Stop.Frame

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Part 1;  Part 2;  Part 3;  Part 4; Part 5;

Filming is now well under way of the Studio Googoo production of Doctor Knowgood – a puppet animation about a know-all monkey in a lab coat.

In the second of this series about the making of the film, we’re looking at the move from character idea to the making of the puppet itself – and all the design decisions and pitfalls along the way.

2) Puppet-making

Stop.Frame
I was really interested to see the way you had developed your puppet-making techniques. Can you tell me a bit about that? ie your starting point, and how and why you refined your techniques and materials to get to the current Doctor Knowgood? Tell me about the different materials you use and how you make thepuppet – do you have more than one? What about breakage etc?

Arnold Zwanenburg
My starting point was a monkey with a jacket that reached all the way to his toes (see sketch, right). This way it would be easier to animate walks I thought: just remove the toes once in a while and shift the body over the floor. But after a while I was getting headaches about how to animate acrobatics with this kind of simplified puppet. I concluded I need legs.

My second idea was to do it half 3d – using a puppet lying on the table (see photo, left). This way I don’t have to fight gravity for any kind of crazy jump. I have arms and legs with aluminium wire inside. It will be really quick to animate. But I was missing the shadows on the floor – I needed some base to walk on.

So I came up with an adaptation. Perhaps I could elevate the puppet on a block of cork and put a floor vertically on the table (see photo, right). I thought much about it. One of the problems is the face… I would need a few for watching different directions. A bigger drawback was the background, which either had to be behind glass, or drawn on the table. Too bad my drawings are never really appealing.

So I finally I concluded to do real stop motion in 3d. I’m better with 3d anyway, and now I have all the freedom to move within the room. I made a small clay model of the monkey (6 cm, see photo, above left) and a real scale one (17 cm, see photo, below left), changed it and changed it again. I experimented a lot with arms and feet. I like the good old latex toy puppets that bend in any direction. It really fits monkeys, with their long arms seeming like rubber. Of course real monkeys have bones, but they break them all the time. Rubber is better I’m telling you.

So my rubber arms and legs won’t break? They will actually, the aluminium wire inside breaks after bending it too many times. To make them replaceable, I use K&S square tube on the end of the arm, and slot it in a second square tube inside the body. This way I can unplug them for repairs when needed.

I use the plastic from electrical cord to cover the aluminium wire of the arm (see photo and diagram, right). So I remove the inner electrical wire of the cord, and put the aluminium in stead.

I use Milliput for the feet (see photo, left), with steel nuts or plates inside to be able to use both magnets and screws for fixing the feet to the floor. Handpalms are also Milliput. I use I-clay for the flexible parts in hands and feet (in toes and at the base of the fingers). I-clay is a synthetic rubber clay I found here. I was not familiar with it before. But I heard it’s also available in European toy shops.

When hands and feet are finished I dip them in colored latex (see photo, left). Maybe some more pictures would help… I will fully explain the technique on my web site (www.googoo.nl) when I have a bit of time…

The jacket finally, is made by my friend Jeroen. It was very hard to make such a small jacket. Almost all is done under a machine. I heard some cursing when he worked on it. I further complicated the process by changing the design of the puppet half way… More swearing and cursing. When he finally gave me his finished jacket, he told me we could still be friends if I would promise never to give him such a job again. So if anyone is interested in making miniature clothing…. let me know. I promise I’ll have the puppet design finished first. Meanwhile I’m very happy with the final result. He put aluminium strips in the seems to facilitate animation. Works like a dream!

So now I have one monkey doctor all dressed up. The lion, my first patient, is almost done, just missing a head. A few days more perhaps…

Puppet making is challenging and very time consuming I must say. But finally seeing the monkey in action I think it’s all been worthwhile.

Part 1;  Part 2;  Part 3;  Part 4; Part 5;