I will probably do a costume entry at some point (which is an obviously huge part of any visual appeal these puppets have). Arlen Gruszczynski makes my costumes, she's amazing.

Anyway, I thought I'd post these so you could get a sense of the whole deal.

TFS- Puppet Making Part 5- Arms and Hands

Some of these pics are big, sorry. Too lazy to resize...

Arms and hands are (like all the other parts) a world unto themselves. So here we go...



The above pic is based on that good ol' scale drawing you've created a while ago (see why it's so important to have that life-sized drawing?) You need to use that scale drawing to figure out the exactly size, shape, length, and overall look of the arm and hand for your character. As you might expect, it needs to be to scale, once again. To arrive at this drawing, I "light tabled" from the original scale drawing to get the arm and hand figured out... then from that drew in what the armature would look like.

You'll notice there's some square brass stock at the end of the arm. That's to slot into the chest armature. Further, you'll see the length of the arm is braided 1/16" armature wire, with some epoxy for the arm bones, and epoxy for the hand (into which is embedded pieces of thin floral wire for fingers). The skin over top is liquid latex (which I haven't talked much about yet, but will).

Floral wire is nice for fingers. It's strong, will stand up to the animation fingers need to do (detailed, precise movements) but is still easy to animate. You don't want really thick wire for fingers, as it will be hard to animate.

Since both of the characters arms were the same, this one scale drawing will serve. Just keep referring back to your scale drawing of the arm armature as you cut pieces and mix epoxy, so that you are making the arm JUST the right size. It's easy to drift, so use that drawing to check. After you make this basic arm and hand, you can simply bend the fingers which ever way you want, to craft it into a "right" arm/hand or a "left" arm/hand.



The above pic is the puppet arms in progress. It's darn handy to use clothes pegs to hold the arms up safely as each coat of latex dries. And another tip- don't apply the brass stock till the arm is 100% done. If you put it on earlier, it's quite tricky to figure out the exact arm length. Leave yourself extra wire at the end of the arm, make the arm, apply all the latex, then snip the wires to length, then glue on the brass stock.

Gluing tip for armature wire when attaching it to brass stock- use "gap filling glue". It's very strong, and will expand as it dries, hence the name. Regular Krazy Glue is super strong, but will only bond surface-to-surface through direct contact. Gap filling glue is the way to go (in this case).

The process for putting on the latex is TRICKY (notice all the caps. I must be SERIOUS). I've practiced a lot, on various projects, to get to a pretty good point. It takes lots of practice. You'll notice with these arms/hands they need to be smooth from the finger tips right up to the shoulders, (smooth, as in like real human arms/hands) since the whole arm would be exposed. If the puppet had long sleeves, you'd only have to make smooth hands and maybe wrists (and not worry about the arms).

Costume REALLY effects puppet making, in this sense.

It was also a challenge because of the visual style I wanted. The puppet heads were smooth and cleanly sculpted. So the arms and hands had to match. If I had made the heads "rough" in their finish, the arms/hands could have been "rough" as well. "Roughly" applied latex is much easier to achieve, and you can get some wonderful textures by using make-up sponges or bits of foam (thanks to Ted Heeley for that tip). You can get a really nice "smooth but pebbly" finish that looks great under camera. And it has a really warm "Muppet" vibe, like a very dense foam. Really appealing, great texture (and we all know stop mo is all about the textures). BUT my visual style was smooth, so the arms had to be smooth.

A HUGE tip I give students- create a visual style that allows your puppet to have a rough finish, and you will be MUCH happier. But- smooth is possible, if you are brave enough. Or stupid.




Here's the finished arms (pre-brass stock). Note their smoothness. Hard-earned, right Carla? And another tip- once you are 100% done applying latex, dump some baby powder on the arms. Rub it in, and it takes any unwanted stickiness away from the latex, and gives it a very pleasant matte finish (latex errs towards shiny- baby powder it away). And besides, you get a sweet-smelling puppet. Win-win.

Here's how I got them smooth. I used a small, cheap brush to get the first layers of latex on. A coat of latex... let it get pretty much dry... then another coat... it takes time. There's lots of tricks and tips for using liquid latex, you can find heaps at stopmotionanimation.com

I used this process to get the arms basically "on their way". By that, I mean at the joints (elbow, wrist) I used this process to add lots of layers of latex, so I had a nice smooth tube. In other words, if you ran your finger from the wrist all the way up the arm, it was flat- no dip inward at the joints. Now, with that basic "tube" of an arm, I switched techniques. I now started "dipping".

You can only get so smooth a finish by brushing. The bristles ALWAYS leave a path as you draw the brush up the arm, leaving grooves and streaks. But dipping means no brush is used, so there's nothing to leave a mark.

To dip, I found a bottle (baby food) that was deeper than the arms were long. I filled the jar with latex, tinted it with the skin colour (acrylic paint), held the arm by the end wire, and dunked it, fingers first, into the latex. Then I pulled it out, fast, being careful not to bang the arm or fingers on the jar mouth.

I quickly flipped the arms around so the fingers were point up, and used a small brush (and often a toothpick) to carefully "urge" the latex downward in the spaces betweens the fingers. Without doing this, you'd get really stubby, web-like fingers. A toothpick works well, cause right after you dip there is SO much latex it can be moved around without leaving streaks. And with the fingers pointing up, you let gravity help.

The next step (once you're sure you aren't going to get stubby fingers), is to rest the arms. This is when a pair of "helping hands" is, well, helpful. Because you want to be able to tweak the angle at which the arms are drying, as they dry. This way, if you see the latex is "sagging" to the underside, you can flip the arm to balance that out. Helping hands are fantastic for this. As the pic below illustrates:



And here's how the finished arm fits into the armature:



Finally, this is a REALLY important aspect of using latex for arms and hands. The brand makes a HUGE difference. I've used other types of mould maker's latex (which is what this material is usually called at the art store), and they suck. They are too thick, too "chunky". You CAN water latex down, with (duh) water, but still... The best brand is this:



Burma Brand latex. End of story. It's lovely and thin, paints on really easy, absorbs acrylic paint (for tinting) really easily, and is great for dipping. It's THIN, and that's how you get SMOOTH. Only use this brand.

Other brands are ok for rougher finishes. Only use this for smooth (or another brand that's equally thin, but I haven't found one).

After all this, here's my two cents of puppet making for those that are serious: come up with a design that is "rough"- a creature of some sort, an alien, a monster, it can be cute, scary, sad, silly, whatever, but let it rough in its design. You can then make some MARVELOUS puppets (I see students do it every year), if you keep it rough in it's finish. That way, you wind up with an awesome looking puppet, and learn about the materials (specifically latex) as you go... then attempt smooth with the next puppet.

On the other hand, now that you know about dipping (after this entry), maybe you'll be smooth right away.

Good for you! But you owe me 5 bucks now.

TFS- Puppet Making Part 4- Armatures

A quickie, since I'm pressed for time.

Using that scale (life-sized) drawing of your character, the next step is to design and fabricate your armature. What's an armature? Find out on your own, I'm in a hurry!

Tape that scale drawing to a window, or use a light table if you have one. Lay another piece of paper over top, and draw out how the armature should look. Imagine you're drawing the skeleton for the character.

It's pretty safe to assume (if you making a human) that you'll have a hard chest piece (epoxy), and a hard pelvis (epoxy), into which braided 1/16" armature will go into, for the movable parts.





Sorry this pic is a bit crooked...

In this picture, there's some things to note. See how every limb ends with a small square piece? That is square brass stock.

The ends of all body parts will be covered in the male size (5/32"), and embedded in the armature blocks (the chest, and pelvis) will be the female size (3/16"). This allows the body parts, should they break during animation, to be replaced. You break an arm? No problem, just slide it out of the chest block, and slide in a new one!

BUT- this isn't so easy. I tried it this way, on this film, to test-drive the technique so as to be able to advise students. If it HAD worked, it would be a fairly easy, cheap way to make an armature that can have parts replaced (as opposed to making or buying an aluminum armature, or a steel ball-and-socket armature).

Why it DIDN'T work very well is that the removable body parts tended to shift and slide out of the armature blocks. The solution? I covered the male stock on each part with a thin layer of CONTACT CEMENT. Not rubber cement, not Krazy Glue... contact cement.

The cement dried quite well, keeping the part in place, BUT would probably have allowed me to yank the broken part out without damaging the armature. I never had to find out, as I never broke a body part (blush).

The OTHER option (instead of all this brass stock) is to simply directly embed the armature wire limbs into the epoxy. This works very well, and you'll get a pretty darn solid armature.

The drawback is that all the parts are committed. So if ONE little part breaks, the whole armature has to be scrapped. That's why you aim to have replaceable parts.

You'll also know from that picture there's a neck-type piece. It's a bit confusing, but a puppet neck is made up of a piece of brass stock for the base, then some armature wire, then another piece of brass stock (that will slide into the head). The thick part is actually a latex tube, tinted the colour of the puppet's skin, slid over the neck so it actually LOOKS like a neck.

Where's the arms? Again, arms are a separate thing (for another entry, that will come as soon as I can)...

And- the feet look like lumps of epoxy. That's true, but what you can't see is that embedded in those lumps are rare-earth magnets, which are super strong.

As you're figuring out, it's ALL custom designed, built and assembled pieces. So if it's confusing and unclear, well- that's why it's taken me years to start to get a good handle on it all. I animated professionally for years, and observed the puppet makers. And I started to adapt techniques and approaches for what I myself could handle at home. I had others help me, I showed pros my work, I kept making more puppets... It's just not a quick thing to learn or figure out (just like all good things in life). I'm still very far from a master at it, but I'm pretty good.

My puppets work.

The only real way (after reading this mess of an entry) to start getting good at armature wire and epoxy armatures is to start practicing. Get some epoxy, braid some 1/16" armature wire (you braid it to make it stronger, but it's still easy to use), some basic tools (Olfa cutter, pliers, wire snips) and start learning the materials.

Use some tight fitting rubber gloves when using the epoxy, too. It's not particularly nasty, but over time it could cause health concerns, and no matter what sticks to your fingers, so the gloves make life easy.

All these materials are CHEAP, so get them, and start playing. You'll learn heaps...