Shoe Casting YEHAH!

I'm still very busy building my puppets and I'm on the home stretch, so I have loads to post about in the coming days. To kick of this bombardment of posts, shoes! 

To begin with I wrapped PTFE tape around the foot joints to protect them during the sculpting and casting process. Illustrated above with Theodor's foot joint used as an example.

I then sculpted the designs of both characters shoes using Super Sculpy Firm and used UHU to lightly tack them to the surface of some foam board. As you can see, the balls that would sit inside the knee joints were not glued in place with thread lock until the shoes were cast. A piece of K&S was glued in place with Epoxy to help with the casting process.

Foam board boxes were then made around the sculpts and plaster was pored over them. For Theodor's shoes a two part mould was made to help get the boot out when the cast was filled with silicone. This was because there was a slight cone shape to the boots design. Bein' a cow boy boot and al'! YEHAH! 

After removing the original sculpt from the mould and cleaning it out, the foot joints were put back into the mould with tie downs running into the armatures. A layer of silicon was then painted into the mould so that any air bubbles that may have occurred would not be visible on the surface. Once this layer was dry the rest of the silicon was poured into the mould.

The photo's above show the shoes fresh out of the moulds. Final photos of both the hands and feet with seam lines removed will be posted altogether at a later date.

As a little treat here's a my mate Joe to sing you a song. If your in London this Saturday why not head down to 229 on Great Portland Street where him and his band Short Stories will be headlining.

Armature Photos

A little later than planned, but as promised here are the photo's of my complete armatures for both Theodor and The Miro. The two photos below illustrate the armatures before any modifications. As mentioned on my previous post they were bought from Malvern Armatures, I would highly recommend the armatures. Could I say armature anymore! 

The photo below shows both of the armatures stood side by side, Theodor is on the left and The Miro is on the right

Modifications were then made to the armatures. For Theodor I added four rigging points two on his chest and two on his crotch. I also attached K&S to the neck and forearms so I could secure replaceable hands, and connect the head. The K&S attached to his shins was used when making the boots, something I will talk about in a later post.

A close up view of how the rigging points sit on the chest and crotch, The first photo shows the front view while the second shows the side view. All pieces of K&S were attached using epoxy glue.

There were a lot more modifications to be done to The Miro armature. A single piece of thick K&S was fixed so replaceable wire arms could be attached. The wire arms were made from two strands of Aluminium wire twisted together with one strand of Copper wire, The K&S Segments were then glued in place with epoxy. Two rigging points were also fixed in place on the chest, which was then surrounded in Milliput to strengthen the area. while a single piece of K&S was glued to the neck so I could attach the head.

The photo above was taken after I had incased the feet in silicon, hence the lack of feet. The two photos below show the chest section before Milliput was added. 

The various pieces of the arms before they were all put together.

Armature Designs

Apologise for the lack of posts over the last few weeks, I've been a busy bee with production on my film. I started my production by designing both armatures for Theodor and The Miro. I did an initial sketch of the armatures over a printed version of my characters, then scaled this initial design up to the chosen height of my models. (As shown below.)

I then sent these initial drawings to Malvern Armatures and after several emails involving alterations (including the removal of The Miro arms, which would be replaced with a wire armature) the final design was decided upon. (As shown below.)

The Final armature designs with all breakdowns are illustrated above, and the final armature designs overlaid onto my character designs are illustrated below.

I then took the Malvern Armature designs into Illustrator and designed the Aluminium Wire/K&S sections for The Miro, including rigging points. Also adding rigging points to the Theodor armature as shown below.

I will be posting photo's of the final armatures later this week, so check back soon.