Moving at the Speed of a Rock

Well, I'm getting through my junior fall semester okay.  I seem to be doing well in all my classes and it looks like I'm moving in the direction God wants me to go with my career.  But enough of all that silliness, I'm writing to provide an update for the latest Mr. Weebee adventure!

Title:  The Pet Rock

Premise:  Mr. Weebee adopts a pet rock which accidentally sparks the jealously of another pet from the same store.

I have completed the storyboards for this episode, but it appears to be a little too long.  It seems solid as is, but I think I should try to simplify it.  The Mr. Weebee series was never intended to be a skit of great complexity.  I hope that if I do make changes, the story will still be solid enough to progress in the film making process.

One of the first things I did was repair the Mr. Weebee puppet.  Nothing too serious.  The wire that holds his arm into position broke off of the main torso of the armature.  This took about an hour, probably less to complete.  Yes, Mr. Weebee is a live and well.  In some of the pictures you can even see him in the background exercising.

After that, I started building the pet that would be jealous over the rock.  I'm going to call it a fur ball.  It's probably not the most original name, but I'm going to stick with it!

His armature was fairly simple.  It was nothing more than a few pieces of metal frame and plates bolted together.  For his front "legs" I used a piece of bent metal tubing.

The build up for his body was merely dried out disinfectant wipes that wrapped around the armature.

What's a fur ball without fur?  I applied it by sewing it in certain areas onto the build up material.

I decided that it was best to cast the head of the creature in resin.  This way, the character will maintain the shape of his head.  Plus, I get to put my resin casting kit to good use.

The original head is sculpted in clay. 

I placed the head inside a plastic cup (the neck piece touching the bottom) and poured in the silicone mixture. 

When the silicone was cured, I cut it open to get the clay head out. 

Here is the the completed mold ready for casting!

As a precaution, I sealed the sides with clay before pouring the resin mixture into the silicone mold. 

Here is a comparison between between the clay sculpt and the resin cast.

There were seams and other small imperfections on the final cast.  To fix these errors, I covered them with some black clay.  This will also help the head match the clay texture of the other characters.

  For finishing touches, I glued on the eyes and ears for this creature.  The eyes were beads, while the ears were clay covered pieces of wire.

You know you want to own one.

I can't wait to see this character come to life in the animation process!  Although this episode won't be completed until the summer of next year, you should expect a reel of animation tests in the beginning of 2014 at the latest.

Thanks for reading and may God bless you!