Basic Puppets Materials

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!

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Aardman Co-Founder David Sproxton's Tips for Success in the Animation Industry, Part 1 (of 3): 3 Pre-Production Tips

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Interview with Joseph Wallace, Director and Animator of Psychedelic, Cut-out Stop Motion Music Video for Canadian Artist Parker Bossley's "Chemicals"

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Interview with Bradley Slabe, Co-Director of Stop Motion Love Story, "Lost & Found" (Part 1/2 of Interview with "Lost & Found" Directors)

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Interview with Chris Randall, Creative Director and Co-Founder of Second Home Studios

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Vincent & Puppet Scales

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Aardman Senior Model-Maker Jay Smart Reveals Aardman's Puppet Materials and Plasticine Techniques for "Early Man" to Adam Savage of Tested

Adam Savage (right) holding "The Farmer" puppet from Shaun the Sheep and Jay Smart (right). Copyright Tested. Along with the usual humdrum of press ranging from critic reviews and interviews with voice actors regarding British animation powerhouse Aardman Animation’s latest feature film – Early Man , a “prehistoric underdog sports story,” in the words of the film’s director Nick Park – has come by the way of the YouTube channel Tested something really exceptional and especially meant for stop motion enthusiasts – a deep-dive into the materials and plasticine techniques Aardman uses for their puppets presented by television personality and special effects aficionado Adam Savage and Jay Smart, a senior modeler at Aardman. During Savage’s tour of the plasticine department, Smart gives Savage a demonstration of a system Aardman began developing for Chicken Run , their first plasticine-driven feature film, to methodize a system for mixing large batches of plasticine to p...

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Behind the Scenes of "Robocop 2" at Tippett Studios and how "Jurassic Park" Changed Special Effects Forever

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Interview with Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Director, Writer, and Animator of Stop Motion Short Film "Bath House"

In art as in life, when in the thick of something – a chain of, at times, loosely connected actions and consequences – it can be easy to miss “the point.” It’s often only in retrospect – the moment when one can contemplate, assessing and reassessing an event, whether mundane or abnormal – when one can discover meaning and a “point” to events in life as in art. When in the thick of something, things often feel commonplace, moments of actual weight sporadic, chaotic, and adrift, lost in the moment. Niki Lindroth von Bahr’s Bath House – a 15-minutes-long short film – perfectly captures these feelings of disorder and inconsequential consequence in the midst of the mundane and seemingly aimless. This mood is further accentuated in the film by a disquieting lack of a soundtrack, using dialogue only sparingly which perfectly accompanies Bahr’s incredibly lifelike puppets and animation, together harmonizing and bringing to life moments and an atmosphere that are rarely (if...

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