Research Into Building Stop Motion Puppets

How To Create A Stop Motion Puppet

A stop motion puppet needs to be designed for the purpose of the film and what it will be required to do. It needs to be strong enough to hold a pose between frames, and needs to withstand being touched and moved frequently.

Making sure that the puppet is the right size for use is the first thing to consider. Puppets that are too small will be hard to create detail and will be difficult to manoeuvre. Also puppets that are too tall will often be difficult to keep in position between frames and will also be costly as the set will have to be big to fit the puppet in the environment.

So designing the characters that are fit for purpose and work within the desired world created for them is the best place to start before making the puppet.

measuring for an armature I 

made in my stop motion module.

Creating a wire skeleton to put the clay or silicone over will ensure the puppet will stay in position and will bend for the joint movement.

A quick armature I made as a practice.

In future models I will make the armature a lot 

sturdier to withstand the frequent movement.

Padding out the skeleton with styrofoam will make the puppet lighter than if it was padded out with plasticine or clay.

Armature made for practicing sculpting

in my stop motion module.

After the skeleton has been padded out the clay or silicone can be added over the top to create a skin.

In places where there is going to be clothes, the padding wont necessarily won't need to be covered as this will be adding weight that isn't needed.

I have a demonstration link for silicone mold making here: 

http://louisestopmotion.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/silicone-mold-making.html

Making Norman From ParaNorman

Face Replacements

For the head most modern stop motion films will use face replacements.

This means the facial expression can be taken out and replaced with another one.

Rapid prototyping, or 3D printing is to create a 3D computer model and have it printed out as a physical replica. The technology behind rapid prototyping has many other uses and implications in itself, but in the film Coraline (2009) helped put it on the map for the use as an animation technique. The area of the film where it was used the most was the facial animation on certain main characters. The faces on characters like Wybie, Coraline's Mother, Other Mother, and Coraline herself consisted of thin replacement masks that we removed and replaced for each frame of the animation.

Priebe, K. A. and Selick, H. (2010) The Advanced Art of Stop-Motion Animation [With CDROM]. 1st edn. Boston, MA: Course Technology Cengage Learning.

I found this YouTube video by animateclay on how to make replacement heads, it's helpful in the way he shows how to mould the heads and where to position the cut-off point.

The Making Of The Sets And Replacement Faces Of ParaNorman