Eyes for Stop Motion puppets

We wanted quite realisitic eyes for the puppet. This is the technique we are using, which is easy to do and looks good!
We used wooden beads and sandpapred them flat where the iris is going to be. We used milliput to fill the hole in the beads, and made a smaller hole with a needle.

Then we painted black in the holde and where the iris will be, the rest is painted white.

 We printed a photo of eyes, cut them out and glued them on the bead.

We covered it with some layers of transparent nail polish, and then finally made the hole through the nailplosh. When we are animating we will just put in the needle and move th eye!

Making of Creatures part 1

While waiting for the wool, here is some text and pictures from the process so far:

The legs are made with ball and sockets since they are so short they needed to be easy animated. The rest of the body is with wire and k&s tubes. The head is made of styrofoam and coated with a layer of wood glue.

 We made a part of the stomache in balsa wood. If the whole puppet was soft we would defom it a bit while bending and animating it, this might look wobbly and not so good. Having the hard head and somache makes us able to bend it without deforming it - and still keping the light wieght.

Then we added foam. The foam is less compact than the wool and the puppet will therefor be more easy to bend.

Now we are waiting for the wool that w ordered... Then there will bemore posting of the felt making!

Main character armature! With Ball & Sockets! yay!

We're done with the armatures for the main character! We're making two puppets of him so we can both animate at the same time :)

 The ball & socket parts needs to be soldered together.

 Here we're working on the hip section. Soldering k&s with the steel rod. Not so easy to do since the steel takes more time to get hot. Just using epoxy its a higher chance for it to disassemble itself. The hip part needs to be quite strong. Left pic is before and right is after..

 We were supposed to use ball & sockets for the feets but the design is smaller, so we had to go with wire. The feets are replaceable. And to make them not slide out we drilled a hole in both and put a wire thru with same thickness. We usually go with 1,6mm

 Here they are! We havnt made his hands and head yet but its coming :) The arms are allso just wire. Same reason as with the feets, the design is quite thin so ball and socket would be to big..

Allso added balsa wood parts so it will be better to hold when animating. Balsa is really light and easy to cut and it can handle different glue and chemicals better than for example styrofoam.

Theres allso a balsa part in the neck/shoulder area, just didnt have a picture of it now. 

It was really fun to make and will be interesting to animate with!

Thanks!

Armature Gold!

Ball and sockets for the armatures has arrived! We concidered a lot if we should buy it or not, but we decided that we wanted to try it out. We started soldering the parts together, and its going quite well. Ball and sockets won't be used for the whole armature. We want small feets and arms so here ball and socket would be too big.

Here is one ball soldered to a steel rod.

Action in the workshop!