Oh Well- set construction

Initially, I had planned to make both of my sets prior to animating, then alternate between them to tackle the most difficult scenes first in the hopes of prolonging the usability of my puppet.

As I ran further behind schedule however due to unforeseen problems, this soon became impractical. I have found myself adapting my schedule so much to work around various difficulties that some work on my sets was ultimately unnecessary. I constructed two base boards to begin with, at different sizes to accommodate different scenes. One consisted of a long ‘cracked earth’ set, which Walter walks upon. The second set follows the same design but is a little shorter- the set upon which the rocky cliff and well sit. Having filmed all scenes requiring my first set before having made the second set, however, I was able to simply cut the first board shorter and build the well and rocks on top. This saved me the time of painting the floor on the second board- which had previously taken the better part of one day.

At the time of writing this, with my second set finally complete, I have now completed the fabrication stage of my SS2 project, and for the remainder of my time I will be using my evenings for postproduction on my completed shots.

The Well

The well was tricky as it needed thickness and detail on the inside as well as the outside, given that we view the inside when seeing the pot being winched out. I had hoped to base the model around a pre-existing supporting structure, such as a plant pot or something similar, but had no luck finding anything a suitable size. In the end, I formulated a fully handmade design.

The main ‘tube’ of the well was created with wire mesh, wrapped into a cylinder. I then cut it into strips, roughly 2” in width, down to just beyond the midpoint. These strips were easy to fold inwards and bend to create the lip of the well and the smaller inside cylinder (accounting for the well’s approximately 2cm thickness). The strips were taped back together on the inside, and the walls were stuffed with scrunched up newspaper for support. 

The stone details were created with sections of corrugated card, glued to the surface, with a top layer of paper mache sealing all the gaps, smoothening the edges/corners and giving an authentic texture. The stone details were carefully created to be correct on both the inside and outside (in that the cement lines match up). As you can see from the images, the outside details only extended half way down the cylinder, yet covered the entire inside- this is because the full length of the well was needed for the extreme low angle ‘pot winching’ shot. Beyond this, only the above-ground well was needed, so I was able to cut off the excess and attach the model to my set (images later).

I painted the stonework with acrylic paints, using a sponge to achieve a realistic dappled surface:

The branch supports for the well were in fact carefully chosen twigs! These were intentionally weathered, chipped and coloured to resemble old dry wooden branches. Finally, the rope details were simply brown string glued into place.

Filming the pot winch scene required the full length of the well. This was difficult to do, as the well needed to be suspended upright, with a camera underneath looking up vertically, with a lit green screen over the top!

Rocks

The rocks were a big undertaking, as they are actually very big. I bulked out the shape with large balls of newspaper, taped loosely into place against my set floor and a backing board added to support the structure.

Akin to the stone texturing of my well, the rocks were given a coating with paper mache, this time with tissue paper as well as newspaper as this was better for smoothening the shape whilst retaining form and details.

Once dry, the rocks were painted with acrylics, using a sponge once again for believable mottled highlights. 

The set in action:

Oh Well- animating!

With my Walter puppet and first set complete, I have been able to animate a good amount of my film over the past week or so, and am delighted to say that everything has so far gone very well! This project marks my first real attempt at full character animation in stop-motion, building upon my work last module. Here are some images of the puppet in action:

Walter begins his journey!

Walter needed a little hand to get going

Walter is secured to the set via screw/wing nut tie-downs

Oh Well- vulture construction

The vulture is a minor character in my film, adding to the sense of peril for Walter as he treks across the desert, and also adding some comic relief by virtue of his almost unnatural predatory stare! Though the vulture is seen flying in my film, I intend to add this as a 2D animation due to time restrictions, which will be added in postproduction. There always exists the potential to animate a puppet later on, and composite this atop the previous animated footage.

For the two main scenes where he features, the vulture simply tracks Walter as he walks along (off screen), his head panning across from right to left (and vice versa as Walter returns home). The model, as per my designs, consists of a solid sculpt for the head and body, painted by hand, with a wire/foam/latex neck blended seamlessly between them, enabling his head to be moved.

The solid sculpt components were created with air drying clay- though I have expressed my preference previously for sculpting with Super Sculpey, I knew that the vulture would have thin legs, and be sitting stop a thin branch. It was imperative therefore that he was as light as possible, and the air-drying clay I use has an excellent strength to weight ratio.

As with Walter, to avoid having to create the head in multiple parts, I sculpted the beads for the vulture’s eyes into his head.

The body was sculpted with a recess allowing the neck to be inserted and glued into place. I created a makeshift tool with plasticard to press a feather pattern into the vulture’s body for added detail.

For the tree, I was fortunate to find a stick the perfect size! I trimmed off the bark and allowed it to dry out in the sun to achieve the dry weathered appearance I desired. The branch on which the vulture sits was actually added separately, pinned/glued in place with the join smoothened over with Milliput.

Since I would be holding the vulture’s body to support him when animating his head, I needed his legs to be sturdy, so not to snap off. I recognised them as a weak spot, thus decided to create them with Milliput around a wire core- held in place with strong epoxy putty. I wasn’t taking any chances with this! I made sure to leave a little exposed wire on the legs to plug into the body.

The components were painted individually enabling me to reach into the difficult spaces. The feathers were given several soft highlights to emphasise the detail and give the bird a more natural fluffy and feathery appearance. Lighter colours appear less reflective, and so adding highlights, coupled with a fine drybrush, helped to reduce shine. You can see above that the branch Milliput has been painted to blend with the main ‘trunk’.

The neck consists of twisted wire, glued firmly into square K&S tube segments. These help attach the head and body by providing a bigger surface to glue. The neck was padded with cushion foam, before I applied several layers of liquid latex (coloured using the same paint as used for the vulture’s head).

With the vulture complete, I was ready to animate his scenes. I clamped the base to the set surface to ensure it wouldn’t move whilst animating. I am pleased to say that the puppet was nice to animate, and worked exactly as I had hoped. The latex on his neck did crease eventually from holding a bent position, though this was expected. The puppet lasted as long as it needed to for my film, and is still in a perfectly good condition to show off at my graduate show!

Oh Well- puppet construction part 4

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Adding the finishing touches

With my cast components complete, I now had the definite colour of my character to match when painting his head and mixing Plasticine for his replacement mouths. The base of his hair was painted, with some black fur later glued in place.

I was fortunate to receive some great help from my mum in making his elastic wrist bands (which hide the join where his replaceable hands are attached) and his loincloth, which also features an elastic waistband to hold it in place. 

The pot

Walter’s water pot was created with a tin foil frame, covered in a thin layer of Super Sculpey. The shape was refined, sanded and smoothened, with a handle (reinforced with a metal strip) added afterwards. This was then coated with Sculpey and baked again, before being painted.

The pot features a loose magnet inside to attach it to the top of Walter’s head. The magnet can be removed for the scene where he falls over and the pot must be suspended via a rig just above him- otherwise, the magnetism might have pulled the two models together.

As you will no doubt have noticed, I have yet to add his mouth and eyebrows! There are 22 mouths for Walter, spread across 10(ish) scenes. I am aiming to film one scene a day over the next couple of weeks. Since I am so pressed for time at the moment, my plan is to make what mouths I need for the first few scenes, and the others I can then work on in the evenings when I return home from animating at university. Once I begin animating, I will be able to use my evenings to tackle small immediate tasks.

I hope you like what you've seen so far! Over the next couple of days, I aim to have Walter finished- check back soon for some shiny high-res photos of the completed puppet!