Investigating Character Design:
I had so much fun making models in previous briefs (10x10x10 model doll of myself, felted landscape for visual narratives and personal project making customised art dolls to sell through Etsy.)
But no briefs so far have specifically asked for me to make a moving 3-dimensional model... UNITL NOW.
This is the perfect opportunity to run with it!
I want to understand how 3D models are used in stop-motion animation and what makes them appealing. How can I take a similar approach?
I've dabbled in stop-motion before and tried to make my dolls move (they have wire frames so have posable limbs), but my creatures for this brief should have a very different way of moving to those sweet little fairies. These are the Fibre Dredgers and they settle in the crevices and creases of all things untouched (need to develop this LAND/WORLD further in my sketchbook and visualise that too!).
I'm trying to make creatures with a certain aesthetic 'creepiness' to them. They won't be uncanny, but they should make skin crawl just a little. Hopefully some giggles too.
WHERE TO LOOK FOR SUCCESSFUL CREEPINESS AND A LITTLE HUMOUR?
LAIKA ANIMATION
I had so much fun making models in previous briefs (10x10x10 model doll of myself, felted landscape for visual narratives and personal project making customised art dolls to sell through Etsy.)
But no briefs so far have specifically asked for me to make a moving 3-dimensional model... UNITL NOW.
This is the perfect opportunity to run with it!
I want to understand how 3D models are used in stop-motion animation and what makes them appealing. How can I take a similar approach?
I've dabbled in stop-motion before and tried to make my dolls move (they have wire frames so have posable limbs), but my creatures for this brief should have a very different way of moving to those sweet little fairies. These are the Fibre Dredgers and they settle in the crevices and creases of all things untouched (need to develop this LAND/WORLD further in my sketchbook and visualise that too!).
I'm trying to make creatures with a certain aesthetic 'creepiness' to them. They won't be uncanny, but they should make skin crawl just a little. Hopefully some giggles too.
WHERE TO LOOK FOR SUCCESSFUL CREEPINESS AND A LITTLE HUMOUR?
LAIKA ANIMATION
The company behind The Boxtrolls, Coraline and Paranorman.
ARTISTS who have made drawings come to life through these beautifully crafted models.
What I like about them is that they aren't flat colours. So many other stop-motion animated models are created using pre-coloured packet plasticine, so the colour is completely block and doesn't change at all. It's artificial and unnatural.
The Box Trolls and LAIKA's other animated characters are all hand-painted, resulting in a finished model that shows the level of care and craft that has gone into this work.
https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/461900505508529830/
These characters require thousands of facial expressions in order to articulate
phonetic speech. The artists work with the actors to develop replicas of these expressions to fit onto the models. With each phoneme of speech requiring a different facial expression, and each semantic dictating the tone of speech, the artists have to change the face hundreds of times in just one scene, so it's a really long process.
They solved this by producing each 'set' of expressions as a different face that they can simply swap onto the body of the model.
LAIKA uses 3D printing technology to digitally mimic and mass produce these faces. This saves a lot of time and effort and helps to ensure that the measurements and details are consistent.
I'd love to make work on the same scale as LAIKA, but obviously they have a HUGE budget. I'll consider the way that they do things though and have a go at making several versions of the same face to SWAP.
Although I can't access 3D printing facilities, I could use the laser cutter to form repetitions of the same shape (make face masks, would need to be hand-painted afterwards).
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