SETS!

Hi, sorry I haven't posted any updates in a while. The last few weeks have been pretty busy. I finished my third year at Uni, went on holiday, had my graduation ceremony and I'm currently interning on a film in London. But don't worry, 'Opening Night' hasn't been abandoned, it's just on hold for a few weeks, and we will continue production soon.

Until then I have lots of pictures documenting the construction of the sets that I can share. I'll be starting with 'The Alleyway' set. This is the first scene in the film and takes place in an alley next the the Theatre. This is where the stage door is located and a mail shoot.

 

Above is a concept image made my Josh. It shows the look we're trying to achieve. The Mail Man will need to walk down part of the alley and interact with the door and mail shoot.

The alley is very long and narrow with several tall buildings in the distance that would take a lot of time and money to make. Since we don't have much time or money, we cheat.

Above is a picture of the stage I made earlier. As you can see we don't have a huge ground surface to work with. The amount of work space is an important factor to consider when designing sets. Our solution was to make a small section of alleyway and digitally extend it later using green screens. I'll explain more about that later. In the limited space we do have, we made the parts of the alley that our Mail Man Puppet will need to interact with.

We started by cutting a large MDF flat that will represent the wall of the theatre. We cut out a doorway and a square hole for the mail shoot, making sure they were in scale with our puppets. (we need our puppets to be able to fit through the doorway). To create the brick texture we spread a thin layer of  multi purpose filler over the surface of the MDF.

When the whole board was covered with a 3mm layer we pressed lines into the surface to represent bricks. We used rulers to ensure the lines were straight and had to work fast because the filler is air drying. While we were working we used a water spray to keep the filler damp. After about 3 hours the filler had set.

The next stage was to paint the wall. We sprayed the whole surface with grey primer to create the grey concrete colour between bricks. Next we mixed up a terracotta colour in cheap poster paints and sponged it onto the surface in a 'dry brushing' technique. The idea was to colour the top surface of the bricks while leaving the gaps between them grey.

Finally we painted lighter and darker colour variations to select bricks to make them look more diverse. These were painted with a brush in a random pattern. While painting we made sure the colours looked ok while they were under the studio lights. Different lights and bulbs can change the perceived colour of the wall. That's why is some of these pictures the bricks seem to change colour

Here is the wall after it was painted. as you can see it has a purple-ish tint, which matches our design art. There is still a lot of details to add to the wall at this stage such as the door, door frame and mail shoot. I'll continue with that in my next post, as well as the wall on the other side of the alleyway.
P.S I'll try and get Josh to update his blog too.

That's all for now,
Until next time.

Theatre Usher Uniform

In this post I'm going to be showing how I made the uniform for the Theatre Usher. The last time I posted about this character I described how I bulked out his armature using balsa wood and upholstery sponge

I the picture above you can see the bulked out puppet body laying next to a printed picture of the character maquette and some red material. I selected this material because its the perfect colour for the uniform. I also took into consideration the thickness of the fabric. Too thick and the clothes wouldn't be flexible enough to move with the puppet. Too thin and the clothes would move a little every time I position the puppet ( creating an unnatural 'boiling' effect in the animation)

As with the other puppets I've made, I used paper templates to help plan the shape of the clothes. I then traced the shapes onto the fabric and cut them out. It can be difficult getting the desired fit to a puppets clothing and there's a fine line between the puppet looking good and functioning properly. I often have to go back and make small alterations, that's why its useful having the templates. In the pic above you can see the puppet wearing his red trousers. If you compare his legs to Elle's It give you a sense of how bulky this character is. The puppets feet aren't seen much in the film so rather than sculpting and casting silicone shoes I used a quicker and simpler technique.

Using sharp scissors I cut some blue sponge to fit onto the armature feet. These where shaped to look like big blocky shoes. Next I mixed some black acrylic paint into liquid latex and painted a layer into the sponge. Above you can see the shoes after a few layers of latex. I left the latex to dry a little between layers. ( If latex is left to dry for too long the next layers wont stick and might separate.) After I painted the first few layers I started to dip the feet into the latex. This gave them a thicker coat and left no brush marks.

After about 5 or 6 layers the latex built up a shiny flexible skin over the sponge. Finally I stuck the sponge to the armature feet using contact adhesive and added black 'Funky Foam' souls. These feet will still flex at the toe so the character can be animated walking.  In the picture above you can also see a gold strip added to the trousers.

The gold trim is made from thin ribbon that I stuck onto the surface of the fabric. I use contacts adhesive to stick on extra details like collars, cuffs and buttons. Unlike superglue or PVA glue, contact adhesive doesn't soak through and stain the material. There are probably special fabric glues that would work but contact adhesive is fast to work with and holds up to constant handling.

Above you can see the sleeve of the uniform with added detail to the cuff.

Finally, here is a picture of puppet with an almost completed uniform. At this point I handed him over to Josh to continue with (visit Josh's Blog HERE). He'll be finishing the head first so that we can plot where to add the collar and finishing details like buttons. He'll probably want to post the details of how he finished the puppet so I'll leave it to him.

I think that's about it for puppet construction. In my next post I'll probably start talking about sets.
Thanks for reading.

Elle Puppet Finished

 Sorry I haven't posted any updates in a while. Both me and Josh have been busy shooting scenes for our film and I haven't had much spare time. What we've shot so far is looking very nice.

Elle Puppet Finished

I've been working on this character for a long time now and I'm happy to show you the finished puppet.
Below are some turn around photos I took. I posed the puppet to match my original Marquette. I feel that has become for signature stance.

In the pictures above you can see the small tie down hole in the shoe. The puppet was only anchored on one foot, but she balanced and held her weight fine. This was the first time I had posed the character in any extreme way to help preserve the life of the wire armature.

Expressions

Below are some different expressions I photographed. I wanted to experiment with the various facial combinations and display the puppets range of emotions. These pictures will be used on posters that appear in our film and used for promotion.( more on that later ).

In my previous post I explained the process of painting the final details onto the face and hair. Since then I have also added a few more decorative components such as earrings and a necklace as well as practical elements like eyebrows and eyelids.

Eyebrows and Eyelids

The eyebrows on this puppet are separate from the replacement brows. This will allow me to have small brow movements in between the more dramatic brow changes. The eyebrows pictured above are sculpted in Bake-n-Bend Sculpey. I chose this material because the eyebrows are very thin, and using a more solid material like regular Sculpey or Milliput would make them brittle and at risk of snapping. Another advantage of using bendy Sculpey was that I could pre-mix the clay to the right colour. In the past I've had trouble with paint scratching off eyebrows during animation. The eyebrows are stuck to the face using Tacky Wax. This is a translucent white wax and as the name suggests, its tacky. Its really good at holding the brows in place and unlike blue tack, it doesn't leave greasy marks. The wax allows the eyebrows to be pushed around the surface of the brow, sliding up and down without falling off.

 

I've made a selection of differently shaped eyelids to help create different expressions and blinks. Creating eyelids for Elle was a bit more complicated than usual as she constantly has a set of black lashes visible. The set of lashes seen in the picture above are made from Bake-n-Bend Sculpey in the same way as the eyebrows. When Elle needs to blink, the lashes are removed and replaced with eyelids. Each set of eyelids has a new set of lashes sculpted onto them. To make the eyelids I covered a spare set of eyeballs with a thin layer of Milliput. I applied Vaseline between the two to stop them from sticking together. Once the Milliput had set I removed it from the ball and was left with a thin shell that fitted over the eyeball and matched the shape. I cut and shaped these shells to fit the puppets face and into a range of different sizes (fully closed, 1/2 closed, 1/4 closed etc.). So that I didn't get them mixed up I labeled the back of each eyelid with an arrow to tell me which way up they go and with an L or an R to indicate the left or right eye. Once I was happy with the shapes I added lashes to the edge of the eyelids, making sure they were all the same size, shape and length. I painted each eyelid using acrylic paints and added chalk pastel to give a green eye shadow effect. The eyelids stick to the eye balls with a small amount of Tacky Wax.

Jewellery

The jewellery was very simple to make. The diamond earrings are small Swarovski crystals that my sister sourced for me. (my sister makes custom jewellery http://www.bluerosejewellery.co.uk)

The necklace and hair clip are made from Milliput that I carved and sanded into shape. I painted them with a metallic silver spray. The chain for the necklace is made from thin silver wire.

 Finally ,above is an 'Ultimate Image' That I created as part of my Uni course. It's intended to be used to help promote the University, as well as me and my work.

That's all for today. Next I will give an update on the Theatre Usher and will be showing how I made his uniform. Thanks for reading.