Puppets and Painting

Well im still working on making my puppets, i have majority of Lewis ready,

and have started to work on the mechanical bird.

I have been exploring different textures and techniques in photoshop

and drawing the bird has turned out to be alot of fun.

I have also began painting my backgrounds. Im initially just doing

them in a very light wash of water colour then i will go back over them with more depth. I think i will tweak them digitally and perhaps use pastels along with the watercolour to help create this.

Today i managed to do a test with one of the puppets in AFX with Huni, although

it was just a series of simple movements it was great to see the puppet working

smoothly. Im really happy with the way the puppet looked and moved, and cant wait to

get into animating him.

Last week i had a chat with Darren about different possible ways to make the light house take off look effective, and also how to create the dust that will be falling amongst the debris and rubble during take off. He suggested filming certain substances such as talcum powder, or flour falling in front of a green screen, however upon further discussion with Huni, it was thought that perhaps the glow of the green will show up to much on the powders??? Then we found something similar that can be done in AFX with particles, so i shall chat to Darren about these queries.

This is basically bringing you up to date with my production, discussions with Jack were also had last week regarding milestones that I wish to achieve by the end of the month. I found this quite helpful as it gave me some clarity and helped steer me in the right direction.

Below are the puppets i have created, as you can see some are still works in progress, but nearly there.