Where I could improve...

Throughout this project I have learnt a lot about what is to be expected from me as an animator and also what I can expect from the industry.

I have really enjoyed researching into different job roles and it made me realise that I would definitely want to start out as a generalist and then maybe move into specialised areas of animation. Although I have a short spot for all the work and detail that goes into a stop motion animation, there are other elements of the industry that definitely peek my interest.

Areas of Improvement.
Puppetry
Although altogether I am proud of my puppet, there are elements of it that could have been improved upon. His legs for example are very long and thin and the puppet struggled to support its own weight a lot during the animating process. If I had looked into more detail of puppets with similar design such as work by Tim Burton, then I may have been able to avoid this issue. When making puppets in the future I will put more time and thought into the size and weight of the puppet and consider how this could affect its design. Like the Beatle character in Kubo and the Two Strings, who's design didn't allow him to stand without a rig.
In order to be part of a team in the industry, everything has to work smoothly in each element of the puppet making and animating system, so if something can work in a more efficient way then I should have pushed it further instead of sticking to what I have known to work in the past.


Scripting and Story Boarding.
I wrote a basic script for the first time while working on this piece. I found it to be very useful when I got into the animation studio as I had a clear image in my head of how I wanted the puppet to look and move during certain parts of the filming. It was quite detailed and to the point but expressed enough of what the different persona's were feeling making it easy to follow and the process a lot faster.
I have never been a strong storyboard artist, I struggle to show how I imagine something to be in such a small area and I don't always know how I'd prefer my characters to move etc. However throughout this period, I have asked peoples opinions on how well my ideas translate through my storyboards and their feedback has been incredibly useful to me as a creator and story teller. This is a practice I will definitely repeat in projects to come as it has allowed me a lot more clarity.


Character Design.
After deciding that I will working with a creepy character, I knew straight away that I wanted it to be lanky with long limbs. However I wish I had pushed the character design more and tried more body types and ideas when looking at this character. I drew a lot of inspiration from pictures of vintages circuses online and saw one in particular that stuck out to me and pretty much lead to his final body type.

Claude's Performance

I went back to the Stop Motion studio to have a practice with Claude for the first time. I wanted to use this time so that when it came to animating properly, I knew what to expect from this puppet, where he works well and where he falls short.

This was definitely a useful experience sit had been about a year since I last practiced stop motion and the first hour of set up and animating was quite a gruelling task.

When animating, I also experimented with lighting, trying to figure out which lighting worked better with Claude as a puppet as I wanted to emphasise how skinny he was for the shadows and also emphasis the crevices of his face.

Moreover, the whole point of this piece is to show him in a performance setting, so I wanted the lighting to make it look like his was on stage, in front of an audience.


Lighting Practice.

Although I really like the lighting in this image, I had moved the puppet far to close to the camera which meant it was hitting it in all the wrong places. It distorts the mask, not making it clear enough at all.

I think this is the lighting I should have stayed at in terms of general clarity of the image. However I really like the moodiness of the first image.

This lighting worked really well when the puppet was in certain angles but when the puppet faced forward it was far too bright so the light blurred out the features of the puppet as you can see in the picture below.

I also only realised after I had animated this that I wasn't wearing my glasses, so half the images I took were blurry. This could be partly because the light was distorting the image.

Here is the edit of this animation, I can see many areas that I want to improve on in terms of movement and showing clarity in the story, it is definitely unclear what is going on in areas, these are all factors I will work on when animating this properly.


As a puppet there are definitely some areas I could have improved.

Good things about puppet:

1. I think that this is quite a aesthetically pleasing puppet, it looks good in a lot of different lighting and poses. 
2. He is definitely creepy, but also can be funny. He is not one way too much which is good because at the end of the day, he's meant to be a clown
3. He is quite a detailed puppet, Im glad that the masks worked well as a general concept and it is clear when he different characters, I just need to push the posing a bit more to make it clear that he is under a different persona.

Bad things about puppet:

1. Because of the gangly, long legs, he can't quite hold all of his own weight on one leg. Even when that leg is pinned into the floor. He needs a rig to do anything more than basic movement.
2. Some of the masks broke on set, which I fixed at the time with White Tac. In hind sight, I should have made multiple versions of the same mask because they are incredible delicate.

Puppet Fabrification - The Making of Claude the Many Faced Clown

I started off with a basic armature which I based off my final character design.

I then went on to foam the puppet, giving him a tiny waist and big hips to make it seem like the material puffs out.

I made the Shakespearean collar by following a basic pattern online. I used a piece of cardboard to hold the fabric together and used a mix of fabric glue and stitching to give it the ruffled effect.

I first attempted to carve the head out a polystyrene ball, and much to no ones surprise, it didn't work at all. I wanted to use it for a head because it is light weight and it has worked well with puppets I have made in the past. However, the head for this puppet is a more interesting shape than one I have made before.

These lead me to consider other materials I could use. I decided to try modelling clay which allowed me to have much more freedom and ease when sculpting this puppet. It also meant that I could easily paint it afterwards. I really enjoyed working with this material and would use it again in the future.

Next I moved on to working on his masks. In total I made 11 different faces for this character.

The idea behind this is to look at a very simplified version of replacement animation which is used in a lot of stop motion animations. The idea is basically replace elements of the puppets face to allow it to have several different emotions and sometimes lip sync.

This was my first attempt at something like this so I didn't want to make it too complicated for myself. However I really enjoyed the process of making these and look like the experiment with it further in the future.

I started by covering the head in cling film so that the paint wouldn't get damaged by the wet clay.

I then flattened out a small piece of clay and push it onto the head. This so I would know where to put the eyes and also so I could mould it to the head, meaning the mask would stay on by itself when dry.

Then I added a nose and gave the masks an expression so that wouldn't all look exactly the same. I wanted to show as much diversity as I could while still making them fit on the head.

I then painted each of the masks individually, trying to focus on which colours would suit each expression e.g., blue for a sad face. I didn't want any two masks to look the same.

Props

Originally I had planned to make a tiny suitcase for this character to take his masks around in. However I thought that using a carry case would be much more effective. I made this out of a box which a super glued together. I then covered it with an old shirt I had. After I added pins at the end of the box to act as a clasp and added buttons to act as wheels.

It ended up looking a lot better than I thought it was going to considering it was a last minute change and I had to work with what I had. I should have planned this part of the character more thoroughly and will consider elements like this in the future.

 Final puppet without mask.

Final puppet with 1/11 masks

Character Design and Development

Character Design in the industry- Found on Creativeskillset.org

To do this role, you will need to:

• have up-to-date knowledge of computer illustration software packages
• be skilled in film imagery
• understand what Directors, Directors of Photography and Editors require from a scene 
• have excellent illustration skills
• be a strong communicator
• visualise perspective and 3D space
• have a keen interest in design, architecture and film
• visually interpret other people's ideas
• be flexible and adapt to change when asked
• work as part of a team

I wanted to experiment with my own art style during this period to show flexibility. I wanted to show that I can be versatile and don't necessarily have to stick to one form of art. I asked people what they thought of each one these pieces in order to get feedback on where I should go with the character and how he can be improved.

When I started think about this characters design I followed the idea that the is meant to be creepy and in keeping with the vintage theme of the whole piece.

I looked at reference images of Vintage Circuses  as well as general Circus of Horrors to get an idea of what this kind of character should look like.

I found these images really useful when coming up with the initial idea for this character, however I knew straight away after drawing this that I didn't want my character to have a big frame, I wanted him to look weak as well as scary as this would fit better with his character arc.

I saw this image online and it changed the direction I was going with for this design, I really liked how the tight striped suit made the limbs look even longer and thinner. It also isn't quite as full on as the traditional clown with the puffy clothes. I thought this would be a more interesting idea for a puppet as well. 

At this stage, I asked my housemate and a couple of my peers which way I should go with the design of this puppet in terms of clothing and material.

People overwhelmingly chose the tighter suit over the traditional baggy one. It may be slightly harder to make but people think that literally showing how thin he is gives of a sense of vulnerability while still maintaining his creepiness.

Here are a couple of character designs based on the image above. I much prefer the thin, long limbs in these designs.

The harshness of the coal in these versions was my way of showing the idea of inner confusion in the character. I later decided to draw him much cleaner as I felt it put more emphasis on his tiny frame.

I decided to keep the shakespearian neck collar in the design as I likes the way it separated the head and body of the character. I know from experience in making puppets that having something cover the neck area can look much neater on a final puppet. It also makes the whole design a lot more interesting when considering character semiotics.

There are a lot of triangular features to this design including his hat, sleeves and shoes. This is because I wanted the viewer to know that this character is not quite what he seems to be. He is confused about his own identity and maybe cannot even trust himself when it comes to his character.

However you will notice that each of these triangular parts of the design is counteracted with a circular element (the buttons, details of hat and feet and the neck collar. This is to show that he is a good character and doesn't necessarily mean any harm. 

The overall effect was an attempt show both good and bad elements of his personality, the whole design is in battle with itself, the same way the character is in battle over its own identity.

While designing his body I looked at other characters of similar body types for inspiration...

The art style and direction of this film was heavily based on pen and ink pieces by Edward Gorey so I decided to have a look into his style of art.

I really liked his work and decided to try a couple of designs in a similar style.

Here is a quick experimentation with texture and cross hatching, loosely based on Edward Gorey's work.

The Faceless Clown

It was at this point that I decided to think again about  his identity under the mask. I have originally planned to have his face wrapped with cloth but that implies that he has got an identity without his masks and he is chasing not to show it instead of what I wanted to get across,which is that he is reliant  on the masks for his identity.

This lead to a whole redesign of his face. For this I looked at other "faceless" characters.

A great example of a well known faceless character is Slender Man. He also has the creepy element to his design which is really relevant to my work.

Here are a couple more features of the puppet. Originally I wanted to make him with incredibly thin hands but I changed my mind to make them kind of Mickey Mouse like, far too big and out of proportion with his long, thin limbs.

The feet stayed very similar, keeping the triangular design which is traditional of clowns and jesters.

Here are a couple of original designs for the masks I made for this character.  I wanted to stick with the traditional clown makeup so it was still wear what he is meant to be. Without these masks on it could be head to tell. I wanted him to have one for every expression, making him completely reliant on these to express himself.

Here is the final design of this character, this is what I made the puppet from. I was influenced a lot by Tim Burton's concept art in genera but I wanted to remain true to myself in a lot of ways. I wanted him to be creepy, but so much that he is unreliable. I wanted to express a sense of loss and confusion of his face which makes you pity him instead of fear him.