It's all in the feet.

So this must be the third attempt at diving back into completing this darned puppet... And it's been slow progress, but as the gears are slowly grinding back into action, the pace is gradually picking up. It's been a year or so since I started on my puppet fabrication and only now am I finally moving near completion, and I'm getting excited about this on a whole new, previously unimagined level. The last 12 months have been full of distractions, commitments, procrastination and general laziness. But throughout that time I've really dug deep and researched the whole animation process. The interweb is a brilliant and never-ending goldmine of animation resources through which I've also purchased a few books including Williams' The Animator's Survival Kit and Stanchfield's Drawn to Life which are vital for any aspiring animator; stop mo, traditional or CG. And all this has me oddly confident that as soon as I start pushing this puppet, all that reading, studying, watching and re-watching and re-re-watching will pay off and I'll get some results that won't completely cripple my motivation.

Sooooo what have I been up to recently in terms of getting this puppet finished? Well one of the issues that slowed me down has been a determination to get myself a foot armature design that will be jointed at the toe for the all important flexibility that will make my walks 'oh so' fluid and a design which will also provide the stability necessary to support the rest of the puppet (including a weighty plasticine head). My first attempt was a composite of brass M3 nuts, 1/32" K&S brass strip and 2mm braided aluminium wire all held together with Milliput epoxy putty and soft solder. Needless to say, it didn't really work so well and I 'unfortunately' don't have any pictures of that particular shambolic arrangement to show (saving me some small embarrassment). But for the benefit of anyone who might be interested in knowing how it sort of went together here is a little something I threw together in MS paint :D.

Foot Armature Design #1 (Note: the nuts are for tie-downs)

The key issues with the above design were strength and flexibility... The putty couldn't quite hold it all together and the braided aluminium wire was too inflexible at the toe joint... Which was more or less located in the middle of the foot (anatomically incorrect of course). So I scrapped that design. After much head scratching and a good ol' inspection of the build up puppet in Susannah Shaw's Craft Skills For Model Animation I hit upon my second design. It was until then that i couldn't for the life of me work out a suitable way of joining the aluminium wire to the brass plate of the foot, but Shaw delivered the answer. Her design was similar to mine in terms of two foot plates... one heel and one toe being hinged with armature wire. But this design had the aluminium wire glued into round metal tube sleeves which in turn were brazed onto the foot plate with solder. 'Genius' I thought. So I went about making my own, but rather than use two strands of 2mm wire braided together, I went with only a single strand for greater flexibility. MISTAKE! This compromised the stability of the foot and thus rendered it a waste of effort.

Foot Armature Desing #2 (Note: Shaw's design actually uses steel plates and tubing due to the use of magnet tie-downs, here I'm using brass and a nut tie-down)

I have since learnt that with ball and socket armatures, the tension on the joints are strongest at the feet and ankles and lessen with each joint further up the body and I can only assume the same can be applied for the strength of the wire in a wire armature. Retrospectively I should have gone back and tried again but with the 2 lengths of braided wire as in Shaw's images and a larger sleeve of tubing. But instead I felt this idea was a lost cause and went about finding an alternative to a wire foot. I thus entered the complex world of hinge joints. Well only in terms of theorising, I have yet to actually make one and to do so will require a Press Drill for semi-accurate drilling as well as a range of other tools which I can't at this time afford. Massive disappointment! So really that whole issue has really inhibited any further progress. So in the meantime I've decided to bite the bullet and accept that a non-hinged foot design will have to do for now. But what's so great about a plug-in armature is that I can always swap for a hinged foot later, 'tis bloomin' genius! so my current foot design looks like:

Foot Armature Design #3 Inspiring! (note: the lack of  a nut for tie-downs is because I've tapped the brass foot plate)

Well there we have it. That's my rather fruitless experience with fabricating puppet feet so far. Not mentioned however is the spot of puppet surgery which was a result of a plug-in nut breaking loose on the left calf. This involved slicing off my 'neatly' applied upholstery foam, sanding down the old solder and then brazing on a new brass M3 nut, which also involved briefly setting the puppet on fire :O but with some new foam glued back in place things were as good as new. From this episode I have learnt that a.) I should invest in some hard (silver) solder for stronger joins, b.) to invest in a smaller butane torch and c.) upholstery foam is extremely flammable!

But that's not the end of it, oh no! I've also been sculpting my puppet's head... Well I've actually been trialling a dummy head in white Newplast (English plasticine) to feel out the design I'm after and to which I can then sculpt the Milliput hair-do. So no pics here yet I'm afraid, but patience, I should have something to show sooner than later (sound familiar?). And I've also epoxied on some washers to my hand armatures (exciting stuff I know).

So still left on my ever growing 'TO DO' list is the 'small' task of skinning my new foot armatures; my answer here will be to just go with some sculpted Milliput trainers for durability. I also need to sculpt me some plasticine hands which means blending Newplast to make flesh tones... should be interesting. And I'm thinking props here too for all these exercises I'll be doing before long... but lets not get too carried away.

Phew, you stay away for so many months, when you return you realise you've got more to say than you thought. But that pretty much wraps up the latest developments so... 'Til next time (which will be soon I hope).