Laurence - Model-making

To start off this module we were tasked with designing and building our own character for a 3D stop motion animation. I started off by looking for some interesting examples of stop motion 3D models.
After a brief reviewing of the various stop motion models and processes on the internet, key points of interest included the work of Ray Harryhausen, and Tim Burton, among other miscellaneous material found on google images, I began to sketch out simple design ideas trying to use minimal clothing or simple materials in an attempt to keep my model to a reasonably simple standard as I haven’t done model-making prior to this.

I did less different designs than I usually would for a project like this but found myself happy with one of the ones I had done fairly early on and decided I would like to get in to the hands-on crafting so I started out producing the wire-frame for my figure after drawing out the size I wanted to make it to. The frame was fairly tricky to make, I had to use a few extra bits of wire to prevent the shoulders and legs from displacing along the spine but overall it turned out quite sturdy and the proportions were better than I had anticipated.

Once with the ‘skeleton’ for my character I started to add some plasticine for the feet and legs of my character slowly adding in and building on top to try and achieve a somewhat naturalistic build.

I then cut some flexible foam up in to smaller blocks to use for the characters torso and arms. I didn’t use plasticine for the body as I intended the legs to be the heaviest part of the figure to help it balance and stand as effectively as possible without needing a rig. I also roughly carved a head out of stiffer [and even lighter] foam to use as the base for my head. The head and arms will ideally be carved further in to and added to with a layer of another material, perhaps Papier-mâché that will then be painted. A coat will be added to the character hiding most of the body area which means I won’t have to render the shape of the body too much or worry about the colour as these areas will remain unseen and simply be a supporting volume for the clothing.