I made this short test of a armeture interacing with some folidge.. im going to make the head tomorow when we get some fimo and i have yet to finish off the clothes.
I cant write a big essay like Hayley but we have all been working very hard mainly on set building so far. tomorow morning we will be assigning shots in the shcedule for people to animate.
Grace
Here’s everything I’ve done this week
Painted a black background (I believe this is the same one shown in Grace’s picks). Adam C asked why it is black on Monday. Because a good portion of the animation is set outside at night. Looks outside window just to check for reference; yep the night sky is definitely black, not bright orange or any other colour. Why do I think a plain black background is the best rather than a mottled, 3 toned streaky painted tree one? Because for one its cheaper less paint is used, takes less time and it gives the viewers eyes a rest.
I believe giving the viewers eyes a rest is the most important thing in that list. The background will probably be out of focus and we will have the 3D trees we have made and the 2D trees and plants before it anyway. I believe you can have too many patterns. If you decorate a room and everything is covered in different patterned material it looks garish and your eyes can’t rest. I believe by painting the board 3 different colours you’re adding another pattern to an already heavily patterned set (metaphorically looking at the different trees, grasses, rocks as individual patterns). Also the 2D trees David made out of cardboard will stand out nicer against a solid background, they’d merge and be lost in a 3 colour background when the camera’s out of focus and we might as well have painted them directly on so thus to me they would become a bit pointless. James’ refuses to agree with me on this and wants to paint over my background with streaky trees and no one has joined in on this discussion so I think we should have a vote, because I’m not going to back down this time unless more than one person disagrees with me.
Second thing I’ve done this week was paint David’s 2D trees brown for him while he was busy with the animatic. There the flat cardboard trees that I’ve seen already posted in this blog.
Third thing I’ve done was I went out and sourced the materials for the characters clothes. I now regret how much I bigged up John Lewis’s material department down here and there free samples. When I went in on Tuesday they had absolutely nothing of any use. Why wasn’t there stuff of any use? Because all they had was very elasticity cotton material that’s very difficult to sew, overly thick curtain material, lots of patterned Christmas material and tonnes of shiny satin for ball gowns and wedding dresses. In short they had nothing that real clothes are made of. They then upset me further when they refused my 25% off staff discount card because even though it’s in date they’ve changed the system this month to a new card. So I had to have a polite moan at customer services where they did give me the discount on the fabric glue I got. David has a record of what I’ve purchased for the project and I’ve still got the receipts so I’m not going to list prices here today.
So I went off to fabric land (my apologies to grace who suggested I go there in the first place) had fun in there off cut bucket and came back with a bounty of some nice lumberjack coat material some denim etc.
Now Adam C did come in on Monday slightly confused on our justifications for using material clothes so I’m going to answer everything I can recall him mentioning with my opinion. I can’t directly quote anything he said but this is the gist of what I remember him asking and saying and since he’s marking I believe it important to answer every point.
None of you has any tailoring ability, has made miniature clothes before etc? Wrong. I personally have a 12 week dress making course behind me. I cosplay as a hobby. I make my costumes from scratch. I have come 1st place in three cosplay competitions. Have appeared in Neo magazine twice, am in the new cosplay fever book, and have been featured in a long list of websites and smaller publications here and abroad. I have more tailoring ability then the average Joe and I believe yourself, so please don’t make out tiny costumes are impossible complicated things to me. I have also made small scale costumes before I will put up proof of all this if I have time by the end of writing all this or later.
Why not just glue the clothes to the armatures? Well just to say I took your advice to humour you I tried using fabric glues on the material when I tested out techniques on my Neil Armature. I didn’t personally think it would be a good idea in the first place as I know glue on fabric rips easily same problem with iron hemming glues from previous cosplay experience, and stitches are normally the only thing to do for a lasting hold as well as neatness. This is because a glue seam never seems to be straight as the glue absorbs and spreads (like ink bleeds on paper) into the fabric at random along the line. I could appreciate the speed of this idea but when I tested this on Neil it just meant his shirt looks naff because the glue has warped the material causing it to curl and loose shape.
Jordan asked if material and the way Neil was slightly soft (he’s wrapped with wadding along the plastercine in the inside) would cause ripples and unwanted movement during filming? I have already thought about the fabric appearing to boil problem. The jeans are made out of denim and I have sewed them to fit Neil perfectly. The denim is tough so it won’t boil like a soft fabric, if at all and bends nicely and handily gives added strength and support to the armature.
Now with the shirt and this soft wadding beneath it also has anti boiling properties. This is because when you move Neil it doesn’t matter how much you brush or accidently knock your finger against his shirt it will pop back out again to the same position. Like when you squeeze a soft bear toy, it will pop back out again into the form it was before. If your bear was made out of plastercine it wouldn’t pop back out again at all.
This is what surprises me the most out of all the questions bombarded by teachers and please correct me if I’m wrong no one asked the obvious which was why did no one decide to make the clothes out of plastercine? So I’m going to ask myself that question to be completely thorough. We could of I suppose, but it would have cost a lot of money in different coloured plastercine to achieve the same range that we currently have with the material. So basically I see it as a money thing, bargain bucket at fabric land, very cheap. Perry’s plastercine, extremely limited colour range and not cheap. Ok we may have been able to mix the plastercine colours together for the same amount of money, but our range would have been limited. Also material is a mass reduction in weight and stress upon the armature skeleton. I made Neil keeping weight in mind so he didn’t become top or bottom heavy and thus when I make his shoes out of fimo he should be supported by them fine, with plastercine balls as feet he can still stand up rather happily at the moment.
No one has asked either what about strobing? That’s the effect you get sometimes on TV when someone wears a stripy shirt if flashes and causes strange patterns. Well none of the fabric has strobed at all on the camera. However I am a little worried because when I photographed Neil his jeans did rainbow a bit in a couple of pictures. However we think this is due to my camera’s display and it is a much outdated low res (4mp) digital camera. Though if they do strobe on David or Grace’s cameras what I will do is run over it with a blue pen because what will be causing it are the white threads in the fabric against the dark blue. Problem solved.
Another thing I would like to highlight is apparently something has been said along the lines I have taken all the milliput, plastercine, and fimo from the stop motion room and thus this apparently slowed down any armature progress today. Now I’m not going to point fingers at people, but I’m not going to keep my mouth shut if I have been used as a scape goat or accused of being a thief either. Firstly I have taken only a golf ball piece of plastercine, from that giant block on the desk and I asked James’ permission first and he Ok’d it and David and Grace where there to at the time.
Now it annoys me when it has been said I have taken all the fimo. What fimo? The only fimo we have ever had in that room are the tiny squares I bought myself from Perry’s. One brown square for Matt Ord’s guitar, one flesh tonne for Neil’s head and hands, and one black square for Neils boots. These squares are tiny and the only reason they appeared in the room was I was asking people if it was ok I use them to make the guitar and to test the flesh tone on Neil. I’d only bought tiny squares because no one had agreed on what we were using for the faces and hands, because everyone had their own idea so I wasn’t going to waste loads of money on fimo if no one had agreed or tested it. So this large amount of fimo that was enough to build the entire cast was never purchased by me or stolen by me. All I can see is that someone has got it into their head I had bought enough for an entire cast of characters and run off with it. No someone needs to go out and buy it still, I would have bought loads on Tuesday but no one had agreed as a group what we where using, so I’d only bought one square for Neil just to test it at the time. I’ve made that clear more than once this week.
So if any amount of anything has been stolen or taken from that room that meant you couldn’t finish your armatures today. It’s wasn’t me and not my soul fault either if they weren’t purchased in the first place. I also said I would be showing people how to make clothes for there armatures and finishing the clothes on the armatures that people didn’t want to dress themselves today. I went in today there at about 2ish there was no one about. Grace was leaving for the dentist and no armatures on the desk other then bill who isn’t finished enough for me to dress. I can’t just make clothes without the actual armature the clothes are being made for in front of me as they are all slightly different shapes and sizes and I sew parts onto the armatures as well.
I’m sorry if the above sounds as a rant, it is not intended to be malicious in any way or anything personal, I just don’t want people turning around to me on Monday and saying it’s my fault the armatures are not finished.
I don’t have time to put up photo’s today as I have to catch the train now home and it’s a half an hour job to upload on photos on this blog, so I will upload them with captions on Monday probably with anyluck.
Hayley Warner
Tomorow i want to know if anybody else is going into uni, mainly James ( i text you )as he has the putty stuff for the armiture heads (and beads for eyes) and i want to make mine tomorow i am going into uni for about 11/12 leaving at 2 for dentist, will be in the stop mo room if you read this before tomorow James let me know if you have that stuff ect otherwise i shall just use plastacine for the time being.
