Animation Tests

Before I started animating properly I wanted to test out the way that the string moved and if the idea I had would actually work. I thought about animating it digitally, however I really wanted to keep everything similar in material and my strengths as an animator are in stop motion animation.

I decided that I was going to use wire and wrap wool around it to create an illusion of it being very flexible string. I first tried to use medium thickness wire (which is the yellow string test), but it didn't work great as I wasn't able to get it to bend very easily. As this string was going to do a lot of wild and fast movements I needed thinner wire to achieve this.

I then tried again, this time with thin wire (pink string test) and it worked great! I was able to get a lot more movement out of it and I'm really glad I tried out these different test before I began. The string is a vital part of my narrative and needs to move in a way that's believable, yet it can have it's own characteristics and performance.

Here are my tests!

Animation Tests - The Box from Stacy Straub on Vimeo.

Time Lapse of Production

The Box Time Lapse from Stacy Straub on Vimeo.

Building Puppets - The Box

Wire Armatures

I drew up the correct sizing on paper first, then measured out all of my wire and built my armatures! I decided to use thicker wire for their spines so that they would be extra sturdy.

 

Milliput Time

I covered their limbs in millput to ensure they bent in the right places and the give the wire some extra support.

 

All their limbs together, I attached nuts and bolts to create their feet so that they could be magnetised to the set. Also, as my narrative involves the characters losing limbs I had to ensure all of the limbs used K&S brass tubing so they could be replaceable and detachable for the animation.

Sponge them up!

 Here I'm bulking out my puppets with sponge and shaping them to my designs.

Felting

I forgot to document a lot of the felting stage, but it mainly just involved me spraying the sponge with adhesive spray and wrapping the felt around it. Then tidying it all up by sewing the seams.

A little ear, I then glued them onto the sides of the puppet's heads.

Both puppets fully felted, then I added the details.

I actually used beads off an old necklace of mine for the eyes as they happened to be the perfect size! And I wanted them to be shiny/polished.

Finn and April <3

Building My Set!

The Design I came up with.

 

 

I first began building my set by gathering the wood I needed and then working out the scales of the door and window in Illustrator to then lasercut the wood. This was the most precise way for me to cut the wood into the exact design I wanted, especially considering the window above the door.

 

 

I wanted the set to be very stripped back and basic, so I painted each wall with white emulsion. I thought that having a white set and off-white puppets would help emphasise the coloured strings in my animation. 

 

 

Here I just saved the cutting from the laser cut and sanded down the sides and created the door from that original piece of wood so it fit pretty much perfect!

 

I decided on this teal colour for the door, I felt it would compliment the red hearts on the puppets and the colours of the string.

 

Very basic foamboard hooks for my curtain pole.

 

 

 Slowly coming together!

 

Originally, I thought it would be best to use hinges on my set so that I could easily move the walls around and get in and around the set. However, this turned into a problem quickly as I glued the hinges on wrong and made quite a mess of it!

 I managed to solve this problem after a trip down to woodwork to see what they could suggest. They advised me to use a "cloth hinge" instead and that this would work a lot better for the kind of thing I was doing. This is basically making use of duct tape and masking tape to form a hinge out of. I never even knew this existed and above is the first try on some scrap wood to see how it would work.

 Here is my final set with lighting! As you can see I painted over the cloth hinges and they are pretty much unnoticeable! I ended up switching the side the door was on so that it would work our better when animating, then when the door opens there is only black instead of seeing the Mac computer.

Dark lighting, I really liked how the light shines through the window above the door creating this blue silhouette on the wall.

 

The door from the inside.

 

And outside!

 

 A still from my animation.

Getting props made!

LAMP

 

It actually lights up!

  

CURTAIN POLE 

I took advantage of having a boyfriend who is a mechanical engineer and got him to create some of my props for me, I gave the measurements and the kind of thing I would like and he made them using machines I wish I knew the name of!

The metal pole next to the stick I gave him to measure the length from.

The final product, and the brass ends matched with the brass door knobs.

SCISSORS

Again, this is Chris making the scissors in his workshop. I needed these making specially as the needed to be the right size to match the puppets.

The final product, I love the shape of these scissors and they match the aesthetic of my animation.

THE BOX

DOORKNOBS