Claymation: Try and try again.

Working on my clay creatures has been a very big challenge; I don’t have much experience with Claymation but I certainly learnt a lot.

Firstly the clay I used was not the best for animating as it was cheap, it worked but it wasn't very strong and wouldn't hold its position, for example if I placed the arms of a character above their head the clay would drop slowly, which for animating does not work.  So I had to make rigs for my main clay characters.  I researched many Claymation films such as Wallace and Grommit to understand and figure out how to make a rig with the equipment that was available to me. (I don’t exactly have the same equipment as a film studio.)

My first try I made wire frames for the body and filled them with foil (as this is what I have done previously with sculpting.) Then covered it with tape so the clay would stick. The bodies of my Red character, Purple character and Green character where not very flexible and keep their form in the animation so there was no need to make their body rig to flexible.  

Red Character:

But the Red character and the Green character both have arms that move. The first time I tried, I used wire, foil and tape for the arms. The shoulder would come out of the body a little bit to keep the size and form and had clay for the rest of the arm. This didn't work as the clay just melted to the ground. (As there was no support.)

I then tried to have wire, with foil in the upper arm and lower arm area covered in tape then clay over the top for the arms but this was not flexible enough. As the wire I was using was difficult to manipulate and every time the arm was moved the clay would get ruined and this is unusable for animating.

After speaking with my lecturers JMC provided me with amazing aluminium wire which is very soft and easy to move without using too much force.

I then cut chunks of Styrofoam out in the shapes of my characters, covered it with tape, pierced aluminium wire through the body and cover that in tape and then I was able to clay the creatures and this worked well. I was able to move the characters arms without smudging the clay. The characters where still not as flexible as I would have preferred but for my style of Claymation it worked.

Green Character:

My green character followed the same procedure with the body. But I wanted his arms to be able to stretch and get smaller. So for my green character I just used clay and nothing else for the arms. When I animated I would always have his arms in a position where they stuck to something such as his body so that they did not melt to the ground. I also placed wire through his legs to help him to stand.

Clay Emily:

Emily was a much bigger challenge then the other creatures as Emily had to keep a human form and still look like Emily. Also she needed to be much more flexible as not only did her arms move but also her back and head.

For Emily’s rig I used Styrofoam for the bulk and to keep her shape.

The main parts where her head, arms, upper body, lower body (skirt) and her legs.

At first I made the mistake on not separating the upper body to the lower body which meant I wouldn’t have been able to animate her bending forward.

This was an easy enough fix as I cut where her abdomen is which meant her upper and lower body where separate. Her head upper body and lower body where all connected through wire that represents her spine.

Her arms where again wire pocked through the upper body and taped. After making the skirt I made her legs and pocked wire through the legs that pocked through to the skirt for balance.

Though I did all this work Emily couldn’t stand on her own, so I had to glue her feet to cardboard then add wire to the cardboard behind her that went into her skirt which was what held her up.

The bags, scarfs, hats and jumper where all made with cut up bits of Eva Foam.