Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Making of the Stop Motion trailer installment 3:
Now that the materials have been decided on here you can see Robin drawing out the plans for making the final puppet. Part of the planning is how to rig it so it doesn't fall over and deciding which parts need to move and how to make that happen. One special consideration for the rigging is that his body is made out of a stick and there's not much for him to balance on or to hide the rigging materials behind.
 You can see on the paper she's devising the rigging method, it will consist of a little tube glued to his back that a rod will fit in to and his arms will be made from a bendable wire held to the rig. We decided since Lollipop's character is somewhat vacant we could get away with him having a fixed expression and just his eyes and arms moving.
 Here is the beginning of the final lollipop head made from red plexiglass and cut by hand into the oval shape on a bandsaw.
 Edges ground down and ready for assembly.
 The joy of moving towards a finished lollipop puppet is overwhelming.
 Finished puppet! His mouth is a piece of wire glued in a permanent smile, his eyes and pupils are made out of paper lightly glued down and easy to reposition for animation.
Here's a close up of the rigging and arms...
and a detail of the back. This will be partially visible when on camera and will have to be removed digitally after the animation is done. He's ready to animate!