Character Eyes

I decided to use beads for the characters eyes. To add the colours onto the eye balls I painted them with acrylic. The next thing I will have to do is figure out how and with what I will make the figures mouth movements.

Test figure Nathan :P

 I based this test figure after my long-haired boyfriend called Nathan. I chose the colours at random.


 After having made the skeleton, which consists of two metal wires wrapped around each other I put the new clay over it.


 I work on the torso first. Then when I am satisfied with it I work on his shoes,pants and then belt. The belt is to slightly cover up the smudged part where the torso and hip connects. It also makes his upper body look smaller and the proportion are a tiny bit better.                                                                                                                                                                              
The figures balance is good at the moment but it is still missing some body parts. The question is will it still have the same balance once it is finished.

I read that in Wallace & Gromit magnets were used to keep the characters in position. sadly I wont be able to use that method as the board that the set is on is too thick. 

After the legs torso and shoes are on the arms and hands are next. At last the head is added and then the hair. 

I have yet still to think about how I will do the characters eyes or mouth. I might just use clay for the eyes or maybe beads. 

Test subject Nathan turned out to be a success. Even if he doesn't have proper eyes or a mouth at the moment. 




At the end the figure still manages to stand and his arms and legs   
 can be easily bent without breaking. 




                                                                     

Bye for now  :D

The Start of the Characters

These are the start of the figures which I might use for the claymation. 

 The figure on the left will be Linda McFly. 

In the scene she actually wears pink but I had none so it will have to do with purple.Marty McFly might become the figure wearing black.I thought of slightly making the clothes more modern. I thought of making Linda a nerdy goth and Marty a punk. But that is just a maybe.

The orange one will be Dave McFly and the white one will be Gorge McFly. The figures aren't finished because I wanted to leave the clay harden up a bit by the air but only the parts of the characters which does not need to be moved. The day when I start the animation I will add on the rest of the clay onto the figures, that clay will be more fresh ad flexible than the one which I left out to harden a bit.

The blue character will be Marty's mother, Lorraine Baines McFly and the checkered one was mend to be Marty but I'm still not sure about that.

New Idea

I changed my mind about using Flash to do my Back to the Future scene, and instead I am thinking of doing a claymation. I researched how little figures were made for claymation before I tried to make a figure myself. Thsi time I am planing on using wire as a kind of  skeleton and newplast clay for the design of the characters. The wire should help with the movement of the clay figure.well to be honest I still don't know what that clay is made of but I thought it was the one that you could be put into the oven at 250oc for five minutes to make it harden...so I tried  it....my test piece came out ..as a blob. ha ha

The wire I used was too thin so I had to wrap two wires around each other. For the skeleton I made four separated parts which i then bent together. The clay was then wrapped around it. This test piece was then put into the oven for the hope it would go hard as I do not need movement in the upper body of the characters......

But this is what happened.... :P ....
it could be due to the wires that it got too hot and started  melting but I will try it out again but this time I will just throw in a piece of clay, in case it goes wrong again, so I wont just waste my time designing it. But if this oven thing doesn't work I will just leave that part of the figure harden for a few days while I work on the set of the scene.