Making a Little Universe

As I am not God I can not make a universe with mere words. So I had to be creative.

I started by buying a mini globe and painting it...

I painted the earth roughly the same colour of green as the towel I will use for my surface set.

I then painted the blue water on and experimented with more wire wool spray painted white to look life clouds and atmosphere. I stuck them on with tacky wax so that I can move them slightly when I animate the world turning. 

 I put some Tacky Wax at the joins of the globe so that it moves slower which will make it easier to animate.

To make the stars I punched holes in a black sheet of card. I then propped it up with translucent plastic.

  I then shown a light through the back of the card so that only the light from the holes show through.I hope to mask out the globe bracket and base in After Effects.

Finishing Touches and Hair

My heads look very bald and boring at the moment, so I had to finish them off...

I started by painting pupils in the eyes.

I then sculpted eyelids for expressions and blinking.

To make the hair. I first roughly sculpted the wire wool into shape. I then spray painted it and let it dry.

I then stuck them on with epoxy glue and used super glue for the edges to get and neat fit.

I then made eyebrows from some of the sprayed wire wool and sculpted eyelids onto the face with Plasticine, which will made them easily sculpted while animating.

However I decided that for The Man and The Girlfriend that the Plasticine needed to be a bit darker. 

I think the darker Neoplastic works better, so I will have to re-sculpt some eyelids for them.

I now just have to make clothes for my puppets. I have casted the shoes for the man from Latex and I am currently trying to cast hands for The Man and The Mechanic from Silicone. It has gone wrong twice now and I hope my current attempt will work.

I also hope to start work on my sets. I have already started by making the globe and finding materials for grass and sky.

Painting Heads and Mouths

I then painted the heads and mouths to give them a skin colour and detail. I decided to spray paint my heads and mouths as it will gave me an even uniform colour to work from.

I first gave the heads and mouths an undercoat of white so that the skin colour would come out well.

I then used a skin colour on the heads.

I thought blocking up the mouths with plasticine (like I did the eyes) would prevent me from having to re-paint the teeth. (However this proved fruitless and I had to re-paint them anyway)

I tried various ways to give The Man's mouths stubble. I thought sticking up bits of painted wire wool would work but it looked to hairy and random.

So I used wire wool to 'dab on' the spray paint to give a stubble effect on the face.

However I felt it was too much and ended up dabing on more skin colour to lessen the colour of the stubble. I then painted the detail of the gums, teeth and lips.

Sculpting Mouths

Next I had to make sculpts for each of the expressions that The Man and The Girlfriend will make in my film.

I referenced back to my expression sheets that I made in pre-production...

I worked out how few mouths I could get away with to limit the amount I had to sculpt.

I again used Super Sculpey to make these and once I had baked them I sanded them down and used Miliput to fill in any holes or cracks.

Now the mouths fit into the space made for them so that there will only we a small seam between the mouth and face.

Sculpting Heads

Here are what my puppets look like so far...

Now I have to sculpt their heads. I first made a balsa wood core so that they would be light enough for the armature to support. I then covered the core in tin foil so that the modelling material Super Sculpey would stick to them well.

I began sculpting by getting a good shape for the head and then working in detail and features.

Here is what they looked like before I cut out the areas for the replaceable mouths.

I cut out the areas in The Man's and The Girlfriend's face where their replaceable mouths would go. I then baked them in the oven. This is quite a risky way of making heads as I will only have one copy of each head but it is quick and practical.

Mould Making

I have decided to make The Man's shoes from latex and the hands for both characters from silicone. This will mean that the shoes will have more of a texture than the hands and the hands will be nice and flexible. To do this I will first have to make sculpts for both the shoes and hands.

First I had to sculpt the hands and shoes from plasticine.

I started by rough sketching the shoes I wanted to sculpt. By using some reference pictures from the internet I was able to decide on a design that I liked.

I added details like the area for the shoe laces...

...and the soles of the shoes.

To make the hands I sculpted around the hand armatures I had made. This meant that the K and S will be part of the mould.

These are the begins of my sculpts for The Man

Here are the begins of my sculpts for The Mechanic.

Then using the sculpts I made the moulds using plaster.

Here are my final shoe sculpts.

I first made walls for the mould using plastic board and a glue gun and lubricated the shoes, floor and shoes, with Vaseline, so that the Plasticine would easily come away from the set plaster.

I add the plaster into some water to make the mixture.

I then poured the paster into the walls over the shoes leaving some of the sculpts at the top free so I can push them out.

Here is the mould when it is dry.

I need to make two part moulds for the hands.

To make a two part mould I first needed a block of clay.

I embedded the hands half into the clay so that a mould will be made from the other half of the hands.

I made sure the clay was tight against the sculpts and made indents in the clay so that the two parts of the plaster mould would connect together easily.

I did the same for The Mechanic's hands.

I then put walls around the blocks of clay and again I lubricated the sculpts, clay and walls with Vaseline. 

I then poured plaster over the sculpts and clay to make the first half of the two part moulds.

Here is The Mechanic's hands once the plater was dry. I peeled off the clay and kept the sculpts in the plaster ready to make the second half of the mould.

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Thankfully before I made the 2nd part to the mould I remembered I had to make a pour hole for the silicone. I did this by attaching a funnel shaped piece of Plasticine to the edge of the sculpt and made sure the edge of it was flush with the plastic wall. I cleaned up the 1st half of the mould as much as I could and then lubricated it again with Vaseline so that the two parts of the mould would not stick together.

Here are the mould just after the plaster has been poured in.

Taking the moulds apart was a very tightening experience as my first attempts where fruitless and I could imagine myself having to go through the whole process again. But once I got a screwdriver between the two parts of each of them they came apart no problem which created an extraordinary sense of relief. 

Here are the finished moulds ready for the silicone.