Wednesday 18 May 2011

Boy Armature Build

Well as you can tell I haven't done anything on this blog for a long time. Reason being is I've been really busy actually trying to make and film everything I'm going to put up here, but I'm well on my way so I decided i better show my progress.

This is how i went about building the armatures for the little boy.

I started of by drawing to scale how the armature would look under the puppet so i could measure the sizes of wire and KNS (square metal tubing) I would need correctly.



After i had my plans down i twisted some aluminium wire and cut it to length. I covered them with a heat shrink tubing to help them from  breaking so easily when animating.


I also cut my KNS to size also.



I decided to make every limb replaceable so as if i encountered any problems or breaks along the way they would be easier to fix if needed. I done this by sliding smaller sized KNS into slightly bigger pieces where the limbs needed to come apart. I also added rig points in case they were needed.

Once I had everything cut so size i glued all the parts together with a two part epoxy resin glue 




To give extra strenght to some areas I used milliput which is a two part epoxy putty


After everything was set and dry the next stage was to pad the puppet out. I started of by adding some blue foam. It is a stiff foam which i carved to the shape i wanted. I used this as a base on the chest and waist so there would be something solid to hold onto while animating. I also made sure to leave holes for the rig points.




To bulk out the rest of the body i used a soft foam to allow flexibility in the joints. i cut the foam to the basic shape i waned and stuck it together using contact adhesive.



Final padded out puppet.



No comments:

Post a Comment