Sasquatch Bulking Out

 This year I'm using balsa wood to bulk out my puppets. I'm not knocking foam it works just as well but I find that balsa wood is easier to work with, less messy and slightly harder wearing. The photos below show the shaping of the chest and hip blocks.

The blocks need a bit more shaping to allow for leg and arm movement but this shows the general shape that it needs to be.

Sasquatch Feet Two

 Just starting to create the shape of the feet using Super Scuply. The aim at this point was to make both feet generally the same size and shape

 

 I've now added toes and have smoothed the sculpy using lighter fluid. So far I'm quite happy with how even they have turned out. I might do a bit more tweaking though. My next task after adding detail like toenails is to lay them up and create a plaster cast.

Sasquatch Feet

To start building the Sasquatch feet I needed a steel plate from which to build upwards from. I managed to salvage some old magnetic door closers (see below) from my dads collection of bits and bobs.

 I managed to cut one of them open and discovered the perfect parts for making the base of my feet with.

I had to file down the larger strips because there was a couple of dinks in them that stopped them laying flat on the table. You can see on the left strip the dinks that I mentioned. The right strip has already been filed down

Cut parts with K&S glued on with two part epoxy

I added some milliput to the feet to strengthen and to add some bulk to them. In the below image I have also glued on the k&s that allows me to attach the legs.

Making Time. Armatures

I think I've been a little too optimistic and have given myself only two weeks to build my puppets including casting and clothing. Judging by my progress so far I'm going to estimate that I'll need an extra week or two.

This year I decided to invest in a professional armature (Marvern Armatures are really great) I purchased a generic H1 Pro armature and made a few alterations to it to suit the proportions of my character.

The Sasquatch is being built using the low tech method of K&S and wire.See below.

This was my second attempt at building this armature. I was a bit careless during my first attempt and made a few mistakes. I also found that my plans were two small and fiddly so I made the Sasquatch 1cm taller to make the building a bit easier. I added a bit of milliput later on to the hips and torso to strengthen them.

Storyboards

I am choosing not to show the last few frames to keep the ending a surprise for those who I've not already told.

Armature plans and Turnarounds

I'd like to apologize for this post being so late. Its been four week since we were given the brief so I figured it was time to show you guys some of my pre-production slides. From now on I'll try to post every week. I just have to get back into the habit. I have backdated some of the posts so they appear in the correct order. Keep scrolling down for more stuff.

I'll be making a 90 second short film for my final major project. It involves the two characters below. More information to come.

 

This seems like a good place to start. These are my two characters, tiny adorable Sasquatch on the left, Larry the retired hunter on the right. Before you ask, no I didn't mess up the scaling, the Sasquatch really is meant to be that small.

I'll be using a fantastic ball and socket armature (from Malvern armatures) for Larry because he's in the majority of the production I wanted a more robust armature so that I wont have to worry about broken arms or legs. The Sasquatch will be a K&S and wire build, his screen/animation time will be significantly less than Larry's so I'm less worried about breaks.

 Turnarounds above, with final colour choices.