Applied Animation: The Model Part 1

As a part of Applied Animation, we were given the opportunity to attend several workshops in how to build and make our own 3-D puppets. I was really looking forward to this first session in the ceramics workshop, as I am really interested in stop motion animation and this involves being able to make your own armatures and puppets.

In the first session we focused upon designing a character and producing a 9 inch wire armature that would act as the skeleton of our model. I found this task really fun and quite easy to do once I had figured out how to bend the wire properly.

In order to make the wire strong enough to hold the Plasticine that we'd be adding later to the frame, we had to twist the wire using a drill. Sounds strange I know. After that it was simply a case of working out how many connectors we'd need for the shoulders and the hips and then cutting the wire into the separate 'body parts'. Towards the end of the session we used a material called Millie Put in order to provide some stability to the form of our skeleton. I found it really fun to begin creating the basic structure of my character and I learnt a lot of new skills in the short time I was working on this.

I can't wait for next weeks session.