The first step in the development of my film was making an effective puppet, made of a material that could serve the different purposes of the story. I needed it to be flexible and light, that could be painted but also cleaned, resistant enough when the character scratches himself. During my summer experience at the NFTS, I have seen animating with puppets made out of wax. I wanted to try out this material, also to learn the casting process with a plaster mould.
The first step was making a maquette out of plasticine, to create the plaster mould. This is the first time I carefully carve the facial details, to make my puppet stand out. His face reminds me of a barn owl statue I have seen in Luke’s garden, and his chunky features have been associated with the sculpures of Henry Moore. I wanted Eo (the name I have given to the character) to have soft, organic shapes.
Thanks to Owen’s guidance, the technician of the ceramic workshop, I began to make the mould by laying down clay around the puppet. I had to be very careful and precise, making the clay very smooth, aligned with the body of the puppet, without bumps.
The plaster took an hour dry out and become firm. It was incredible to see how quickly it starts to harden, just after being mixed with water. It is a very fast process and timing is important in order to get the right consistency. The first time Owen mad the mixture and poured it over the puppet lying in the clay. We built the frame around the puppet once again, and this time I made the mixture of water and plaster and poured it over the puppet. I was a bit slow so the mix was too thick, therefore it created lumps and bubbles on the surface. It wasn’t too bad, luckily. Now both sides of the block were ready to be put together, so that I could pour wax in it and make my puppet.
I placed the armature inside the blocks and poured wax. This is a picture of the puppet after a short animation test. Unfortunately I haven’t taken any pictures of it as it came out of the mould. The wax was clear, but the puppet resulted gray because of some leftover color in the heater where I melted the wax. The result was quite disappointing. The wax is too hard to animate freely his body without breaking the juntures. I realised that the wax puppets I have seen at the NFTS are all fully dressed and hide their juntures under the clothes. Plus, they don’t move much, while my puppet has to stumble, run, fall, roll down. It is also very weak on smaller parts such as the fingers. On the positive side, it is quite light and the plaster worked well, making a perfect copy of my plasticine puppet without too many flaws (deriving from the side of the plaster I made, which had some lumps and holes).
Here is the animation test. It was quite hard to animate naturally, and it looked quite stiff. As a consequence, I decided to keep experimenting with plasticine to make a good puppet that could work in my film.
Animation Process and Promotion 