Stop Motion Animation

Alright, internetters, I'm on a roll what can I say? Here are some pictures and finished product of a piece I finished a few months back.

Yes, I am slow to post, but better late than never is the story of my life (ask anyone that knows me)! Back to the good stuff, I took a course at school DKDS, with the formal title Self-formulated Project within a Shared Framework. Basically, I could make up my own project, do it, and present it, then defend my choices to my professors when they saw the finished product. Right away I knew I wanted to try my hand at creating my own stop motion armature. What is that, you ask? Check it out here. I hit up the University of youtube A.S.A.P. and after hours of fiddling around "learning", I set to work. Below you can follow my process in chronological order to the big finish with a video of the final product. Enjoy the fruits of my labor as I took my first crack at creating armature from scratch, building a puppet, dressing said puppet and trying to make her walk!

How's my hair?

                 Process Process Process

Getting started with pow-pow-power tools and heavy wire. 

Playing God.

Let there be skinny jeans and braided hair!

Sanding the bottoms of her shoes because a girl's gotta be able to stand on her own two feet.
Am I right, ladies?

Playing around with hairstyles and the new rig!

Girlfriend is camera ready, let's get this party started! 

Hard at work (don't mess it up don't mess it up don't mess it up)

Recording in the studio! 

Pink Elephant

Hi and welcome back to my blog! Today I'm finishing up a spontaneous project I began the other day using real, dyed leather scraps that I had left over from a previous job for a client. I didn't plan anything on paper, I just sort of imagined it and have been mapping out the logistics as I go along. That's why I haven't posted any sketches and you may feel as though you are just jumping right into the middle of the process. Let me walk you through it quickly.....

The basic materials I had lying around...2 kinds of pink leather....(unseen materials include thread, needles, and really sharp scissors)

I began with cutting out panels to design the nose and overall head. Then I used brown thread to place the eyes. On to the ears (I love their floppiness!) which are just folded layers of leather but have a great realistic movement quality. From there I imagined what kind of legs and feet they have and made four circles and stumbled through several sizes of perpendicular leather cut outs. Finally I sewed all four of them together and they are ready for attachment to the torso.

I used regular old batting to stuff the legs and then went about pinning where they should be placed on the torso. This is as far as I've gotten because it takes a loooooooong time to sew leather, in the round, by hand, while you make it up as you go along. I wanted this to be unique however so of course I'll continue the hard way.  

After I attach both back legs (and create a tail) I plan on doing two important things: including a metal wire skeleton so this doll will take on puppet capabilities for stop motion film and filling the bottoms of the feet with seeds to weigh it down. If I don't, then the elephant could easily tip over, and I'd like to have a little more control over the positioning. 

Finally! At long last I built up enough calluses on my fingers and braved the difficult final stitches to finish this project. Here are the finished product shots.

In the end I gave it as a baptism gift to a relative. I'm happy she got a good home. Thanks for following! 

Fun with Mr. Beard/Hr. Skæg!

Fun project alert! Ever since my daughter was introduced to Hr. Skæg (Mr. Beard/Fun), his show has made an appearance in my house on a daily basis. So for Christmas I decided to make her a soft doll of him.

This is Mr. Beard / Hr. Skæg. Ok I'm not gonna lie, I love his show too, and this is my favorite song.

I began with this sketch

Then I just dove right in at the fabric store. I found the perfect shade of red felt. I also bought (a ridiculous amount) of faux fur to use as his beard. I had some batting just laying around to stuff him with. The rest was just scraps of leather and and old tie of my husband's that I up-cycled.

At this point I was really just winging it. I decided to create a little pattern out of thick bristol paper before I started cutting the felt. I traced the shapes and then had at it!

Sådan! Here's the final product- I present to you Hr. Skæg- in doll form!