Here's what the body looked like after the latex had dried. Although this method has many properties which we wanted, the process was too complex and unpredictable so as Jess has now posted we have switched to using silicone and things are moving a LOT faster now.

Assorted Images of Post Production

Before I was relegated to storyboarding Jess and I were actually able to work together in constructing the set and making the characters, here are some pictures of us working in the studio.

The armature has to be sprayed before the mould is filled to avoid it rusting. We spent most of a day driving around trying to find the right stuff!







The mould is painted with liquid latex to form the skin of the puppet.








Jess pouring some chemicals, note the appropriate safety apparrel.







The foam latex expanding out of the mould. It looks like we crushed Gromit!!








Lucky the latex isn't low calorie or she'd have eaten it all!








Si.

Story reel number two

Another week has gone by and another story reel has been sent off. The storyboards took a lot longer than I had anticipated but thankfully there was enough time to get them finished before going to Jess's on Wednesday to capture them on David's rostrum (thanks David!) Thursday and Friday night were spent editing at Duchy Parade Films in Harrogate. We got straight down to it the first night and got all the frames numbered and timed out.

This new version came together a lot faster so on Friday we just had to add some new drawings I did during the day and put some sound to it.

Here's Dave Long deep in concentration, poor guy had 4 people barking orders at him none stop. Truly the patience of a saint!





Dave's speed on the controls is incredible, he's like a concert pianist on an editing keyboard.






Peter keeping a watchful eye on proceedings.....between coffee runs.





Two heads are better than one, or in this case probably equivalent to one!



Peter sent the DVD's off on Saturday morning so now we're just waiting to hear back about how it is received. So this week will be spent preparing everything else essential for the start of filming.

Si.

Thank the lord for silicone!!!

Well folks I decided on Thurs that I would scrap everything that I had done with Henry's body, arms, and heads and start all over again. I was finding the liquid latex way too unpredictable and back painting latex is just insane. It worked for my lil old lady in The Owl House as she only had one head. Henry has 4 and they all need to be consistent colour wise.

Luckily I was prepared and had ordered some silicone (silastic rubber) from a company call Thompson Bros in Newcastle before hand. They were SO helpful and provided me with all the info I needed. I then needed to learn how to airbrush, oh and purchase one too. Luckily I have a dad who is like my knight in shining armour...I'm not kidding, he just gets things done. He got it for me as a gift and also bought me a compressor...I think I might be his pension? So next task, learn how to airbrush and research how to paint silicone.

I found it's not a straight forward process and you need to mix silicone pigments and silicone sealants with toxic chemicals...it's safe to say I had jumped in at the deep end. Help was at hand though and a quick phone call to my friends at Mackinnon and Saunders set me on my way. Sara Mullock, my super hero at M&S arranged for me to chat with Joe, one of the talented genius who paints up all the models. He was a great help and I felt confident to go for it.

I also needed to purchase a thinner called Toluene and found a local solvent company in Tockwith called LSS (Leading Solvent Suppliers). Thanks to a very kind gentleman called Derek Walker, I came away with just what I needed and free of charge... Derek also had to do a check on me to make sure I was not going to use the chemical for erm...other things.

Next job was to order some silicone pigments. At first this felt like a lost cause but then I stumbled across a site called ModelLife. These guys are great and they provided me with a load of pigments and a bunch of information.

So away I went and you know what, this was the best decision I think I have ever made. I have now 2 silicone arms ( I attempted to do this with latex and expandable foam around 14 times...each time taking 5 hours or more) I have 3 heads, two with animatable jaws and I'm just working on the final head and then I shall start on the Body...I am as happy as a monkey!!

First animatic

Si, Jess, David and myself working with the brilliant editor Dave Long put together the first version of Si & Jess' story in drawn form at the end of April. With editing, scratch track recording and instant rostrum re-drawing all happening at once, it was alot of fun, if hard work!

Now, work is near complete on the monster amount of drawings to finish the second animatic pass. Once more to be assembled at Duchy for the end of May. A fresh supply of coffee and biscuits at the ready.

The telescope...ahem having a little too much fun...

I wont say much..heres some pics of Ally and I making stuff, including the telescope.

Ally Cross

ts been busy and we have had SOOOOOOO much to do. So to help us get things done we invited a good friend and fellow animator to come down and help. Ally is an awesome person and so much fun to work with. She is talented and precise and is a brilliant to have around. Ally worked hard and produced the most wonderful roll top desk.

See the making...




 

The desk is made out of Balsa wood and then stained with watered down acrylic. After that Ally coated it with a wood varnish...beautiful!!

Good work Ally!!!

Storyboarding? More like waterboarding!

As Jess said previously, I've been storyboarding for the last week and a bit. Once we had rewritten the story it needed to be put into pictures and then pitched to the producers. This is my job. So while Jess is off doing all the glamorous stuff I get to sit at a desk and draw.....and draw and draw. It says a lot when the highlight of my week was discovering that you can buy water soluable graphite pencils now.


The Post-it notes show where I need to change or add more images. This was just the rough board, for the story reel it will require around 1 image for every second, so thats about 300 images for a 5 minute film.






This film will play with lighting a lot, so I thought it important to work into the boards to show some of that even at this stage.








Here's Jess mocking my work.





I pitched it to Peter and David. Pitches should be roughly to the running time. The first time I pitched our idea to them it came out at around 25 minutes! This time it was about 5 so I'm getting faster even if I'm not getting better. Once I was done we went through it and broke it down. The guys were really pleased with some of the stuff in there but a lot needs tweaking, so thats what I'm doing all this week so we can edit it into a story reel as soon as possible.

The Sound of Ultimate Suffering

Back when we made the first story reel at our producer Peter's house we needed some vocals, some screams to be exact. David being a thespian we barely had to ask before he was doing vocal warm ups and sipping warm honey and lemon!

He started off with some whimpers and moans but it wasn't enough...we needed "the sound of ultimate suffering". The results we ridiculous! I genuinely believed the neighbours would call the police. If you've ever tried to properly scream you can appreciate how hard it is, poor David lost his voice that night and then got the flu, he still sounds hoarse! It'll all be worth it in the end......

Here's Jess giving him his motivation:





"Ok David, that was good but now try following the script"








Jess takes great pleasure in other people's pain as you can see.








"Don't call us....we'll call you"

Jim Caroll - The Actor

Jim is the man. He is the umm's and ah's behind Henry. 

As we have no dialogue in our film we have to tell a lot about our character through actions and gestures. We can also get across what Henry is thinking through different ways of breathing and vocal sounds. This is actually much harder than I thought it would be and Jim did an amazing job!!

Jim came down and spent the day with myself and my partner Topher who helped us lay down some vocal tracks for Henry. We had a lot of fun and it was lovely to see Jim in character. There was one point though when he was screaming and i feared for his life. 

Jim you are one CRAZY son of a bitch!!!!

God Bless the TEAM!

Si, myself and the producers David and Peter have had a difficult week.

We all worked incredibly hard to get the animatic sent off and we were all feeling pretty positive about what we had put together. Sadly, we found that we had still not nailed the story after receiving some mixed feedback. Both Si and my self were gutted and our spirits were as low as could be. We were very concerned about how we might solve the issues in our story without changing the story completely. One thing that Si and I were determined to do was make sure that the story we ended up telling is still the same story we pitched at the beginning. We were starting to feel that this was no longer the story we wanted to tell. Its hard to fix something that you don't think it is broken. Clearly though our story was broken in some respects and we had to come up with something.

Then, like a glowing light in the darkness came our producers David and Peter. These guys just don't panic and they take everything in their stride. Peter being away on holiday in Philadelphia worked from over there and conversed with David whilst David worked with us. Their support really picked Si and I up out of this negative spiral we had started to sink into and helped us focus again. David arranged a meeting almost everyday last week and was keen to keep the positive energy flowing. We bashed our heads together and finally came up with something.

Si and I have honestly been through every which way to tell this story. We found it the most difficult and exhausting process. We were thinking to fix the problem we might have to take out one of the key characters (the father) We did not really mind losing him at this point as he was causing so much confusion. However, after discussing this with David we realised the importance of keeping him in. We didn't want to lose the heart and both Si and I never really looked at the father as being the heart of our story. So, upon realising this we were able to look at the story in a different way.

I think we have solved the problems but we will just have to see what the guys on top say...

This post is dedicated to all the hard work our Producers have put in! David thank you for all your help and for your time and hard work. Peter thank you for taking time out of your holiday to help get us back on track. You guys are the BEST!!

Back Painting Henry's face and arms

As Si mentioned before, we are making Henry out of liquid latex and expandable foam. I have been testing all kinds of ways of making him look sick. A cool technique is back painting. This is where you paint the inside of the latex instead of the outside skin so you see the colour through a few layers of latex. This creates an awesome realistic effect but is a ball ache to get right. I'm still working on it. Check out the images to see what I mean...

Testing Lighting

Si spent a good hour or so playing around with lighting and how we might cast Henry’s shadow onto the wall. All this hard work testing and sadly we will no longer be using the scene he was testing this for. I thought however he created some cool effects and it was worth slapping on the blog.

Preparing the Studio

We are SO lucky to have parents who are so keen to help Si and I in everyway and are supporting us to know end. Si’s parents have taken me on as a new addition to the family and have allowed us to use their potting shed as our workshop and studio. First job was to clear out the exercise equipment. I enjoyed standing eating my special K bar whilst watching strong men move heavy equipment. Thanks to Si’s older brother Ed who helped clear out his gym stuff and who made no fuss about us taking over his exercise shed. After all the shifting of gear etc Ed even offered to help Hoover the dead and alive spiders from the walls ceiling and floor for us.

Si and his Dad then spent the weekend painting the entire room black from walls to ceiling. It now looks like a real animation studio and we can't wait totest it out and see what the set will look like under some moody lights etc!

Plastering and sealing the set

Sadly I have no pics of the set as Si and I spent around 5 hours plastering into the night and early hours of the morning. This was a funny story as I assured Si we would get the job done in 20 mins…clearly I was talking out of my ass! I had no idea it would take so long. Si ended up sitting on the sidelines and eating digestive biscuits whilst watching stupid me trying to give the walls a smooth finish. We did it in the end but it took around 3 days to dry!!!