Sculpture for Animation

Sculpture is a three dimensional art form. It can be used for stop-motion animation (puppet making, sets, etc.), modeling for character development in traditional animation, as kinetic sculpture, or in its own right as a stand alone work of art. 

Puppet for Walk Cycle

Students will make a puppet with moving limbs and head for use in a walk cycle animation. This project has four parts: design (character personality development), armature (interior skeletal structure with moving joints), surface design (skin, clothing, details, etc.), and documentation (email, photos, reflection, and presentation).

Introduction to Stop-Motion Puppets

Stop-motion Animation uses puppets that are moved in small increments to create the illusion of movement. These puppets have moveable joints and changing facial features to give their characters life and personality. The puppets used in stop-motion animation can be very simplistic (a blob of clay or an inanimate object that doesn't change shape) to very complex (mechanically controlled motors inside the puppet that control gears).

Armature Types

Wire armature with expoy bones and foam body
Wire & Wood Armature with replaceable arms and head and epoxy bones
Wood and wire armature with replaceable arms and felt finish
Ball and socket armature with moving eyeballs

Preparing your Wire for an Armature

Wire armatures will break over time from the repeated stress of doing the same movements over and over with out annealing the metal. 

In this video, Ed tests how twisted the wire should be to have it last the longest in your puppet. He says between 5 and 10 turns is the sweet spot if you are going to twist your wire. Wrapping it is also a good strategy, but twisting it too much damages the wire and makes it weaker.

It would be interesting to test the wires after twisting and annealing to see if the tighter twist would last longer than the less twisted wire.

Composition Concepts

  • Symmetry
  • Color Scheme
  • Variety
  • Body Proportions

Technical Skills

  • Armature - joints & bones
  • Body Volume - specific, interesting character form
  • Surface finish - details

Tools & Supplies

  • Hand Drill
  • Drill Press & Hand Saw (for wood)
  • Oven & Sculpting Tools (for baked clay)
  • Felting needles (for felt skin or hair)
  • Sewing needles (for clothing)

Technical Skill Videos

Resource Book Page

Order of Work

Determine Your Design
  • Side View
    • Draw the life-size design concept for your puppet
    • The side view should reveal how the character holds its weight as it stands
    • Include many details to make the character specific and unique
    • Your design should include at least four details that create an adjective for your character
  • Front View
    • Draw lines from the top of the head and the bottom of the feet across the page
    • Draw a few more lines from key points (shoulders, hips, knees, etc)
    • Draw the front view, keeping the same scale as the side view
    • The front view should include many details to make the character specific and unique
  • Armature View
    • On the back of the paper, trace the outline of the front and side views
    • Use these two outlines to draw how you want your armature to work
    • Include bones and joints for every moving element
Armature
  • Your armature design should have at minimum three jointed limbs, a neck that moves the head separate from the body, and a tie down in the hip on one side (either full side or 3/4 back)
  • You have some options on the type of armature you want to make: 
    • wire with baked clay bones (less secure)
    • wire with wood bones (more secure)
    • ball and socket (MUCH MORE WORK: you would need to come in at lunch for a week or so to manufacture this at the soldering station)
    • You also have the option of make removable arms and head or permanent arms and head
  • If using wire, you can either twist or wrap two or three wires together to create the skeletal structure for your puppet.
  • Lay the twisted wire across your armature design drawing to assess the length of the wires you need. 
  • Make sure your cross sections are well secured (ex: arm wires are twisted into spine wire; or, arm wires are glued into body hole; or, arm wires are glued into small square tube and tube is inserted into wooden body with companion tube glued in)
Body
  • Use the athletic wrap to bulk up your armature limbs
  • Use foam or aluminum foil or wood for body elements that are large
  • Use bake-able clay, liquid latex, or felt for skin
    • Bake-able clay is the easiest to add fine details (for non-moving parts)
    • Cosclay is a bake-able clay that can be moved after baking (for hands/joints)
    • Liquid latex has a skin-like texture
    • Felt is soft and natural (less like plastic doll)
    • You also have the option of making a silicone puppet using a mold of a clay puppet part (like hands or legs) [this takes more time and has more steps but is super fun to animate with]
  • Permanent facial features are needed (the ball part of the eyeball, nose, ears) You can decide how you want to approach the mouth. If your character's mouth doesn't move, then you can sculpt the mouth at this stage. If your character moves their mouth, you can leave the mouth blank and use replaceable stickers or replaceable clay mouths or wax based clay mouths. 
  • Facial parts that move will be wax based clay or replacement baked clay or stickers or felt (eye pupils, eyebrows, mouth, etc.)
Details
  • Add many details (at least four) to your character
    • Exaggerate features to make your intentions more clear
    • Clothes, accessories, hair, etc. all make your character more unique and specific
    • You should be able to look at your character and ascribe an adjective to your character easily and assume that someone else would also think of that word to describe your character (ex: adventurous rabbit: you can tell it is adventurous because it is wearing a backpack with binoculars hanging on chest, bandana around neck, handkerchief or map sticking out of pocket, camp shorts, and laced shoes)
Documenting

Design your Character

Armature

Body

Facial Features

Picture

Clothing, Skin, & Details

Picture

4 Photos of your Puppet

  • Use a solid background (no distracting lines, shadows, table, or other stuff) like the photo cube 
  • Use quality lighting (soft shadow from artwork only)
  • Photo should be in focus, with artwork centered
  • One photo of in the photo cube, three photos at your desk photo station (3/4 back, side, 3/4 front)
  • Four photos total (turn in to drive folder)

Email an Image of Your Project

Grading Criteria