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

My Film

Ive decided to finally post my film, as i'm taking forever with the making off pictures. I uploaded it to Youtube but private link as i'm not ready to properly unleash Der Blinkfang upon the world.

As stated earlier this was my third year studio project inspired by fairy tales and German poems such as Struwwelpeter.

Please enjoy, it took ages to do as it was my first stop motion film. If it's too small, you can click the button in the corner so it takes up the whole screen.

Getting the outside scene finished

For the outside I wanted a dead, eerie looking tree just by the door of the shed. I felt it would help build fear and therefore question why Archie would be so curious but like a few fairy tales I feel the character's are too curious for their own good and it normally comes back to get them.

Making the tree i used about 15 strands of aluminium wire (all equal length) and using a cordless drill to coil the wire and seperated the ends for the branches. Then i applied Wood filler to give it that bark look. Below are the pictures.

 For the rest of the outside I had to make a old looking fence which I did using balsa wood, For the grass I used a static grass mat. For the area around the shed I experimented with a mixture of things including sand, soil and the inside of a tea bag. I painted the shed and scratched and basically attacked it to make it look old.

     Me painting the shed and experimenting with the area around the shed

The Fence in place

With the tree also

The pictures are not the best to see but I gave the fence and shed a slight purple tint because I wanted to show how the monster bleeds into this real world to lure in his victims, he watches the real world and is not just a hungry stupid monster. I wanted him to come across as more intelligent than that.

Below shows the background for the outside scene, i did this with my girlfriend Danielle which i just kept simple with dark clouds, dark blue sky and the back fence and trees for a night time scene

Inside cont.

Its been a while since my last post. Been busy enjoying post student life including a great weekend at Hop Farm music festival.

I will just continue where I left off showing the process of my film.

Carrying on with the inside, I had to make the sharp iceberg like rocks which I wanted to so it would give the environment hidding places and help build suspense. I wanted them sharp and like icicles to give the environment a sense of coldness and pain. Below was a test I did, like everything I had to make sure it would look right and work for the film. I used expanding foam which I then cut and using mod roc I shaped the sharp edges.

The real thing below, and then painted black.

Put together it looked to dark and black so I gave the walls a re-coat of black and added more glitter so there was more colour.

For the sharp edges i painted silver again to give the sense of cold in the lair. I will show more pics of this later.

Building of the monster's lair frame

For the interior I wanted a cold cave type atmosphere and look, the walls would be rock like and there would be these sharp iceberg looking rocks going around the main space (To allow hiding spaces for the monster). The main colours would be black to give the feel of darkness and evil, purple for a magical mysterious feel and blue to give a cold feel. 

I will show more of the concept later, below is how the build went. 

I used a 9mm sheet of MDF and cut it down using a jigsaw. Below shows it put together using braces (using braces allowed me to take certain walls of for different camera angels and easily re-attach). Below you can see the interior was much bigger than the actual shed, i wanted the illusion of transporting to a new world (so if someone the monster didnt want came in, it would be a shed), this was the Alice in Wonderland inspiration.

I used mod roc for the walls, scrunching it to give the effect i wanted. I then gave it two coats of matt black wall paint (which i luckily had spare from 3 years earlier after painting my room) and then sprinkled blue and purple glitter on (I gave it another coat later on and added more glitter).

 

For the door i used MDF again which i cut to shape and used small hinges so it could be opened. I gave the door a different sort of shape to add to the feeling of being in a new weird distorted world. 

Building of the shed

Below is the building of the shed, It was the first thing i starting to make for the set. I remember how it felt good to finally get started on the build after months of designing and planning. I used balsa wood for the shed and the process went very well other than running out of wood and being delayed for a while until i got more.

For the door, i bought doll house hinges which were 1:12 scale and used a thick bit of balsa wood for the door. The little screws which came with the hinges weren't very good, some not even fitting in the hinge's holes so i improvised using pins as i knew they would be painted anyway. The swing of the door was stiff but that was perfect as the door was going to have to open during filming and that allowed me to control the movement easily. For the window i just used a clear plastic which i cut out then scratched up a bit to age it.

First Character Designs

After lots of sketches and experimenting i had three designs i liked.

Below is the young boy, i just wanted a standard average looking boy that can be relateable to the audience.

With the monster, i wanted a crazy looking monster, inspired by characters like the 'pale male' in Pans Labyrinth. Other character inspirations were by Illustrators like Gris Grimly and Alex Pardee

I had two designs i liked which i then (like the boy) edited on Photoshop. i was fairly certain on the monster mainly being purple but i did the other one a green shade just to make sure i was very certain on this. I wanted a manic, gangly look which would leave the oppotunity for strange movements possible to do in stop motion. The Purple was my favourite and at the time the look i would have for my monster.

My story inspiration

The original idea for my stop motion was a 4-5 minute story inspired mainly by Alice in Wonderland, a young character spots something and goes to see where it went and transports to a new world. It was also inspired by the film Big Fish in the way an older character telling a younger character a story from his youth which the younger character is unsure about the how the true the story is.

The basic concept was a Granpa telling his Grandson about the time he lost his eye after he visited the shed, This makes the boy curious as to whether Granpa is just telling tall tales or the truth so he decides to visit the shed to see whats in there. I was torn as to whether to make it that the Granpa had misunderstood the monster and the monster was nice or it was actually mean.

I started looking at more German fairy tales and came across Stuwwelpeter (which i had not read since i was much younger) which is a German childrens book with ten rhymed stories which have bad consequences for the child involved. I also took inspiration from Tim Burton's 'The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy' which is also a book of poems with quite dark endings but done in a humorous way.

We were recommended by our tutor Lizzie Oxby to do an animation of about 90 seconds max so i knew i would do the scene where the boy goes to visit the shed so i just decided to adapt this to make this the story as i wanted to do a complete film.

I then worte my own poem (which i will post in the near future) inspired by these two books which at the time i thought i would have narrated over the top of the animation.

My first blog

Welcome to my blog, this is my first blog ever so this should be fun and I hope you enjoy.


Der Blickfang is my third year studio project. A stop-motion animation inspired by old German fairy tales and poems (such as Struwwelpeter). I will be adding pictures of the process in the very near future.