ohlookapuppet

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Body Prototype

Using Newsplast I have decided to make a prototype of the body and get the sizing right now that I had the 3D head print. I started off with an armature and wrapped the plasticine around the wires. I was quite pleased with how the body shaped look and the sizing of it. Imade the hands and decided she was only going to have 3 fingers and 4 toes to make her a little less human. When deciding on the feet I wasn’t sure if she should be barefoot or have little booties. The combination of both works really well but I think the boots take away from the fact that she’s not got much and lives off of socks so it would only make sense for her to have  socks on.

To make the face and head attach together I bought tiny magnets and created a row of them on top of each of the objects. This way they would be easily attachable and detachable. 

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3D process

The first images show how the 3D print has came out the printer, this then gets the wee stills broken off and the model gets sanded where they were attached so it can be smooth. The thicker model worked very well and there weren't any faults with it, all the parts fitted together. 

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First attempt at 3D printing. Failed.

The thickness was too thin making the material very fragile and breakable. The eyes and eyelids all broke and from then on I realised I won’t be able to 3D print the eyelids unless I was to make the eyes smaller which was something I didn’t want to do. 

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Zbrush sculpt

I haven’t used Zbrush previously so this project was a perfect opportunity for me to try another sculpting technique. I thought I would make a time lapse video of my progress to show the different stages I went through. 

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Retopology 

The model made on zbrush came with a very uneven and high poly count which needed to be changed if I wanted to have the model rig correctly. I did some research on topology and how to do it. and minimised the polycount as much as I could without loosing the shape of the model. A problem I had was that after the retopology the model was very angular so I had to smooth it in order for the printer to print it the way I have planned. 

For the 3D printing I asked a classmate to send me a powerpoint she received last year teaching about how to 3D print and what the model needs to be like. I have also gotten advice from a masters student Justin who kindly showed me that I needed to add thickness to the body parts in order for them to print as a solid. And so I did. I cut the head apart so that the details on the ears would print well and the face could be removed and attached when printed.  

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After deciding on the colour scheme it would only make sense for the clothes to match her body. Therefore I chose pastel blue and pink as her clothing. Another reason for that was finding socks of the right colours and imagining her wearing them. At first her little socks were going to be the same colour but to add a little quirkiness I made her have unmatching socks. Out of all the clothes I think I will be mixing the 2 last outfits together to create her clothes. She will have long pink sleeves, a blue dress, and a little pink scarf.

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Exploring colour palettes

With a chosen body and it’s proportions, it was time to decide on what colour the puppet would be so I could plan ahead and order paint, look for the right sock colours and something to make the wig out of. The wig seems to be a bit of an issue as most studios have their own wig makers, who take around 2 weeks to create 1 wig. Also they’re made out of real hair, and I don’t thin that’s an option for me. 

As this is based on a fictional elf I have decided to explore with different skin colours such as bright blue and purple. The light blue skin was quite pleasing but it only fitted with the blue hair, and I didn’t think there would be enough contrast and colours if it was all blue. The design would be too boring. 

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Sketching out different possibilities for the designs including some clothing and bodies. I was concentrating on a hair style as with the 3D models I didn't manage to achieve any. Through looking into buns, ponytails and mullets I figured out I wanted her to have big fluffy hair similar to a mullet. This design was inspired by a drag queen Aquaria who wore a mullet wig during her time on the show Rupaul’s Drag Race.

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This is the design I’ve been searching for!!! 

She looks very Tim Burton, has a nice slim face and exciting patters on her such as the spiral in the ears. I didn’t feel the need to further adjust her as I knew that was the design I was happy with an wanted to model in 3D. The eyebrows are very corpse bride/Victor which will allow her to be very expressive and the cheeks make her look more cute as they’re round and appear soft. 

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Oh look another male design? I really like his ears so I kept trying to adjust his nose in hope to make him more feminine but nothing worked. The eyebrows are too bush again but I do really like how they stick out which would make it easier to animate them .

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This design is by far my favourite so far. She looks like a female! a creepy one but a female. At first even though she had female features, she was missing something and it was the eye lashes. I’m not trying to be stereotypical but eyelashes can change a characters gender within seconds. The shapes in her faces work so well as they’re very angled. I really like her design but it was quite creepy so I have made some adjustments to the eyes and lifted them up a little in order to make it more natural. Some more adjustments were done to the nose and I decided to leave this design and try something else, however if I wasn't going to discover anything else this would be my choice for the head design. While getting rid of some plasticine from the ear I accidentally made a spiral parren that I might take on board for the next character design. 

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The next head design I have worked on looks like a guy again! maybe I should just make the character non binary and save myself the trouble of making a female face interesting. When I was looking for interesting female designs online I was troubled to find any, all of them are made to be perfect and cute. Whereas the males have very extravagant features such as huge noses, chins etc. This is where I wanted to take this character design and give her a large chin, not to make her look more male but to give her more room for speech and a chance to have wide mouth movements. I went through multiple adjustments to try and find the better design as I really didn’t like her lips at first. Once the lips were changed I added more adjustments such as details in the eyebrows. Which actually made them look messy and more manly. I’ve given her a septum piercing which I thought could add a little to the feminine side of things and it worked. I quite liked that design but there was still something off. The chin. It had to go. And once I got rid of it I became happier with the design but it still wasn’t what I was looking for. 

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Designing the character

As this project is about a 3D puppet I have decided to sculpt my ideas out rather than draw them. This would help me visualise what they’re going to look like better than a 2D drawing. 

The first sculpt I did looked too much like one of the tutors so I scrapped that idea and didn’t finish it which is why he’s missing an eye lid. The next model I have created is made designed using oval shapes with nice and round edges to them so she’s seen as a friendly character. Unfortunately this character didn’t look much like a female, but it did have interesting shapes to it so I have kept trying to adjust his nose to see if any of the designs would look good enough to take forward. 

I have always felt that noses are a very interesting part of the model and can tell a lot about their personality. I’ve tried big and small noses on the model but nothing was standing out to me as a final character design. The one I do like the most is with the beaked nose however not only does that make him look less female, it also gives it an evil look to it. 

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Some more analysis of characters from movies such as Kubo and The Two Strings, Boxtrolls, Isle of Dogs and Paranorman. 

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Another book I have explored was the Art of Corpse Bride which is another movie created by Tim Burton who is a huge inspiration of mine. The book was mainly filled with concept art for the movie, which were beautifully illustrated. They also talked about the process of making their puppets and how the Bride’s hair was silicone and her dress was wired so the animators would be able to give it a more realistic flow and have more control over it. 

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