LAST SHOT!

Over the weekend, I animated my very last shot of the film! I have 9 days until graduation and a lot of compositing ahead of me. Wish me luck and Red Bull!

Casting a Face!

This is how you know who your true friends are. Andrea spent about 25 minutes under the mask—10 minutes  under the alganate and another 15 waiting for the plaster mother mold to cure. 

Plaster and burlap mother mold... and pink straws, because breathing

Fabulous!

De-molding complete. From here, I'll be modifying the sculpt to create the character's face. I'll be adding eyes & brows in clay for animation next week.

Filming Techniques

The marionette is filmed in this 3' tank (approx. 200 gallons).

The caustic lights on the coral are made by animating panes of dappled glass frame at a time. 

Each layer is shot separately to give me more freedom compositing. For this camera move,  I attached the camera to a track and moved it by hand to animate the stop motion camera move. I do not have access to a motion control rig at this time, but I should when I revisit this scene in the fall.    

Upholstery

Next, I refined the foam by hand and applied primer. From there, I upholstered the pre-dyed fabric. To do this, I soaked the fabric in a 1:1 mixture of white craft glue and water. I pulled the fabric tightly around the set and used pins and staples to hold the fabric in place while it dried (over several days).

Hundreds of Pins Later... 

I also started sculpting additional forms out of Sculpy to dress the set with once it dried. 

Future Tube Sponge

I sculpted over the heads of pins to make a bunch of quick additions.

Environments

Below are a few environment renders, set elements, and a shape language guide. I still have a few more environments to get though, but I'm starting to really nail down the look and feel of the film.

The coral reef will be my most fabrication heavy environment. This set is also the bit of fabrication that I am looking forward to most. I'm going to begin sculpting the bones out of foam this week.

This environment will be the first layer explored by the puppet. I'm debating if I want to animate the branches as stop motion elements or in After Effects using the puppet tool. I think I'll do a few tests to figure out which aesthetic fits the film best. Furthermore, this render helped me to identify my influences for surface textures. Mary Blair is my primary influence. 

Assets to help me define my render style. I'm going for painterly, but graphic in silhouette.

I'm still playing with my shape language—finding that fine line between graphic and geometric. Primary influence: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. 

Spring Break Studio: Dye Tests

I spent my first evening of Spring Break in my apartment doing a batch of dye tests while catching up on Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Hulu (btw, great show, check it out). I have two main fabrics to work with—a textured white cotton material and a more complex woven upholstery fabric. The cotton took the dye really well. The upholstery worked better than I expected, but it did come out a bit darker than I would like. 

So far so good. The process of using iDye packets is pretty simple and worked as expected (no surprises... which was a surprise). The dye is a powder that you add to water, then add fabric, bring to a boil, and simmer for about 30 minutes. The tests took all evening because I did 4 batches. 

A little goes a long way with iDye—a dusting of dye powder did the trick. 

Huzzah! I didn't burn anything. 

Scarlet, pumpkin, and pink iDye pigments compared to the original fabrics above.
 Far left: upholstery fabric treated with pink iDye.