music

So while I'm waiting to make my set I'm just remembering music and things. I already had a chat with Andrew about it and he's helped me figure out some options one of which I've picked. I haven't seen him to discuss it any further though. I have decided to go with an ambient child like but scary music that andrew suggested. At the moment I have an animatic which gives me a rough idea of time but until I animate at least the stop motion I'm not going to have a clear idea of where the time will be. And I assume to make music a composer will need that.

The other thing I'm worried about is that the last few times I've wanted music I haven't managed to get any one interested in helping me out. I have asked twice and never this close to the end of the year. I'm worried people will be far to busy to help me out and I might have to resort to free music which means I might have to compromise on the quality.

I know it sounds silly but maybe I'll have a go myself. I took music for a long time at high school and have a grade 8 so I might mess about with some stuff myself and see what I can come up with. I just know I don't want to leave it till the last minute and have it become an after thought because that'll will just cut the quality in half.

The Puppet

Ok so I'm going to walk you through my puppet making process. I've written it into my sketchbook so I don't forget for the future and so you all know how much effort I put into making him.

Ok so step one: I drew out a life sized picture of my puppet so I could move his measurements over onto this board which has a whole bunch of holes for pegs in. This is what it looked like at this point.

 Ok so after three attempts I ended up with this puppet, who's legs and arms were the right length. Which was the biggest problem I was having with the two previous versions of my armature. The arms and head then had metal attached to them in order to allow the head and hands to be removed during animation to change them. (Made making the clothes a thousand times easier as well)

Then I made the head and hands. The head is just balsa wood and the hands are milliput and wire.

Here's what he looked like when I put him all together and shaved his skull down to the right size, he also sticks to the wall

Ok so onto hands now. Like I already explained the hands are milliput and aluminium wire. Then I dipped them into coloured latex, which I was hoping would just slightly skin colour them but they went a bit red. However the latex does keep them nice and flexible while covering them and keeping the wire from stabbing you. It also means that they look quite naturally like hands although mine ended up a bit fat. Doesn't really bother me though because children have quite fat little hands anyway. The hands now just have to be painted which will be acrylic paint and copydex so it sticks and won't crack. I'll update this post when that has happened.

So moving onto his head now. Once I'd filed the balsa wood down to a rough skull shape I hollowed out holes for eyes. To make the eyes I bought some wooden beads and painted them white and added blue pupils around the already existing holes in the beads. Once all the paint was dry I very carefully coated the beads in clear nail varnish. The difficulty with this is if you paint it on it will remove the acrylic paint and you'll have to start again so the best way to go about this is to drip it on and slowly coax it around the bead. Then to stick them in I used a small blob of plastcine behind the eyes. The good thing about this is that if I wish to move the eyes I can just put a piece of wire into the hole in the bead and pull the wire around. This is a technique I learned from RedKite animation and have been developing myself for a little while. I think I'm almost completely happy with it I just don't know if I think the pupils are to big to make it worth actually moving his eyes.

Alright, now there's some clothes. This was the biggest pain in my ass. I am so getting a costume designer to do this in the future.

So this whole process involved me finding patterns online and manipulating them to the size of the puppet. I drew out the correct size designs on grease proof paper and then cut them out and pinned them into the fabric then I cut them out, checked their size against the puppet, then I turned them inside out and stitched up the seems. Which worked for almost all of the seems. Following this the clothes had to be tried on and alternations made. His collar needed cut down as it was to high up to begin with. Also his shirt was to long and was making him look, for lack of a better word, half assed. Then my biggest problem came. Getting the sleeves in! Eventually I decided to just glue them in which actually worked out great (thanks mum).  And once all that horrifying ordeal was over I could embellish a little by adding a collar and buttons. Then he was clothed.

So still to do he needs his feet painted to look like feet and his hands painted too. The ne needs some placticine on his chest and shoulders as well as parts of his fore arms and shins so that he's fully covered. Also hair, for his hair I intend to use model magic as this is light weight and will stay in one piece. I've ordered it and he should have hair by the weekend.

P.S. He has no mouth yet because I don't want to put an expression on him incase its wrong.

The pin tool possibility

Ok so here's a test I have done with the puppet pin tool and my shadow. I will probably do another one without a background image because that really does ruin the illusion however the shadow moves with a very smoke like movement and I am rather pleased with it.

I know I said in the last one that I didn't think this was practical but I like it so I may have to do something about that.


You know what I think this might be possible for most parts with some rejigging of the original movement thoughts. I'm going to take a look at the storyboard now

I am not finishing this film!

I've got a lot of updating to do here but at the moment I just want to really quickly document a thought. I had always thought that to do this project I would be best animating the shadow using the puppet pin tool but I'm actually not convinced he has any movements that would lend themselves to this technique. Which is not helpful because now this probably means that I'll have to film all the stop motion stuff first (which was the plan anyway) then import all the frames into photoshop and draw the shadow character over the top frame by frame... Which I can imagine will take twice the time. At least. Urgh. Oh well. I am so not finishing this film. I'm sorry Jared and Alan. But in my defence I wasn't expecting a 4 week collaboration with jewellery! D:

animatics so far

I feel like since I started collecting my thoughts on pinterest I have been neglecting my blogger a bit. So just to put my own mind at ease and prove to Jared and Alan that I'm still using my blog here's a little update.

For the purposes of clarity here I am just going to write really briefly what the idea is. I've already pitched it to Alan and my sketch book is full of retelling's of the idea but I want to make sure I state it outright here as well, you know for Tyler and Amy who're my only followers...

Two characters

One setting

That's the absolute basics. My characters are a young boy and his shadow. My setting: his room.

What makes this story worth telling is its inclusion of fear and phobic states that intertwine with the real world. in this story the little boy's shadow is just his shadow and his room is just his room but he doesn't realise this until for a long time. He believes his room has monsters in it and a shadow man is coming to get him. Which means in this animation his shadow will move of it' own accord and act against him, while his familiar bedroom setting will dissolve away and become a blackness which surrounds him. The only remnant of his room left is his window which floods the only light into the room. This is a metaphor for the part of his mind that realises he should not be scared of the dark (as this boy is slightly older than the typical child who is scared of the dark. He's maybe 7 or 8). The film itself will hopefully also contain some interesting camera work to convey the emotions of the boy to us without compromising the simplistic story, and still make it interesting, or increasing the time it takes to tell the story. 

In terms of the mediums I will use to complete this, I have been thinking quite a lot about this to be honest. It's kind of difficult to decide but I have gone full circle and come back to my first idea. I had some help with my full circle from Neil and Donald who both gave me lots of options before helping me see which one was the most probable and achievable with the best results. Really it was just a perfect fit. I am going to create a real set with a stop motion puppet for the most part. While the shadow will be added post production with after effects and the puppet pin tool. (All the decision making for this is in my sketchbook with all the other ideas I considered too.)

Really that's all you need to get to this point. Now this animatic contains none of the intended camera movements as I haven't 100% decided there. Another chat with Neil is needed to decide what is achievable and what would actually add something. I'm hoping we can get some pulled focus teamed up with some track outs as Neil says they freak your eyes out a bit which is good. I'd like that.


Just in addition to this I'd like to point out I have had a few conversations with Andrew about music. He's been giving me little bits of advice on what'll fit and what routes are available to me. He's come up with a nice music idea so far. I think I'll have another chat with him about it and then find someone to help me do it.