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.