New Stop-Motion Reel

Hi guys! I've been hard at work on animating the final act of The Hollow Boy and have some more tutorials coming soon. But for now here is my updated stop-motion reel of all the commercial projects I've been working on recently.

-Fonz

Commercials and Dinosaurs

Hi everyone. I've been pretty busy as of late directing various commercial projects and doing character animation for a few stop-motion shows. I'll bring you up to speed on the progress of The Hollow Boy in the next post but in the meantime I've included a commercial I directed with my Brother for the apparel company Hips and Hair. It was my first venture into live action so it was quite an adjustment to say the least. But fear not, the entire intro is animated along with a few other shots in this one and half minute epic. Hope you enjoy it as much as we had a fun making it.

And here's an episode from College Humor's "Dino Office" which I had the pleasure of animating on along with Ashley Arechiga and Pete Levin. Directed by Trisha Gum with puppets and sets by John Sumner and Emily Franz.

Until next time...

-Fonz

Puppet Fabrication (Built-Up Method) and Clothing for Stop-Motion Puppets - Part 5

So we've finally come to the end of the Puppet Fabrication (Built-Up Method) tutorial. The video above shows one of the final puppets in action. One final thing that still needs to be covered is how I created the head. 

 

To create the head I simply sculpted it out of Sculpey. Sculpey is a clay that won't harden until you throw it into the oven. It can also be used to fabricate set pieces, props, body parts and anything else you can imagine. The great thing about it is that it won't dry out between uses so you don't have to feel like you have to rush to finish a sculpt. Once you do put the final sculpt into oven it comes out rock hard and can be handled/sanded without ruining any of the details.

Here's a before and after picture of one of the heads I used. The photo on the left is the sculpt right out of the oven and the photo on the right is the same head with the final paint. For paint I used some extra cell paint that I had lying around, but acrylics will work just as well.

Here's a sample of some of the heads I'm using for the towns people. As I mentioned before these are supporting characters whose faces won't really be seen in the final film other than in cast their shadows and silhouettes, so sculpting eyes and mouths weren't necessary in this situation. These same techniques however can easily be expanded on to create a more detailed head that can actually be animated with the use of different mouth and eye shapes.

-Al-Gonzo