Puppet making: disaster in slow mo

This part of the project is NOT going well at all. Atually, puppet making seems to be my biggest drag at this point of the project.

I posted earlier about my first attempt to sculp a suit in Manny's clay. It looked great... when it was still wet!

The cracks appeared as the clay shrunk on the wire armature. So I made some repair with some putty epoxy, which is very hard to shape. Never mind, I thought, will just sandle everything back in shape, so I patched heavily over the cracks.

But the epoxy turns out to be much harder than the original clay, and sanding back 2 materials of very different hardness proves to be an impossible task.  So here am I... Actually, the picture does it a favor, it really looks worse in reality. So long for the smooth, doll-like, detailed sculpture that made me salivate in the tutorials I tried to emulate. If only I could... lacquer it to give it a smooth surface... or dip it in some sort of all-forgiving-and-viscous-elixir.

Well, since I will probably screw up my first plaster-mold-making attempt I might as well consider this as a crash-test-dummy candidate.

Now, I need to find some non-shrinking clay and some damn good sculpture 101 tutorial.

Celso's skull 3D print (1rst test)

Hey, Chay! This one is for you!

Prop making: Molding corners

Earlier in this blog, I posted my attempt to modeling the art-deco ceiling corners in Manny's office.

I sent the shape to my favorite 3D printer and received a scaled 3D print for that shape as shown below. I could have asked the print of 4 identical pieces and be done with it, but... 3D print is expensive, and this relatively simple geometrical shape was a good practice target to learn the craft of Silicon mold making.

I show below the original 3D print of the master shape. Then below a Silicon mold made of this shape. And last row the resin cast of 4 corners made in resin.

The result is good enough for a decorative prop of this kind. A little sanding, a little painting, and those four pieces should look OK in the set.

The whole process was made in a week-end, with locally available chemical products (RTV Silicon, Resin, and their respective hardener), and it was fun to do with my daughter. However the result would probably not be good enough for a more intricate design requiring a higher level of precision. I made all the beginner's mistakes, as usual, and I will probably do better next time. Which was the point of the whole exercise... I could have skipped this detail from the set with no much visible difference in the final movie. But this project is as much about learning techniques I am unfamiliar with as it is about the final product, the movie.

There are plenty of excellent tutorial around about this RTV Silicon mold making, so I will spare you with the details. However, always happy to answer any question, from layman to layman.

Mouth Sets fresh from 3D Print

I just received the Manny's head and mouth set from the 3D printer. This time the skull and the jaw fit perfectly... well, at least for 4 among 7 mouth pieces. I don't know exactly how I managed to mess with the dimensions of the 3 others, but these are being re-printed promptly.

I will soon be able to make a true, stop motion lips-sync test, just like the one I did virtually earlier.

On another front I am having the time of my life learning the ropes of silicon mold-making. Translate: disaster on first try.
But that's another story for another post, with some sticky pictures of the mess I ended up with.

I said a few month ago that I was expecting to start to shoot sometimes in march. Well... give me another 3 month, OK?

Breaking news: A blessing from the power that be

Tim Schafer, creator of Grim Fandango, has apparently stumbled upon this blog and blessed this project in a tweet. This is HUGE!

While waiting

I have finally ordered my replacement mouth set to the 3D printer i.materialise, along with a few props and will post  the pictures as soon as the parcel reaches me.

On the puppet modelling front, I had to face some misfortune... the clay shrunk, and, combined with the rigidity of the armature, some cracks have appeared around the feets and hands. My sister, who is, unlike me, a sculptor artist, warned me about the risk. Well, nothing that some miliput epoxy can't fix, but for those of you who are tempted by the adventure, make sure that you are using a clay that has 0% contraction on drying. So long for departing from the recommendation from so many wiser puppet maker. I will post a picture of the damage before I fix it later on this post.
 

Now, after the recent post I made on the AdventureGamer Top 100, here is another wonderful post that I stumbled upon, this time from EuroGamer, as a restrospective on Grim Fandango aptly named "Dead can dance". This paper flesh out (no pun intended) some very interesting aspect of the GF story and gameplay which I had almost forgotten about. They are pulling also some of the best lines from the dialog to drill their point. A little gem to read. Kind of make me want to play the game again!

Puppet Making: Modelling Manny's suit in clay

I was a bit apprehensive about this... I am not a sculptor and that was a first (as almost everything since I started this project).
I started from a basic modelling armature sized after the animation armature, then used a british clay called NewClay. It's a nice clay to work with at the beginning... but it seems to be drying pretty fast and there are some parts, which I left without touching for too long, such as the shoes, which have become very uncooperative. Anyway, that will do. I still have the hands to finish, and then I will discover the joys of mold making in gypsum plaster...