Making the characters

Hopefully you enjoyed the film (its in the post below). I wanted to post a bit more making off process and this is how I made the stop motion models.

To make the armature, I used 2mm aluminium wire and twisted it together using a screwdriver and pliers.

Using bits of balsa wood for the areas you can see above I glued the lengths of aluminium wire into holes in the wood I had made. So above is the basic armature I used for my models (also a minstrel easter egg box), worked very well when filming. I did do a practice one about a month or two before my final ones just for preperation.

I then applied plasticine to the head and fingers (which were made using a thinner aluminium wire). For clothes I bought tights as they were a good thin material appropriate for this size models. I practiced on my practice model (as seen below) and I used uhu glue to glue them together, the back was a tiny bit messy looking but ok as not a lot of filming involved their backs. I used teddy bear stuffing under the clothes to pad them out a bit.

For the shoes I used Milliput. Drilled holes in the feet, painted them. This gave me good strong sturdy shoes.

 The little eye on the stick was how I made Archie's eye, for the monster I used these eye beads but for Archie I painted most of it white except a little circle of black in the middle as I didn't want them having similar eyes and more white in the eye would show more fear which I wanted Archie to have.

AHH!!!! It's on fire