One of the new animation books in Clare street called 'Stop Staring'. This book is intended for CGI - character modelling for heads but turned out to be very useful for my animation short. As there will be a lot of dialogue and close-up head shots, this book gives valuable advice on lip-syncing, eye and brow movements, and head tilting. All of which, when done correctly, will add to the credibility of the characters. I would definitely recommend it as the information applies to any style.

 

 

The images above might look a bit strange. As I intend to build my characters in modelling clay, I've been researching ways of doing this. A lot of modellers bulk out the characters - after building an armature - to save on clay. Mostly because it can be heavy for a large character, and generally for heads as they tend to be oversize and can easily overbalance your character. So I wanted to make a solid sphere shape to use for the several heads I need. Using a ping pong ball I made two moulds out of plaster, using the bottom half of plastic bottles to contain the wet plaster. I intend to fill each half with hot glue and then join them together when their set. The advantage of the hot glue is that it can be drilled, painted, etc. I had tried using silicon sealant but it was too flexible.

 

This image shows the actual volume of expanding foam in the can (for future reference). I gradually built up each shape - for my buffalo - over several days. I'm making a few copies as I know there will be accidents along the way.

 

 

In the image above the aeroboard that's visible is all that remains of the original 'body' of my buffalo character. Constructed from two separate pieces of packaging the hollow form was unstable so I filled it and added to the overall size for later shaping.

 

I did record each step of the process - I started with two blocks of wood to allow for drilling ( adding neck and limbs) - and gradually built up layers of foam. Though it says further layers can be applied after 20 mins I found that the foam stayed soft for hours, due to the cold weather at the time, so I added layers on a daily basis.

 

I decided on using expanding foam to bulk out the body of the buffalo in my short, which had to be kept big, as I want to keep the other main character at a workable scale.