Week 4 - Maquettes

Maquettes:

In terms of the usability, it is good because it allows you to see the physical shape of the object, understand the depth and volume and the space it occupies before developing the film overall. However, in terms of stop-motion, you could develop a series of drawings to develop a working treatment for it.

You could devise different approaches that give you the same result to help with the treatment for the animation you are wanting to create. 

Making a Maquette:

You will need a really thick wire, so it is sturdy. Don't get the maquette any bigger than 20cm because you will want to move it. Something between 16 to 20cm should be the maximum you will want to work with.

The blocks that go with the maquette and stick them into the wire to build into the arms and legs. This will help frame the skeleton underneath the actual puppet. Will be using Pleistocene, then cellophane for filing and cutting the body arts down. You could also use the 'Hot wire' to sculpt the body down and then bulk the body up as much as possible to cover it with clay.

Base for your puppet; discs to create a maquette on top.

Animate your puppets bouncing a ball against the wall 3 times.

(Reference for positioning of squash and stretch)

Attempt 1:  Using a Ruler to move the ball.

My first attempt at trying to animate a bouncing ball three times didn't turn out very well. I had completely missed the idea of using a rig to animate a bouncing ball instead of actually bouncing it. I then began to brainstorm other ways I could move the ball and then remove the prop through keying the colour out.

Attempt 2: Using Sellotape to move the ball.

In my second attempt I tried to use sellotape to change the positioning of the ball. This was definitely worse than the first attempt as it's not a very steady object to use to move an object. I found that it tended to swing backwards and forwards when I was trying to get the squash and stretch into it.

Attempt 3: Using the wall to bounce the ball.

After my other 2 attempts at this process had failed, I began to explore other options. I tried making the positions for the ball in clay and then placing them onto the piece of paper I was filming against. However, I attempted this with quite a thin piece of paper and it didn't work very well and the paper ended up falling down onto the Armature causing the positioning of the character to be moved.

Attempt 4: Using the wall (Second Attempt)

This way seemed to be a much better way of approaching the task and began to experiment with different positions after I had got more comfortable with the process and using the wall for the positions of the ball. 

Final Attempt: 

My last attempt at this task worked really well, I had completely understood what positions the ball had to be in and made sure there was a clear squash and stretch happening as the character bounced the ball three times against the wall.