Stop-Motion Puppet

Stop-Motion Puppet
Animation Guide
Introduction.
Stop motion animation is a very interesting kind of film production. This is how it
works.
When filming live action with a normal film camera, the camera takes 25 frames
per second. When you watch the film on television or the cinema you see 25
slightly different pictures in a sequence every second, this gives the illusion of
movement.
Stop motion is a technique where you shoot one frame at the time and you animate
the movement of objects, characters and such. This means that you take a picture
of for example a puppet, then you change the puppets position and you take another
picture. And then you change the puppets position again and take another picture
and so on. When you have shoot whole scene you can put together the pictures in a
sequence and you have a moving picture.
The good thing about the technique is that you have a very good control over the
movements, the challenge with it is that it can be very time consuming and requires
a lot of knowledge to get it right.
The task.
The task for this workshop was to create and animate a puppet with multiple movements in different pastes and a personality that would make the viewer to instantly
like him. The puppet will be a drummer boy playing his drum, the moving parts
will be his arms, the wind-up key, his head, his eyes, eyelids and eyebrows.
In the team for this workshop was Erik Zaring (stop-motion animator), Nina
Muhonen (puppet constructor), Erik Öhman (postproduction supervisor), Ragnar
Granstrand (director) and to some extend Mikael Linbom (stop-motion animation
support).
Building The Puppet .
By Nina Muhonen
In the beginning when we started to build the puppet, the design was almost
complete, but certain details were not decided on, like the function and design of
the eyes and face, which are the most important parts of a character.
Also the colours were not decided.
I started building the body in Styrofoam and putty, while I thought about how to
build the skeleton and joints. Mikael Lindbom from Dockhus was a really good
help for me. He showed me how they build their joints, but I really didn´t have the
time to make them myself so I bought two “helping hands” and took the joints I
needed. It was a bit difficult to decide what size the skeleton had to be inside of the
body but after some experiments it became alright.
Later it appeared that the movement of the joints could have been built much easier
from the animators (Erik) point of view. He wanted the arms to raise straight up
and down instead of also be able to move out from the body. This was pretty easily
fixed with a little steel plate between the arm and body.
During this I could finally start sculpting the head and build the eyes inside.
It was really good for the workflow to let Erik Zaring start testing the puppet at this
stage, as he had very good practical advice about how to create the facial
expression. This turned out to be the most difficult part of this project, as the whole
character had to be cute and loveable. But after adding more clay to the cheekbones
and the little chin the puppet became more adorable. Later when the moveable
eyebrows and eyelids were attached it became “alive”.
When we started painting the body we ran into some problems with the paint.
The underlying layer “raised” when I sprayed the next layer so I had to wait until
it had dried and then take off the paint with sandpaper and start all over again. It
turned out that the paint had a solvent that could not be used in several layers. This
was really frustrating because then I had to mask out every part that should not be
sprayed. The paint took about 8 hours to dry.
But it all worked out and when Erik came back to do more test animations the
puppet was finished!
Animation.
By Erik Zaring
It was clear that the puppet functioned properly regarding the movement of the
arms and the wind-up key. The puppet was still missing the head and was not yet
painted. Naturally the head is the most important feature of the puppet. It was not
until a couple of days later when the head and paint was in place that you really
could see if the character communicated in a positive way or not.
The puppet character came alive for real when the eyes came in place and was
painted. You could see the soul of the character. The action of the eyes is really,
really important when it comes to animation. The drumming and mechanics of the
puppet is secondary action compared to the joy of life showing in his glossy eyes...
My comments and suggestions regarding the functionality of the puppet was
swiftly implemented by the puppet constructor Nina in her workshop.
Rigging for a stop-motion shoot takes time. Often a lot more than expected. This
because the set must put in place, lights adjusted, reference/test pictures of the
framing, approval of the framing, approval of the lighting, placing the puppet
firmly, people walking in and out of the set tripping over stuff and you have to
backtrack to get the exact frame again and so on. This is how it usually works.
But not this time. Everyone in the team was really focused and it seemed like they
had done it a millions times before (which they had not). It went pretty fast rigging
the first take of . Stop motion is a very demanding discipline to work in but when
you get it all right: Magic!
And before I forget: make sure that the fuse box can handle the juice it takes to put
up a couple of 1000 w lamps!
Another thing that worried me before the puppet animation is the fact that when
you use a digital still image camera you can get light flicker. A phenomenon due to
the fact that these cameras is not build for still image capturing with long intervals
between frames. This problem is solved in post production using software to even
out the differences between frames to eliminate the flicker. This was not the case
during this shoot. Probably because we used a good camera/lens (Canon EOS 1 DS
Mark 3, Canon EF 50mm f/1,4 USM Lens).
Result and lessons.
We are very happy with the result, the movements turned out really smooth and the
facial expression really made the puppet likeable. We learned a lot which variables
we can use to change the facial expression of a puppet.
We also learned that it is really important to plan the work in every detail, and have
all design and functional problems solved as soon as possible. Next project we will
make 2-3 small puppets in clay to test the design and different shades of colours,
before I start building the actual puppet. I think this will help the design team to
come to decision faster and I will not have to make huge adjustments on the actual
puppet.
Contact.
For more information about the project please contact:
Ragnar Granstrand, Director
ragnar@popcorefilm.com
Nina Muhonen, Puppet Constructor
nina@atributmakeri.se
Erik Zaring, Puppet Animator
erik@dockhus.com
Erik Öhman, Postproduction Supervisor
eric@dreamfield.se