Handsome Man!

Well well who's this?

If you recall I was getting quite frustrated with the thread lock giving out on my old ball and socket armature.  Heck, I even gave it one last chance and cold welded the armature together.  However when I did that one of the balls snapped off and I didn't have a spare.  So I took it as a sign that I should really consider making a wire armature like the ones I used on Beforal Orel and Robot Chicken.  I sooooo enjoyed animating with those so it's not like I'm settling here.  This current armature is made of Apoxie sculpt and aluminum armature wire.  The Apoxie sculpt is great because I can sculpt the shapes into their general form and then when it cures I was able to go back with a dremel and refine the shapes a bit more.  

Already this armature is holding up a lot better than the last one.  During fabrication of the ball and socket things kept coming loose and I'd have to backtrack, cleaning off parts and then setting them again and again.  

So now I'm pretty excited to see if he will last through a walk cycle (another area where the last armature came up short).  Then some movement tests.  I pretty much want to see how far and how long I can push him until he breaks.  This is by no means my final armature, I'm just testing the method.  There are already some modification I know I want to make as far as the placement of the neck and other miscellaneous details.

If I'm able to animate this guys for a while I'll take the next step and cover him with foam and test the movement with that.  Although I know I shouldn't be getting ahead of myself in case he breaks too fast, I can't help but plan our future together!!

WHAT IS UP

So here is whats up.

When I returned from my most recent work trip I picked up work on my short.  I got SUPER excited and was so super motivated from the energy I had felt working on Robot Chicken.  I decided to do a walk test with my ball and socket armature.  I set it all up and had him take a step.  I felt totally alive and thrilled as I finally animated my little man.

AND THEN.

The thread lock came loose.  For like the THOUSANDTH time.  I had 9 joints in the neck alone and the thought of one or all of them going while I was in the middle of animating gave me a headache.  Have you heard that saying "to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results is insanity"?  Well I realized, I could re-clean  the joints, reapply thread lock AGAIN and maybe this time it would stick.  But louder than that voice came another one that had been stirring ever since I worked on the Moral Orel special.  I really loved those armatures.  They were wire armatures but the way they were made was amazing.  I could animate it as hard as I wanted and they never broke.  When I returned to Burbank later in the year to work on RC they used the same armatures.  And again....  I loved them.  Before I made a decision I asked myself a question:
- if the puppet broke while I was animating it would I have fun in stopping to take the time to fix it?  Or would I be annoyed and impatient and want to get back to animating?
Answer: I would be seriously annoyed and impatient.
So I've made a decision.  I'm going to remake the armature out of wire.  I don't want it to break while I'm animating.  I care more about animating than I do building.  There is just more joy for me there.
When I came to this realization I felt both relief and panic.  I had spent MONTHS of time working on the ball and socket armature.  Had I really wasted all of that time?

No.

When I look back on the time I spent in my cold studio with my fingers freezing trying to piece together the steel armature what I recall the strongest was how happy I was.  I love building things.  I always have.  I love using my hands.  This is really why I love stop motion so much.  I had fun building that armature.  I can't think of a better way of spending my time than by doing something I truly enjoy.  The sum of that time is not a useful tangible object but rather bits and pieces of knowledge that I gained while sorting through the many small obstacles I encountered.  To me this is priceless.  What else is priceless is knowing that I worked on the things I thought I wanted most - a ball and socket armature.  And to be shown that when I thought I had to choose between A or B there was actually a C I didn't even know existed.  I love being surprised, especially when it changes my mind about something I was so sure of.

So I happily pulled out my original sculpt.  I measured it and made a scale drawing, shrank it in photoshop and am now using it as my template for my new armature.  Using wire will enable me to get back to the proportions I had first envisioned.  Smaller joints, thinner limbs.  I'm excited.

Back Forward

Oh Boy.

I ripped apart my leg build up.
I disassembled the hip/thigh and feet joints
I cleaned them.
I put them back together with JB weld.
I WALKED AWAY.
I came back 24 hours later.
Things are looking good!














Oh wait... no things are looking bad.


















I stopped and had a moment with myself.

I should just rip this whole thing apart and start again / that will take a long time / sometimes its worth it to just cut your losses / if I don't take the extra time now I may be screwing myself horribly in the future / but I really like the way the torso came out.... and it is still working fine / if it ain't broke don't fix it / what the hell should I do


THIS IS FUN


Yup.  In the midst of complaining and cursing to myself I found myself smiling.  The truth of the matter is no matter what I love building things.  I also love destroying things that have been craftily built (if you are a stop mo animator you KNOW the joy of being handed a beautiful pristine prop knowing that to do your shot right you MUST DESTROY IT).  So I ripped off what was left of the legs.  I cleaned them again.  I JB welded again, this time a little more thoroughly.  Then I posed the crap out of my puppet because a) it seemed like a fun idea b) I could test if the torso and arms were still holding up.

Cleaned off the parts with rubbing alcohol

Skinny thighs after ripping off all of the foam leg build up.  All that remains is the apoxy sculpt that I reinforced the  lower leg with.  I think I will go back and reinforce the upper leg as well. 

Posing without fingers!!  The fingers are being kept safe in a ziploc for now.   I'm also going to redo where the neck joint attaches to the head.  This is only a placeholder head anyways!

They held up.  I'm gonna leave them for now.  If I need to rip apart the precious work I have put into my puppets in the next few weeks, I'm ok with it.  In fact it's going to be a good time.


Oh yes and back to the point of this entire post.
For ever step backwards that has happened, I learn something.  Even if it is the tiniest something I still have a little more information than when I started.

Therefore every step backwards is really just another step forward.

So there are no backwards steps.  This makes me feel pretty alright.

Wrappity Wrap!

I am aspiring to make my progress posts clearer and more explanatory.  I'm figuring things out as I go along and I want to share my thought process as much as I can so ANYWAYS here's some stuff.
I realized that I was not quite getting the silhouette that I was after mostly out of the neck.  I also wanted to redo the knees and start working on the feet.  So I went in and sandwiched foam with spray adhesive over the parts I wanted to build up.

Then I wrapped/compressed those parts with foam wrap and left it over night for the adhesive to set.  I am SO impatient so if I don't walk away and leave the room I WILL TOUCH everything and anything before it is ready.

So I left the studio and came back the next day and just started trimming, first with big scissors then with little ones.  Here is what I ended up with:


So now I have a better silhouette with the neck that I was after.  The feet still need a lot of work.... so I am still working on them.  Of course I need to keep reminding myself that to get a really good silhouette you really need 10% a good puppet and 90% a good animator.  So I need to stop being such a perfectionist with this puppet and move it along so that I can get closer to animating.  It's easy to get distracted by your own thoughts when your the only one working on a project!!  Truth be told I am scared of working on the skin.  I haven't settled on a method yet and I'm kinda scared!  Which is silly!  So I'm just gonna get started on it!  Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

Everything Everywhere All The Time

Lately my mind has been a jumbled mess.  It is frustrating because I've had some really good extended periods of time of non-jumbledness and those times are so productive and fun.  But I suppose what goes up must come down and I'm just in one of those down times.  I have confidence that the next time I am up it will surpass my last most creative period.  Things just seem to happen that way.  For now I am trudging along, doing what I know I should be doing the best I can until I can snap out of it and run (creatively speaking of course...).  I've been experimenting with some textiles!  I made a rule recently that if something sounds like I fun I do it.  So buying embroidery thread and experimenting with different ways of wrapping it and even having a go at knitting with it using fine wire as knitting needles happened. It was fun and interesting.  So mission accomplished.  I had this thought about using embroidery thread instead of latex paint for the skin of my Old Man.  Experimentally it is not working in a way that I like.  But I think I want to explore some new colour themes and then maybe some new approaches.  I'm not fully giving up on the idea yet.....  I'll let you know how it goes.

Experimenting with mixing different colours of embroidery thread to see how different colour combinations/wrapping and weaving read optically.  These are wrapped around his legs.  Screen Left leg is just wrapped while Screen Right leg I braided the thread first then wrapped it.

There'd be days like this....

I have recently (today) come to the realization that "staying motivated" isn't really the problem we think it is.  As artists we tend to think that staying motivated is the KEY to success, without it we are lazy and time wasters, no good and will never get better.  We've all experienced excitement at a project!  The feeling that you just can't wait to get going on something.  And then....  for whatever reason..... you loose motivation.  You sleep in or feel cranky or something in your personal life is exploding a little and you really just don't have the energy to be excited for your art.  You don't even WANT the energy to be excited for your art.  And then you give up a little and it hurts the artist inside you that you would dare give up on something that is really at your core very important to you.  And then we ask ourselves with regret and shame "Why can't I just stay motivated?  What's wrong with me?" I totally get it, I think we all do.

Hello from my Old Man!!!!!

Here's the thing though, the key is not to stay motivated.  The key is to forgive yourself when you are not motivated.  I have spent a lot of time just beating myself up for not working hard enough or long enough or good enough.  I always thought if I could just "stay motivated" I could be the artist I always wanted to be.  But this just isn't life.  Things are constantly colliding with us that knock our focus and energy away from our art.  This is life.  And its ok.  I think where the trouble really starts is when we start beating ourselves up about it instead of just moving on.  How can we be expected to create when there is someone in our head questioning our own dedication to our craft?  It's ridiculous.
Next time you feel completely unmotivated... Just let it be.  More than that try to recognize what is distracting you, maybe take some steps to manage or get rid of your distraction.  Then forgive yourself for not drawing for a week (or whatever) and you would be surprised at how fast your own brain will wake up excited instead of remorseful screaming "Let's go!!!!"

Sooo....

What have you been up to?

Grumpy Old Men

So this is not the best picture (I took it with my MacBook) but its better than nothing!  For some reason I can't seem to co-ordinate bringing my SD card and point and shoot camera with me.  I'll get the hang of it then better pics will follow!  So at this point I'm kinda stalled on the puppet construction as I wait for some more supplies to be shipped.  Since this is the case I am now switching gears to focus on the set.  I've been sketching and colour swatching like a mad woman.  My heart is still with my puppet though so I'm just kinda going through the motions with the set until I get excited about it.   WEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Half Alive

It's really weird to see things progressing like this.  I've had this idea in my head for so long and actually seeing it take some sort of physical form is magical to me.  I've assembled my armature and hope to to have build up PHASE ONE (blue foam) done by the end of tomorrow.  Soon it will be time to work on the head sculpt and replacement mouth parts.  WOW.  I'm excited.

CTN and Vimeo

WHO GOING TO CTN?!!  I just finished packing and I thought I'd post my latest progress on my man before I head out and ignore him for a week or two.

I'd say at this point he's at the 50% way done mark.  I gotta say this has been one of the most satisfying things I've ever worked on.  Seeing photos of it is highlighting some part I need to work on still.  ALSO as you can see some of his armature is sticking up out of the back of his neck.  This was a total mistake and a lesson learned for me about building armatures.  I really didn't put too much thought into the armature cause I wanted to get on with the sculpting, but of course it ended up biting me in the end.  Can't wait to smooth him out and get into finer details.  

ALSO my vimeo link is now working.  I have my most recent demo up (which does not include what I have been working on for the past 6 months as I am still working on said project).  

Looking forward to tomorrow!  Some life drawing with my favorite model, then a few hours of sleep and then I'm on a plane!!  Hope to meet some of you bloggy people at CTN!

Progress!

Started roughing in the hands! Still have a long ways to go but here is my process so far.

Also I used my iPod to take this pic so sorry for the icky quality! Better pic to come soon.