However, I can say that I'm trying to get back on track. After doing some preliminary experiments, I have figured out what materials to use to make each soil character. Here are some of the puppet building experiments I did for these characters.
I also did some experiments with Flex-ooh and Mad Mattr (yes, that's how they're spelled) to see if they could be used in this film or in animation in general. I was just shopping around at Michael's one day exploring all my options...
No special effects were used in the video above because I wanted to show what you could do with just the Mad Mattr. This substance appears to hold its shape better than kinetic sand, but it does have a very similar texture. It can be mixed with clay, but why do that when you can just mix clay and kinetic sand? This is not a good material for puppet building by itself.
Again, no special effects were used in the above video to demonstrate what you can do with just the material. Flex-ooh has this really nice gooey texture to it. It appears to absorb and reflect light very well. It can potentially be used for special effects with lighting (like stylized fire, glowing goo, lava, etc.) By itself, it's no good for puppet building. The volume of the character would change too much between frames, even with a beefed up armature. When mixed with any amount of clay it loses its unique properties. However, the mixture would be significantly lighter than using pure clay which can be used as an advantage.
With all that data, I have made some decisions on how to start building these characters. The wayside soil will be a mixture of clay and kinetic sand (the mixture is a consistently porous material). The rocky soil will have "bones" with protrusions made out of oven backed clay. His "skin and muscles) will be regular clay, or a mixture yet to be determined. The thorny soil will be a mixture of clay and granulated sand. The final soil will be pure clay for the sake of symbolism unless I find material that better resembles fertile soil..
These decisions are of course subject to change. I will soon be looking at each character individually to finalize designs. However, there is one character I have yet to mention... the bird. To have this one stand out from the soil characters, he will not be made out of clay (at least on the surface). He will primarily be made out of pillow stuffing and or foam with fur and feather textures. I have yet to do experimental animation for this character, but I have started building him in pieces to tackle this challenge one step at a time.
That's all for now. Thanks for reading and may God bless you!
