Opinion on puppet

Opinion on puppet

Hey everyone. I've been sculpting with clay for about 2 yrs now and i want to try making a claymation but I ran into a problem. I am making a boxer (not the dog) puppet and was wondering what material i should make it out of. I'm split between foam and clay which is a common problem as I've read. For a boxer, i feel clay would be best for muscle and face detail but i also feel it would be hard to keep clean and keep from deforming when I edit the puppet. With foam, I feel it will fix the cleaning and deforming problem but I'm worried it will make the muscle movement look crappy and that it will limit the puppets motion. Since this is a common debate and problem, I was hoping some of you more experienced animators could give me some advice. Ill post some pictures of what I plan to make if I can ever figure out how to fix my scanner. Thanks for reading this, any help is appreciated!

West
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Re: Opinion on puppet

Hey West,
It really depends on what you want the finished model to look like, and what it has to do. As far as muscle movement, unless you are re-sculpting the body every frame, which I doubt that you will, then that is a non factor, unless you think that the foam might suck in at certain points of the body, which is a fair concern.
I can tell you this, a foam character will be a lot lighter than a clay one, and therefore is easier to animate, but I don't know the look of your character, which is also a determining factor. You have not stated what you mean by foam, is it a foam cast model, or a build up?
Sorry to leave you with more questions than answers, but these are things that only you know the answers to, and will have to figure out before you can proceed.

tim smyth
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Re: Opinion on puppet

A cheap way of doing this is to make a plaster mould of the final sculture, and make a latex slip cast. The resulting rubber skin can placed over the armature and stuffed with dacron and foam.

Durand
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