Animating The Crows (Gorran and Bran)

Now this is a big test for me... animating to music. Something I have never done before. I didn't have a dope sheet or infact any musical experience. I had to listen to the tune over and over again, act out the movement and just know that it was in 4.4. So I knew that the concertina would go out for 2 beats and in for 2. Beats into seconds was just under. I nearly gave up at one point but seeing them come to life spurred me on.

My parent's friend Paul Spooner, who makes wooden automaton,
made me the paper part of the concertina. I tried and failed.
He's fab.
I made the rest out of foam and wire and painted it up.

Patiently waiting for me to finish their squeezebox.

Ready to go!

The music was performed by my friend Seamus. He did his own version of Frère Jaques on the accordion, a wonderfully dark sultry version. I had to edit it down from 2 minutes to 20 seconds but it worked a treat. It has a slow intro, almost like the tuning of instruments, double bass , this inspired me to have the birds on a turn table. I thought it would great if the lights came up slowly and then once the full tune kicked they would start to rotate round to meet the camera/ audience. 

Luckily for me, there was a turntable already made left over from a previous student.

So I turned the turn table round 1 cm per frame. Shot in twos. Nearly cried once.

Birds...

Polymorph Bones

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Lightweight neoprene core for the chest gives something hard to
grip when animating.

Wrapping wadding round wire joints...

...Before wrapping the rest of the body.

Feet

Hands

Hands sandwiched between foam and latex then cut out.
I added thread dipped in latex to make knuckles and tendons.

I made the bones in the feet from cocktail sticks- glued and then
wrapped tightly with gaffer.

Bird Twins in the making

Got started on the armature for the Bird Twins today. I had to make a scale drawing relevant to the skulls.

Armature complete with polymorph and K&S.
Still needs polymorph bones...

Scale drawing and armature

Stuffing the skulls with wadding to make them less fragile and also for the
K&S to cling to.

Skulls avec K&S

Today I Have Been Mostly....

.... Cleaning Skulls....

Mmmm, what a delightful morning I've had. I got up early and ate breakfast, watched silent witness. waited a couple of hours until I knew my food was going to stay where it should and then I took my box of maggots and skulls up to the snowy downs and emptied it.....

Luckily the cold weather had killed the maggots before they turned into flies. But them dying in with what little rotting flesh was left on the skulls created an almighty 'perfume'. Now I know what medieval towns smelled like.

I sat in the snow with some vinyl gloves on, wiping away the soil and clusters of maggots. Molly came to keep me company but didn't last very long. She threw up behind a snowman. I'm stronger stomached than her. As I lay out the semi-clean skulls out I heard a caw above my head and looked up to see a crow staring down at me form the tree branches. I left the big pile of maggots for his dinner.

Back home i rinsed the skulls and gently scrubbed the dirt away with an old toothbrush. I haven;t got anything to bleach them with yet as I don't want to use anything too strong. At the moment I've left them to soak in a tube of vinegar and bicarb. It should hopefully harden them.

Just after de-maggoting.

Vinegar and Bicarb.

My Initials. Kinda Cool.

Crow Head Casserole...

So, over Christmas, I finally plucked up the courage to de-flesh the crow heads! And boy was it fun....not.
I put them in a metal pot filled with boiling water and left them outside, but because ot was so cold it didn't do much. Thankfully my parents aren't squeamish so they let me put the heads i the pot with a lid on in the bottom oven of the ago to slow cook.

Like a Crow Head Casserole...

It smelled so odd. The heads weren't rotting as they'd been frozen but the smell was indescribable. Not over powering just lingering like a musty room. It did smell like death.

Then I spent a morning with a tea towel wrapped round my face and vinyl gloves on, picking away at the flesh and feathers. Mum even helped too. I think she enjoyed it more than me. So much so that she took over while I wrote my dissertation.

A few days later I went to the fishing tackle shop in Penzance and brought some fine looking blue bottle maggots.
£2 a pint, cheaper than the pub!
I put the skulls in a tub covered with soil and emptied the maggots on top. They had to be kept warm-ish so they would be lively and eat the flesh. I put them on the mantle piece but took them down after a day and night as I didn't want them to cook.
Now they are sat behind the loo in my house in Bristol. They have probably died of cold now seeing as it's been snowing the last few days. I just want to wait a bit more before I empty them, somewhere on the Downs in a wide open space. I checked on them a few times but it smells so awful.

Dinner? 

I filmed them wriggling...

Finished Bird Twin Prototype

I finished off the puppet. The second head, I made form Miliput as I wanted to see which was better to sculpt in. I think I prefer Sculpy for sculpting in as it is easier to manage and I'm not having to race against the clock as it doesn't air dry. It is also cheaper. However, Miliput has a better finish which i can sand, drill, paint etc. Sculpting the bird heads is only a back up as I'm still hoping I can get some skulls.

I have brought 3 crow heads off ebay (oh, the stuff you can get on there...!) and I'm planning on taking them back to my parents in Cornwall so I can boil them up in the yard without offending anyone. Last year I pissed off all my housemates by boiling up fish heads to try and gets the bones. To be fair it wasn't that bad.... but then I do work in a sea food restaurant...

To get the skulls I need to macerate them (boil them slowly) and then make a rot box with soil and live maggots to eat the remaining flesh and get the brain out. Yum.

Any way, I also had a tutorial with Mary about my project and thank god I did. She helped me think about the overall feel of the piece, that its not a show reel but more a short film of vignettes. She also made me scrap my idea of the theatre stage as it was too generic. Will post the set stuff later....
She looked at my designs and said that the accordion I'd drawn was too 70's looking and if I want my film to have that Victorian toy-box creepy feel I should opt for something more like a squeeze box. This would be easier to make and easier to animate being played.

The squeeze box is made form neoprene and aluminium wire.

Black and Whit cos I'm hip...

Its hard to get the heads the same.

Making Prototype Bird Puppet

During workshops with Mary Murphy, I began to make a prototype puppet of the Bird Twins. We had to make a scale drawing and work from that. I didn't think I'd like to work from a scale drawing but actually it was really helpful and i want to make some some really well drawn scale drawings to display as part of my degree show. I think I need to improve on my technical drawing.

And (as luck would have it, not....) I can't find my scale drawing to put on here. But its all ok as I will be re-drawing it for the final puppet any way.

Referring back to the scale drawing

I made a wire armature using the scale drawing as a size guide. Then I made the 'bones' with polymorph. 

Polymorph strip cut to 3x width of wire

The chest is made from neoprene foam (yoga blocks) that I cut to shape. I glued this in two halves over a miliput core. The foam is very dense so it means there is a hard surface to hold whilst animating, meaning there will be no 'travelling' of skin, clothing etc.

To make the flexible form for the body I used wadding that I pulled into strips and wrapped around the armature. Using spray mount to glue it down and stitching to create shape. I prefer carving in foam, although this method is quicker. But foam carving gives more detail, in my opinion.

The head needs to be as light weight as possible. I used Lightweight Sculpy for the core and then made the rest of the head in normal Sculpy over the cooked core. K & S is used for easy attachment of heads, hands etc. This is inserted into the raw core before it is cooked and the head built around it. To make a moveable jaw wire is also inserted into the lightweight core as are eyes (if they don't need to move).

Diagram form my notebook on how to make the lightweight core.

I used miliput to make the feet and a tie-down in the bum of my puppet as I want it to be able to sit. To make the tie-downs in the feet i simply made several holes with a pin and stretched them out as miliput shrinks as it dries. The tie-down in the bum was made with a screw so it is more sturdy.

The orange chest is the neoprene foam, cut to shape.

Tie-down in bum.

After much wrapping of wadding. The tie-down is just visible, nicely hidden!

Prototype head made from Lightweight Sculpy, Sculpy and K&S

Prototype head no1.

Once the flexible body had been made I then added clothing. This was done by retro-fitting fabric to the puppet. I used old tights as the weave is small enough not to look out of proportion and the nylon stretches two ways and sticks well to copydex (used in very small amounts to make hems). I had to sew very carefully to make neat seams that were the right proportion and that weren't too visible.

I used real feathers as a ruff.

Need to make the second head before doing animation tests....

The Siamese Bird Twins

This character is a two headed siamese twin. I had the idea from a doodle I did of a two headed bird creature. I wanted to use found objects too and thought I could use bird skulls for the heads. 

INSPIRATION!

I saw some work by artist Jessica Joplin at the Natural- Unnatural exhibition at the end of the summer down at RWA. She uses found objects like brass, leather and bones. She makes THE most amazing work. I was actually drooling a little and finding myself extremely envious wishing I had made the pieces myself.

Here's some sneaky pictures I took...

'Comet', Antique Brass, hardware and findings, bone,
silver, velvet, glove leather and glass eye.
23x20cm

'Raphael' Antique Brass, hardware and findings, bone,
vestment trim, glove leather and glass eye.
43x26cm

I started to do some concept drawings....

Very early concept design

Mirroring

Final concept design for the Siamese Bird Twins
or 'Alouette Twins' as I like to call them.
I made this collage using photos of crow skulls and real feathers.