BAA Sheep

Made the first of four sheep, i totally winged it on the head, never made a sheep head before, it was weird, too used to making people, so the next 3 will probably look much better as i try to improve my method for making little sheep heads. The wool also comes off when i touch it, as it is made out of a bag of 30p cotton balls from Tesco and glued on with PVA, this may be a problem, of course i could just stop touching the sheep for no reason.

BAA Farmer - Body

Made the armature body for the farmer, as he will be in a hospital bed, surrounded by sheep, he doesn't have any legs, so i'll just put something under his duvet to give the masterful illusion of wee plasticine legs. I covered the balsa in plaster tape to help the plasticine stick to it. And the half finished farmer looks creepy as hell.

BAA Farmer - hands

Made one of the hands for the BAA farmer, not sure why, but i've decided to make them quite detailed and with 5 fingers which I've never done before, and as a result they take a really bloody long time to make. I haven't made the other one yet, but I'm waiting until the body is finished, just in case I've made the first hand disproportionately huge. I don't think i have, but who knows?.

BAA Sheep - Armatures

Started making sheep armatures, the sheep aren't actually going to move enough to need armatures, but i need to get the construction practice in for my next film, as i am going to need about seven armatures for it, and have never made an armature out of balsa wood before. I said the word "armatures' way too many times in that sentence, didn't I? Anyway, i have 4 of them now.

BAA Farmer

The head of the BAA Farmer puppet, he's ginger because I'm going to reuse him as an irish drunk in my next film.

Filming

Filming for the Beetle, Ant and Mantis.

Mantis

Praying mantis during filming, his legs kept catching the leaves and pulling them, so i had to completely lift him off them every time he moved half an inch. It took ages.

The Insects

Heres all the insects next to each other, it's the first and only time they've all been in the same place at the same time, and its very pretty and that.

Grasshopper

Started making the grasshopper, it's back legs are a bit too short, so i will have to add extra bits later.

Caterpillar-finished

Finished the caterpillar, its made of Fimo and plastecine, so it can bend, but it's legs are a bit naff, as they are just strips of black plastecine that don't really move...

Insect designs

Nearly forgot to post these, they are the designs for the ant and the stag beetle, i haven't designed the mantis or the cricket yet, because i'm not sure how the hell i'm going to make them after the ant turned out to be much harder to make than previously thought, but i'll figure it out soon. And the caterpillar should be simple enough to not need a design, i can just get on with it when i get the materials. I also included the research photo of the stag beetle i worked from.

Stag Beetle-Finished

Finished my stag beetle, actually very pleased with it, it looks exactly as i planned, although there is one issue i noticed after i had solidified it in the oven and that is that the mandibles don't move, which severely limits it's movements, but making the mandibles movable would have made the model look a bit rubbish because of the altered head shape it would have required. Still, minor oversight on my part.

Stag Beetle-Start

Started making the stag beetle, had to make some last minute design changes, as i have run out of aluminium wire and have to make do with armature wire, which is much more flexible, but definitely will not support the beetles weight. So i will only film the beetle from a bird's eye perspective so no-one will notice that it isn't actually standing.

Ant Model-Finished

I think i've managed it, although it doesn't look as good as i wanted it to, and it's back end has started to fall off, but it should be fine...

Ant Model-start

Turns out that making an ant out of fimo and aluminium wire is surprisingly difficult, the legs seem very rickety and move around a lot, but the heat shrink should hold them in place, and the wire is definitely strong enough to support it's weight.

WSS End Credit sequence

Recommended by Osbert Parker as research, I like the way the names have been presented as graffiti on the wall, i will probably animate the insect models to create the names on the walls and floor in a similar style, but with more insecty action...

Cactus

Here are some pictures of the cactus in it's various different forms during the dream sequence. It was a bitch to re-sculpt because of the 40 odd spikes poking out of it, i stabbed myself about 150 times. Because the decision to make it come to life was very last minute, i didn't have a pair of eyes prepared, so i had to rip them out of the head i used for the 11 second club animation. I hate having to do that.

The Cactus - Finished

Finished The Cactus, i prefer this one much more than Fat Pants, the lighting experiments were all a success and i think the cactus' transformations worked quite well, although i would have liked to spend more time sculpting the different cactus forms, especially the last one, but it would have taken far too long and i probably would've stabbed myself with the cocktail sticks even more than i did.

The Cactus

Changed the name of the Mexican to The Cactus due to the story change, about halfway through the dream sequence at the moment, so far i have used 4 different lighting gels, and they have all had the desired effect, so far, nothing has gone wrong. I'm not gonna lie, i'm a little suspicious...

Mexican - story change

I've decided at the very last minute to completely change the story, i'm doing away with the wife idea, because to be honest i liked the idea much more than the prospect of filming it, and i didn't trust myself to do it properly without making it look crap (like i feel i did with Fat Pants...) So my new idea still revolves around the mexican and a cactus, but it will be far more surreal, i'll do a very quick storyboard for the new bits, and i plan to do a lot of experimental lighting with gels and that. In terms of the 'Wish you were here' format, it doesn't work as well as the previous plan, but it will be to do with the mexican man's isolation in the desert making him hallucinate, he craves real companionship so much that he is imagining that inanimate objects are alive and friendly towards him, but this backfires when they try to kill him...

Fat Pants - finished

Finished fat pants, not sure if i like it, the dancing is complete toss, you can properly see where the puppet has lost balance and fallen slightly, making the animation look jumpy. The only thing i could have realistically done to prevent this would have been to modify the armature, but this would have rendered it useless for any further animations not involving fatties. I was right about him being too heavy to animate doing any dancing, and using Jermaine Stewart as the song choice was a bit of a random decision, but it wouldn't have worked with any other song.

Fat Pants - started filming

Started filming fat pants, using a very simple white set, looks a bit like he's in a dance studio. Also gave him a CD player that he will turn on and dance to. I have decided to combine my previous two ideas of both dancing and touching himself up, he will turn on the CD player, dance, get carried away and touch himself up a bit, become embarrassed, turn the music off and walk away. For lighting i'm just going to use the camera flash, as it makes the set brighter, and the lights i have make it look yellow. So at the moment i'm filming one animation by day and another by night. At some point i should probably sleep, but thats not in my schedule and would be a waste of time.

Mexican - Started filming

Started filming the Mexican, plan to do around 25 - 30 seconds, unfortunately i've lost the last page of the storyboard, so hopefully i will find it by the time i reach that part, if not, i remember enough of it to survive without it, or at least redraw it.

Mexican's wife

Here are the designs and final model for the Mexican's cactus shaped wife, she will only appear on screen for the best part of 5 seconds, and i literally made her in 3 minutes, so she looks bloody awful, but she'll have to do. She also doesn't have any hair on the back of her head, but no-one will ever see that because of the camera angle. And I know she isn't hispanic, but i'm running out of plasticine and have to improvise with what i've got. She can be his mail order wife instead.

Fat Pants complete

After 15 hours, I have finally finished the fat bloke, i fixed the problem of his legs looking too long by giving him leg warmers, it makes him look a bit more stumpy, and a bit like an 80s paedophile, but this may work in my favor as i now have to alter the animation because the puppet weighs way too much to be animated doing a dance, which is a shame because i was really looking forward to doing that, but the truth is, if i animated him dancing it would look really clunky, as he would be constantly weighed down by his own mass, a bit like a real fatty, so i should at least get points for realism.
Anyway, my new idea that revolves around the "wish you were here" format basically has him standing in a room being a dirty sod and seductively touching himself up, as a sort of twisted homage to Fat Bastard from Austin Powers, with the caption "wish you were here?, really?" appearing afterwards. In terms of an E-card, it could be for a jilted lover who feels 'unfairly dismissed' by their partner, and is incredulously appalled that they're now banging a fatty instead of them, with over 72 million people in America alone classed as obese (yeah, i looked it up) this scenario must apply to at least a few people globally.

Fat Pants crisis

Having real difficulty making this puppet, his character design makes him short and fat, but the armature is designed for a tall, slender character. I'm not going to modify the armature, that would take too much time, and it would be irreversible. I will have to add more bulk to the legs and 'gunt' to make it even, this will make him him a lot heavier than originally planned, which will almost definitely make him harder to animate, but i'll decide what to do about that when he's finished.
I've been sculpting, destroying, and re-sculpting this fat guy for over 10 hours now, and it's one of the most difficult puppets i have ever tried to make, i love it.

Fat Pants

Made the head for Fat Pants, gave him a much simpler design to what i've been doing lately, very basic nose, ears and mouth. I feel this also adds to the 'fat simpleton' look i'm going for. His hair was a pain in the arse though, due to me insisting on it being curly, i went through about 17 different styles before i settled, and then i decided that the first one i did was better and started again. i really get on my own tits sometimes... I'm only gonna upload 3 of the pictures, cuz they all look pretty much the same, it's just me being ridiculously obsessive over something very unimportant. God it was fun though.

Bugger!

Due to a very stupid and easily avoidable oversight on my part, the skull for the fat pants character doesn't fit on the armature without the him having a stupidly long neck, due to me measuring it on the other armature, i haven't got any fimo left, cant afford any more, and haven't got enough time to redesign the head. I am a dick, should have foreseen this happening and will now have to make the head without a skull, which may cause problems. He doesn't talk though, so there is no real need for replacement jaws, i can just regularly adapt his entire face, and re-sculpt his mouth as i shoot, but his eyes will be harder to animate. Lets see what happens...
Also his eyes are pink because i over cooked them by two minutes. Everything is going wrong, but to be honest i secretly enjoy having to fix my own mistakes. I have no idea why.

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Had to desecrate the old guy to get the armature back, sad now, still it's good to see the armature again after about 3 months, now i must prep the joints with cling film and cover it in plasticine all over again... woo

11 second club-march 2011

Final film for 11 second club, i know the lip sync is a bit dodgy, but i think it'll do for a first attempt. It came in 99th place out of 193 entries, not ideal, but no more than i expected and still in the top hundred! (by one), and the feedback from people on the site is really helpful.

11 second club-filming underway

about two thirds of the way through, it's taking a really bloody long time cuz i'm shooting at 25 frames a second instead of my usual 12, still, the animation looks much smoother, and i might start filming like this from now on, or at least compromise for time at 18 FPS...

Lip sync mouths

6 of the 7 mouths for lip syncing, the other one is probably on the model.

Dope sheets

Dope sheets for 11 second club animation, only took us about 3 hours of listening to Steve Martin's stupid fucking drawl over and over again. God i hate Steve Martin...

11 second club animation

These are the final characters for the 11 second club animation, the rabbit won't really do anything other than react to the mans movements, and flinch when he is shouted at, and i might give the man a mustache to make his mouth replacement easier and faster, as it will cover the gap between his bottom jaw and the rest of his head.

Mexican set

This is the set for the Mexican animation, i don't like the background though, the sky and ground look too flat, so i will paint some loony tunes-esque mountains and rock formations in. My idea for this animation is too have the mexican looking at a photo of his wife, who is very obviously cactus shaped. He will notice this similarity, and begin to eye up the cactus, possibly to the point where he actually has sex with it, i think the wish you were here message will be pretty clear from this.