Set Dressing

 Lets start from the bottom. The floor is made from stick back wood effect vinyl. Instead of just sticking down the correct size shape of vinyl I decided to cut it into strips to create the look of floor boards.

 Just starting to dress the set.

Close up of bed and table. Remember to stick all your small props down. I  had to restart filming when I bumped my table and all the props shifted, luckily I was only a few frames in.

Most of the posters are Easter eggs. From left to right my A-Level art work, me in comic con costume, Sloth Clintwood, Victor Dinkleberry, Chocks (Hannah Griffiths) and Lockstock Rob (James Stafford)

Finished Puppet

Here it is the finished puppet ready to be animated. I secured the Gameboy to the puppets hand with a length of wire. I also added some eye lids to make him look less creepy/like he's staring into the abyss.

Props Props Props

 After finishing the puppet I had one week left to make a set and dress it with loads of adorable tiny props. Unfortunately this is where my recording gets a little sparse so I mostly just have finished photos of the props.

  The books are made from a core of card then covered in a layer of coloured paper.

 The shelf was made from a left over strip of pine which I stained and stuck to the wall using wood glue.

The lamp was quite fun to make. The base is a large button I salvaged from the model room, the neck is a short length of 2mm aluminium wire, and the shade is a rolled up piece of sheet metal that I cut from an empty tomato puree tube. I was worried that it looked quite shoddy when it was glued together but it all came together when I spray painted it.

The Gameboy was a piece of balsa-wood that I very carefully shaped. I don't have another photo but there is also a game cartridge in the back.

The bed was the largest prop I made. It's mostly made from bits of wood and card, then made to look pretty with the fabric. It didn't require animating or moving at any point during filming so I didn't waste time by building making it perfect.

Replaceable Mouths

 

These are the replaceable Plasticine mouths I made. I had intended to connect them to the head using k&s but decided that it would be too fiddly. I decided instead to place a tiny magnet on the back of each mouth and one on the head itself.

 


The back of the mouth pieces. I glued the magnets slightly above center to stop them from spinning when I attached them to the puppet.

Once I started filming the lip sync I decided to remake a few of the mouths to improve the animation. I make sixteen mouths in total though I only used about ten of them.

Set Building

 I built the a small animating table several month ago (30cm, 50cm), I decided to add two walls to it to create the corner of a room.

This was the set after I added the walls. It's basically a couple of MDF boards held together with batons. I then screwed the batons to the legs on the table base.  I would like to thank my dad for helping me out with putting the set together.

Head

 Next I carved the eye sockets out of the head then reinforced them with Milliput.

Next I covered the head in felt despite its odd shape I found i easier to cover than the body.

To finish the head I need to paint and glue in the eyes and make the ears and replaceable mouths.

Covering the Body

 The next thing on my to do list was to cover the body of the puppet in felt. This wasn't as easy as I was expecting. My first attempt was to wrap it like a gift but I found that the excess material created too many lumps and bumps. My solution was to cut away any excess fabric then carefully stitch or glue the seams.