Week10-Towards Expression1

For this last assignment, I would like to work with plasticine, which is a material I used only once in foundation year. I began with a wire structure still, and wrap this wire with plasticine only. To make the head lighter, I had a styrofoam in it, but the rest is purely plasticine. After the puppet was done, I found that I forgot his tail. The problem is that without a wire in it, the tail didn't attach to the body at all and it just kept falling apart. The other problem is that his body is still to heavy for the feet to balance the weight. The arms could not move freely or else the wire in them might expose. Anyway, I had a lot of issues working with this puppet.

 After the failure of puppet making, I decided to change my character and story to a simpler one (since I don't have much time left for this assignment). This story will be focusing on one character only, with a much simpler background design and no camera movements in order to limit the work load. The storyboard is still longer than I need, the animation should stop at step 4.

Week9-Detailed Reflection on Deeper Studies & Proposal for Towards Expression

I-Detailed Reflection on Deeper Studies

I guess I can call it a failure of the past three weeks. I tried different ways to keep the puppet standing on its own (wire and magnets) but none of them work. Honestly, I am tired of making a human-like miniature, and the materials I used didn't work as well as I imagined. The next assignment I will probably be trying some other materials.

II-Proposal for Towards Expression

This is the character design:

This is the inspirational sketch:

This is the storyboard:

These will be the materials:

This is where the inspiration (puppet making) comes from:

Week8-Deeper Study2

I created a new puppet using wire structure and felt, but this time the limbs are separated from the body and the feet are made of magnets. I've tried the magnets before attaching them on to the puppet. Magnets work well on their own; however, when attaching to the puppet, it was still unbalanced. Therefore I have to use more magnets than I thought I need. The problem is that I have nowhere to hide the extra magnets, and it might take me extra time to remove them in photoshop.

The other difficulty comes from the limbs. I have a toddy bear in this kind of design, and the arms and legs can be moved freely. But the puppet I made didn't work the same way, which means they don't have memory in their movements. I had to limit the arm movement because of the problem.

Week7-Deeper Study1

I used the same puppet from the messy period, trying hard to make the puppet stand up by using wire. It doesn't really works, cause the wire cannot support the weight of the puppet (though it's pretty light already). I have to hold the wire underneath while at the same time shoot the photo, which is a challenging move, and my back and arms suffer a lot after animating.

A profile walk:
 

Yoga exercise: