Tuesday, February 27, 2007

ONE CUTE STEP FORWARD





































Shel here again....

I WAS ABLE TO TAKE A STEP FORWARD TODAY AS WELL. I woke up this morning and found a sweet little dog armature waiting to be foamed.....sometimes i feel like the shoemaker, it's fun to wake up and see what the little elf has made in the wee hours of the night.

so i got to foam the dog which is good cuz otherwise it was a dissapointingly deconstructionist day.

here's some pics of the whole foaming process, someone asked me to tell more about how to foam but i know there are people who are much more experienced at it than me.....so here's some pictures of the process and am happy to answer any questions anyone has in the comment section. i did make some variations for this guy. because the dog is thick and needs to be able to hold some pretty crunchy poses, i put extra foam in the mix to make him spongier (for skinny puppets, i use less foam to make them dencer). and because the mold is so deep i put extra gel in so the foam would gel soon enough to put the top mold piece on without dumping out all of the liquid. i used 200 oz. of base which was a perfect amount for this guy (because he is so deep and suseptible to spill off, i like to have extra to pile on). cooked him for 6 hours at 180 degrees. we do all this in the garage (including the cooking in an oven we put in there) to keep the chemicals out of the house.

12 comments:

Harv said...

Really nice stuff, keep it up! I love the cat too.

Adam said...

How many dog bodies and heads will you need all together for the film?

Will you have an extra Skinny Punk when you're done for my desk at work? :B

jriggity said...

Yeah man, 4 sure.....

Well definately make one for ya.....Ill also try to get a copy of the maquette.

one to animate one to Look at.

jriggity

jriggity said...

WOW ! the Harvatine visited my Blog!!!!!

Hey man...Thanks for stopping by.

jriggity

Shelley Noble said...

I just caught up with Shel's posts and I'm really impressed with her expertise in running foam pupps! Wow! I would love a workshop maybe sometime? Somehow? Someway? Someday?

I've also been very impressed with both of your comments and posts lately about your observations about the stop motion personality and the notion of it's uniquely weird time distortion.

Rock on!

shel said...

thanks HARV. that's cosmo kitty.


ADAM, we'll make sure to get you a skinny punk....

the dog heads will be made of clay and there will be 25 or 30 of them all with different expressions (most of them will be on their way to or from different expressions).

the dog bodies are a big question right now, we need to find an armature/material combo that works first....this guy seems like he might be good for the action shots but he's not collapsable enough for the depressed spread into the floor shots......(we need an un-stunt double). but once we figure him out we'll make at least two of each version in case one breaks mid shot.

Harv said...

Cosmo kitten totally cute. I'm jealous.

Jriggity, perhaps we can meet up another time. I'm not working at Moral Orel this week.

Darkmatters said...

Hey, you said the dog isn't collapsible enough? Have you considered fleshing out the bulky part of his body with sofa cushion foam before plopping it in the mold? I believe that's commonly done for thick bulky puppets anyway.... the cushion foam is softer than the foam latex (well, I assume.... no actual experience handling foam latex).

jriggity said...

Yeah ....we tried a similar concept.

I used a foam filler that we can cut out and then refill his belly with cotton balls for shape.

I could also just squish the foam ball to get the space needed but then would have to re-cotten him as soon as he stood up.

we are going to run another dog tomorrow.....so we can give that a try too.

thanks for the always helpfull tips!

jriggity

goutwort said...

I'm really impressed with people who do this stuff from home. I've worked as a stop motion animator, but did so with an entire crew for support. I have an idea of what sort of skill and drive it takes to produce anything in this medium.

Great job.

Tony Merrithew said...

Cool shots of the foaming process. It's always fascinated me how that's done.

UbaTuber said...

Great post, Shel.....I'm new to foam and haven't started experimenting with adding more or less foam or more or less gel agent....you seem to be a natural at it :) thanks for the tips....