As you can tell, the character appears to crack a lot during the animation. This works in my favor for artistic reasons because I want to give the impression that this character can barely hold himself together. However, it cracks a little too easily, and I'm thinking of trying out a different type of clay to mix with the kinetic sand. I also may have to mix less kinetic sand into the clay. For this puppet, the mixture was two thirds clay and one third sand.
The armature skeleton for this puppet was very simple being made out of epoxy puddy and metal wire. However, the epoxy "bones" didn't dry on the metal wire properly or something because they became loose on the armature during the animation process. I haven't had that problem in previous projects. The metal wire also fought me a lot, but fortunately I got in the habit of using a homemade surface gauge to keep track of the puppet's movement. If you look closely, the character is able to stay standing in certain poses because I put bolts through the foot of the puppet and floor of the set which was tightened by a nut. I plan to make a new puppet to do a new set of animation tests. I'm going to try a variation on some of the materials to determine an ideal final product for the short.
Also, I will address the bird you see at the very end of the video. What you see is merely an experiment on what I can do with the head of the bird. It's a puppet with no wings or legs.
The skull and beak are made of oven baked sculpey. The beak was painted black, and the head is covered with shredded pom poms that are glued on to it. The eyes are simply black beads, and the "body" is a tube of fur fabric. I'm proud of how it turned out, but it can be improved. My approach to this character is going to be as realistic as possible. This will not be a cute cartoony bird. I plan to make it as intimidating and scary as possible. The design and movements are based on the white spectacled bubul.
I have done a couple of other little experiments with this character, but I won't write about it until the compilation of tests is complete.
I really am trying to make progress on this, but I do have some bad news. I work a job where I build trusses on an assembly line. During the winter, I had only 30-40 hour work weeks. Now it's 50 hours. I'll have less time to devote to my hobby, but I'll try to march forward as best as I can while pursuing other projects.
Thanks for reading and may God bless you.
