It’s been a while since we’ve had time to tend to our blog, but exciting things are happening at Stop-Mo-Studio as we embark on a new challenge: the production of a stop-motion short film, ¿Bikini?. This quirky, independent story follows a day in the life of a monster named Simon, who embarks on a somewhat absurd journey with miscommunication at its core. While progress has been slow, our first puppet is just about complete, and production planning has officially begun. But today, we’re talking about Simon.
Bones and bandages
Simon is a beautifully flawed character, both in his personality within the narrative of Bikini and in terms of his design. Working primarily with found materials, he has not been created in a way that will allow for replacement limbs or easy rig attachments. While he’s admittedly terrifyingly cute, keeping him upright is bound to be a challenge – but we’ll cross that bridge (and share our solutions) when we get to it. Simon is built using a base of aluminum wire, which was twisted together to create a skeleton, more commonly known as an armature in the world of stop-frame animation. From there, we used an old kitchen sponge to flesh out his belly, then wrapped him up in a bandage left over from a nasty ankle sprain! His face was created using air-dry clay, which was sculpted directly onto the bandaged armature. Making his teeth was somewhat challenging. The original character design called for a toothy, awkward mouth, and finding something that worked was certainly no easy feat. We eventually settled on small pieces of wire, which we pushed into the clay before it dried, and secured with glue in the end.
Show me your skin
The next thing to consider in terms of Simon’s design was his skin. As the name of the film might suggest, we needed him to have a full body of skin, and honestly, we weren’t entirely sure how to approach this issue. Given our experience in mould-making and silicone casting, we considered sculpting his body, making a mould, and casting him out of silicone. However, it turned out that our polyurethane supplies were running far too low to make a mould this big, and so we changed our approach and did something we’ve never done before: painting directly onto the character with silicone. The first layer didn’t do much for his final look, but we pressed on, determined to make it work. A few layers later (plus some different shades for a spotty texture), and Simon was well on his way to looking like a true star.
Look into my eyes
Simon was coming along nicely, but creating his eyes was a whole new experience. Previously, we had created eyes by simply painting the tops of miniature nails, but for Simon, his eyes needed to have a somewhat human feeling. They needed to convey emotion in a way that a painted eye simply couldn’t do, so it was back to the drawing board. Our first attempt involved drawing his eyes on paper and covering them with a blob of hot glue. While this definitely looked rather nice, it would have been impossible to move them. They needed to be 3-dimensional.
Our next effort involved a similar technique, where we created eyeballs using leftover air-dry clay. We created the eyes with a hollow centre, where we painted an iris and pupil, which we then once again tried to cover with hot glue for a glassy effect. The process was messy, and the glue didn’t cover the whole eyeball, so it looked rather strange from the side. It was, however, unbelievably cute. In the end, we decided to experiment with a new material – UV-cure resin. The process was relatively straightforward, and once we had some eyeballs that were a little better suited to the size and shape of his eye sockets, we finally achieved something that felt just right for his personality and the story.
So… what’s next?
Over the next few months, Simon will be wrapped up with some custom clothing and some nice white paint on his teeth. With our first production meeting just around the corner, we’re excited to get started on sets, props, and eventually the most exciting part: animating! Stay tuned for updates on our process – we’ll share them all right here.
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