More than one person has asked me what exactly do you need for a simple puppet. The basic materials are foam latex, an armature, faces. The best place for me to buy foam latex is http://www.burmanindustries.com, or http://www.animationtoolkit.co.uk/, both are trustworthy. I prefer foam latex over clay, it's easier to use (after molded properly) although, it is somewhere around 15 - 20 times more expensive than clay, but if it will work for you budget it works best. The armature is sort of tricky, it depends on how much you use the character. For instance, all the puppets on Robot Chicken all have wire armatures, on the other hand with a feature flick like Coraline, all the armatures are ball-and-socket. I usually use a wire armature. You can buy the wire at a reasonable price here on http://www.amazon.com. The best way to make an wire armature is to use a drill to twist two strands of wire to create a heavy duty wire; then tie wires together for arms, legs, etc. Faces are a hard subject to talk about because everyone has there own way. There are three main types of face animation: replacement faces, cut out faces, and one animate-able face (this method was used in Fantastic Mr. Fox). Overall, that's the basics, you can buy most of it on Amazon, thanks for your time!
A still from Two Balloons featuring the character of Elba. Photo courtesy of Mark Smith. As I sit, listening to Peter Broderick’s moving composition for piano More Of A Composition , I close my eyes and envisage an enormous funnel cloud skimming across the crystalline face of an ocean – the skies are murky and unusually dark, lightning crackles, spider-webbing across the darkened skies before then vanishing, and still, after its gone, an electricity continues to hum in the air and I simply know that it’s going to soon strike again. And as the scene presents itself to me, I suddenly feel something similar to what director Mark C. Smith felt when he saw the same image as he sailed to a small island called Grenada along with his wife in a timeworn sailboat. For him, in that moment inspiration struck, and the idea suddenly came to him for his heartfelt stop motion film, Two Balloons . For me, I open my eyes and feel as I did the instant Two Balloons faded to black – as if I’ve j
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