A lot of research and testing tends to go into stop motion projects. This clip is an extended test I did to determine if a new way of making puppet parts for the stop motion class would work.
The “new way” of making parts would be to NOT add small pieces of round brass stock onto the ends of all the animatable parts (legs, spine, arms), and instead just leave the pieces as plain armature wire.
The brass bits give the set screws in the armatures something to bite into. My fear was that without brass stock on the ends, the set screws would chew into the bare wire, making the parts break far too quickly.
So this test was done with all pieces free of brass stock. I tried for a lot of rotation and demanding animation, to see how long the parts would last. I was impressed. enough to quite possibly stop using brass stock on the parts for next year’s course.
The other test was mostly with the leg wires. Typically, I add epoxy to make “bones”. This keeps the leg wires from going all “rubber hosey” when that’s not what we want to achieve in the animation. But I tested just bare 1/8″ wire, with green tape to remind me where the joints (hip, knee, and ankle) were as I animated. Again, I was impressed enough to seriously consider this technique, come next year. Yes, the wires get a bit hosey, but if you are careful to keep them mostly straight, it’s fine. And in fact, having a little bit of rubber-ness is fun, and makes the animation a little bit easier to achieve (a good thing in an intro class).
Post time: Jun-13-2017