For the different pieces, I created them using plastaline clay that doesn't dry, but gets softer to the touch when you mess with it. I created two sets of each, but ended up using only one to create the molds. Below you see a picture of plaster molds. This was my initial idea. Make molds out of plaster and cast it in silicone. By the direction of a friend, he recommended that I create the molds for the hands and feet out of resin and then make the casts out of silicone, while doing the opposite for the head. This idea was to ensure that my hands and feet were created out a flexible material that would allow the stop motion armatures to move with a realistic feel.
The picture on the top is what the molds looks like after the clay was mostly cleaned out of the mold. The bottom picture is the mold in the process of being cured. And my friend Michael Bradley helped me to create the molds for both the hands, feet and head. How we created the mold was that I hot glued the hands and feet to a piece of foam board and hot glued walls around it. The walls were also sealed with hot glue to ensure that the resin we used for the molds wouldn't come out. For the hands, we made sure that there was also a hole where the wrist met the wall so that when it came to casting the hands with the armature inside of it, it would come out easily.
To cast the heads Michael taught me this method of painting on silicone to create a mold. The pictures above indicate the first two layers that we put on the heads which were also molded out of clay and then painted on top of. The layer affect was to create a thick enough wall to hold the silicone after it dried, but still allow us to be able to get the clay heads out of the molds. The idea was basically the reverse of what we did for the feet and the hands.
When we cast the heads, how we ended up doing it was hanging the armatures from a cabinet above out workspace to hold the heads in the general area I wanted the head to be on the neck. We had them hang there till the resin dried and then took them out of the molds.
(Above: Tests for the molds to make sure they worked.)
(Above is the armature for the feet sitting inside the mold)
(Above is a picture of the armature in position before the silicone was poured.)
(This is what the molds and casts looked like after the silicone was poured)
(This is what the feet looked like after it was taken out of the mold.)
(This is the armature all put back together!)
( Pictures to come with the finished armatures ) To finish the first armature, I reattached the legs and wrapped the whole thing in pipe cleaners. The idea was that the first armature was going to be a skeleton and so I twisted three pipe cleaners and a piece of floral wire together to create the shape of the ribs. For the second armature, I wanted it to be human so I plan on doing a similar technique that I did for the skeleton but give it clothes and change its color to accommodate skin.
This project has been a lot of fun because I learned first and foremost about creating Stop Motion puppets, and second I learned about the process of making molds and casts. I also learned just about the process of creating the armatures and how it all works so hopefully maybe in the near future, I can go work for a studio that does Stop Motion Animation and create their puppets for them.
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