I know things haven't been too exciting around here for the last week or two. I've been working on a miniature set for an I Dream About the Earth episode. I suppose first off I should let people know that I aim to have claymation be consistently present in the show from now on. Or at least stop motion animation in general. The claymation opening has kind of been the catalyst for that. Anyways, this main set I'm working on is going to be the staging ground for the story of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, a very old Irish legend. The episode is going to be more narrative based, so that should be really fun to do. Here is what I have gotten done so far:
It looks pretty crappy and empty right now, but It's still being worked on a lot haha (the lighting in the studio isn't all that great either). I also haven't gotten the foliage yet. I initially was going to use torn up and stained sponges, but wimped out and just bought some actual model foliage/moss stuff. It'll look better in the long run anyways. I've been trying to base the design of everything off of some really great watercolor-ish looking images I've found:
I've been using this as some basis for the design of the character too, but that is a different story. He's normally portrayed as a bulky, hairy dude, but I liked kind of the innocence of how youthful he looked in these paintings. It's not too direct. I've been doing a lot of different stuff with it (some of the things literally because I'm struggling with the model I've built. That leads me to some thoughts about building clay models in general.
Well, actually, first off I can show you a crappy picture of Fionn and his band of warriors, the Fianna:
The Fianna are all going to be black and white paper cut-outs that move as a single chunk. I may have to make a different version of them that can move around the set, because they are a little big for it. Fionn is an alright size, but the way I built the armature was dumb, so I'm going to have to redo him almost entirely. The wire I used for the skeleton was too thick, even though it felt alright initially. The clay gets too soft when manipulating it, and so when you try to shift the figure in any way, either the wire holds too well and you can't move it without shifting everything all over the place (making really subtle movements impossible in the animation) or the clay simply pushes through and falls right off of the armature. either way, it makes it pretty clear that you need to reeeaaaally consider everything that goes into making one of these.
I've recently been told that the best thing to use for the armature is (surprisingly) pipe cleaners! Imagine that, those goofy things are making a come-back into serious work now. And I can totally see why; they are super easy to manipulate, they are twisted wire so you don't have to worry about them breaking if you bend the joints too much, and they have all that ridiculous fur on them so that the clay will actually cling to the wire! or any other material for that matter, if maybe you wanted to use actual fabric for the clothes. I don't know why that isn't an internationally announced truth of the universe. It's so simple! Anyways, enough of being excited about that.
I've still got a long way to go on this animation. So what I want to do, is complete another episode in between the time it's taking to finish this one. I was thinking, maybe something about blue dwarfs. I could still do claymation for planets and stuff, that wouldn't be difficult at all! And I could use the new intro too. It would be like an ease-in to all the new claymation stuff. So yeah, that's what I'm currently working on, hopefully you guys think it's as fun as I do.
ps. I just finished up my internship with wonder wonder, so I'll have monday and thursday mornings to devote to working on stuff... or sleeping in? YoU dEcIdE!!!1 No really though, gonna be putting more time into these now. At least for as long as the semester goes, I believe we have three more weeks before holiday breaks and whatnot.
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