Animation test for replacement mouth puppet head

11/5/2012

0 Comments

 
Here's my completed animation test using my puppet head with the replacement mouths. The eyes went a bit (a lot!) haywire but overall I was really pleased with the actual lip sync and liked the fact that I had managed to get the beard to move with the mouth, giving it a more realistic feel.
0 Comments

Replacement mouth puppet head.

4/4/2012

0 Comments

 
I've made the puppet head with replaceable mouth for the lip sync! I'm quite excited by this, look at all the little mouths...
I made it all out of sculpey because of the fact that it's easy to sculpt with and bakes hard so that I had no chance of ruining any of the little mouths when animating.
I created a flat surface where the mouth should be on the head and lower than the rest of the face so that I could create mouths that would sit on top of this area.
I had the problem that the mouth looked obviously seperate from the rest of the face so I tackled this issue by giving my puppet head a nice moustache and bushy beard!
When placed on the flat surface, the mouths are now surround by a beard that covers the joing giving the appearance that the mouth is part of the head.
Here are the nine different mouth shapes i created. In Preston Blaires phenome series there are ten different mouths, however I didn't use the 'L' shape.
I also made seperate pupils which sit on the eyes with vaseline. This means I can animate them, giving my puppet more character.
Half blink eylids.
Full blink eyelids.
Now to animate!!
0 Comments

Lip sync

16/3/2012

0 Comments

 

Lip sync with stop-motion puppets usually means that replaceable mouths (as seen in the image on the right) will be used as this reads better on screen than a jaw which just moves up and down, (for example 'Muppet' mouths).
I wanted to try out replacement lip sync, as these animation tests will help me better understand how to make the puppets easy to animate and bring to life. Before diving straight into a 3D lip sync I have started more simply with cut outs of the Preston Blair mouth shapes:
I have used a segment of a song that is heavily accent so that I had to really listen to the sounds that were being made rather than the letters that were being said. Here is the outcome:
Although I am relatively pleased with this outcome, I have realised from this excercise that I do not need to change the mouth shape as often as I thought. I would probably take out a few of these different m0uth shapes and simplify the animation if I were to do it again, which would most likely give a more realistic interpretation.

Next step... a 3D lip sync!
0 Comments