Hi everyone! Firstly, last weekend I made a tie-down board. Many of you probably won't know what that is, so it's basicly a big piece of wood with lots of little holes in it. Then, you make the puppet with nuts (tie downs) in the feet (not showing of coarse). When you are animating a puppet walking or on one leg or falling over, you put a screw through one of the holes, then screw it into the puppet's foot, and use a wing nut under the wood to tighten it, then your puppet's foot will be held right down to the ground. Of coarse, I am stupid enough to make one for myself, hours and hours of holes, holes, more holes, holes, more holes, and finaly, it was done. Also, while I'm on the subject, look at those
TIP: DON'T DO THIS AT HOME!!!

Next is the coolest news ever!! I am now more into making brass tube armatures, and will (hopefully) soon be selling them in my shop. Here's one I made in the last couple of days. The head can be taken out, and I have armatured the hands as it will be a foam latex puppet. Also, the wooden feet I created from my head, and they sort of work like a ball and socket armature's feet do. Like I said, I created them from my head, and they took a day to make, but I have now thought up a much more clever way of doing it, using more brass. Last but not least, here is a picture of the full armature next to the origanal design I drew a few days ago. Also, you will have noticed rescently up 'till now I have been using black alluminium wire. That's because it was 2mm, and now I'm back on the much more animator prefered 1.5mm.
Thanks!

P.S. I will try and open a shop on the net soon, where you send me your design for an armature, and I will make it. The price will depend on how complicated the design is.

Fish

Happy Easter everyone!! Wousers...In the last week I've spent about £10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 on animation stuff (not really, I'm working out cheap ways of making proffesional stuff, and I have to experiment with lots of things!) from the internet, so when it gets here I'll let you know.

But right now, I'll tell you about the electric guitar prop I made. I was basing it on an old Gibson Les Paul model like this one:
First I drew it on paper, and drew the outline onto a piece of wood. Then I cut it out and sanded it down.
Then I cut out extra pieces made from card to glue-gun on.
Then I gave it an undercoat of white paint
Gave it a proper paint job...
A few extra details + Morilyon man =
Once again happy easter!!

Fish

Morilyon animations site

Hey guys! I have just published my own website, for Morilyon Animations! Don't worry, this blog will keep going with all the behind the scenes imformation, but that site is there just showing some of my work. I only created it today, so there is very little there, but every couple of days I will try and add something, to make it bigger and better.

http://morilyon-animations.weebly.com/


There are a couple of things you will notice there which you havn't seen before, including this plasticine model of Paul McCartney in his Beatles years, wearing the 'Sergeant pepper' costume

Hope you like my site and the new stuff, come back soon for more!
Fish

Clay animation tutorials

For a long time, I have been a friend of Majed, a great sculptor and animator, and he has resently created a site, dedicated to bringing you the answers to all your stop motion problems, through video tutorials. So far there are three on there, but there will be more soon. Here is the site:
http://web.mac.com/majed.elass/Site/Welcome.html
Majed asked me to put a post up about it, and here is what he says:

'Would you like to subscribe to Clay Animation Tutorials? If you do, tell me your e-mail and name. What will you get if you do? You will get instant notifications of new tutorials, contests, products and more!'

If you would like to subscribe, send your name and e-mail to this adress:

artisticboy91@hotmail.com

Thanks,
Fish

Quick lip sync test

A quick test I did to try out my new lip sync program, papagayo, which works well, the timing was good, but 1) the voice didn't match the character 2) the light kept shining in as I did it next to a window and 3) it was an old puppet so it didn't have any replacement mouths, so I had to do it on the spot, but I should have made the mouth shapes bigger and more noticable.

I will do more, soon and honestly I did this in like 5 minuets, didn't even bother to block the sun!!

War of the worlds martian

Hello everybody!

Yesterday it was world book day, and at my school we all got read the book 'war of the worlds'. It was interesting, and clever and I recommend it for a quick read. Now, my school is hosting a competition where you have to draw one of the martians according to the descriptions. As I love to be different, I asked if we could make models, and the answer was yes, so here is a quick post to show how I made my plasticine martian.

Here is the armature, I made this quickly out of alluminium wire.

Then I put Epoxy putty on it, to secure it. That's great stuff!!

Now I made the big eye. I didn't follow the discriptions for this, there were meant to be two, but I like to be imaganative!! I started off with this half ping pong ball type thing from an old magic set.

I painted it and covered it in glue, to give it a shiny eye-y feel.
Now, I covered it in dark brown plasticine. It's cheap to buy and easy to use!!
Plasticine covering the tenticles...
...And on the head. I used alot of plasticine to meke the head.
Next I cut out a circle where the eye was to be, pushed in the eyeball, and made plasticine eyelids.
I then stuck the eyelids on, and smoothed them in.
Now all that was left is a mouth, so I added it on, and here's my finished model!!

Fish

Rig, skeleton armature and MORILYON MAN!!!

Hey everyone!

To start with, in a £1 shop close by to me, I bought two mirrors. But they weren't just any old mirrors, they had ball and socket joints!!! I had seen tutorials on the internet using mirrors like these (the mirror isn't the important bit) to make rigs!!!

I bought them for a pound each, so they were easy to pull apart!!! I took off the mirrors and the blue bit on the other end, then it was just a simple task of putting the end of one into the other!! Wallah, a rig!! All I need to do now is find something heavy to way one end down.
Next I will tell you about my quest to try and make an animatable (is that a word??) skeleton, like the ones used in Jason and the Arganouts. I didn't base it on the ones in that great film, but refrence pictures from the net!

Here are the ribs I made from alliminium wire, for the armature.Here is the main parts of the armature ready.I gluegunned all the parts together, and added on the ribs, and here is the finished armature:
Unfortanutly when I added the clay ontop, it looked terrible, so this is all your getting for now, but some time in the future I might go back to the project.

Next is the most awsomly awsome news in the world!!! My new puppet (and mascot for Morilyon productions) is a super hero called Morilyon man!! His armature was one of those shown two posts ago, and here I have some pictures of the proccess of making him.
Here is the armature and Epoxy putty feet with working tie-downs in the bottom.Next comes the spare clay I don't want, this saves the new nice clay.

Next is the purple clay, just a thin layer of this should do the trick! Now I add the boots, covering the feet too.Now add final touches, and your done!!!
The finished model!!

Fish