Big Baby Madness: Making the baby!

Hello everyone, if you've been following my posts, you'll know that i've been working on a short project for the monthly competition the 11 second club.
I'm doing the animation in two sections, the mother and the baby. Since the baby's part is shorter I thought I'd do him first to get him out the way. I've finally gotten around to puppet making and sorting out his animation.
I documented the process as I went to show my progress.
Here's how I've been getting on!

Starting to build the baby's head with mixed plasticine 

Here's his finished head, all that's missing are his eyebrows which will be added later

Some replacement mouths

Building up the baby's body

There was no need for legs as he would only be shown from waist upwards.

I then built some simple props for the animation:

Some building block toys 

A cot for the baby with bee design

Here's my final set up, a simple set with a simple puppet ready to animate

Here he is, mid shot, in his whole 3 second appearance 

Next up is the mother and her part of the set. Hopefully it won't take me too long, there's only a week and a half left of the 11 second clubs deadline.
I'll keep you all updated as to whether I succeed or not!

Thanks for checking out my blog!!!!

Foam latex puppet

Okay so i wanted to show you the first foam latex puppet i ever made.
It was for a university project in second year (now graduated)

It was quite fun to make but i wish I'd created a better armature.

Here's what happened.

I first created my puppet out of Plasticine with a very basic wire armature.
I then took a big wooden board and covered it in clay, i placed the plasticine figure on top of it.

I then built up with the clay all around the puppet so that i could cover it in plaster to make a mould for the foam latex.

I then built up walls using blocks of wood and sealed the edges.

 

I then filled the box with plaster and waited for it to set.

 

I then had a plaster mould.
I took out the Plasticine and did the same thing for the other half of the puppet

I then put my custom built armature inside the mould
This was then pressed together with the other half of the mould and foam latex was injected into it and cooked in a special oven.

I used the foam latex puppet to destroy a pub set that i build based on a painting by Van Gogh.

The link for the film can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/24355426