Sculpting and Model Making
Plasticine mouth replacements
As an assistant animator we are in charge of sculpting all the mouth replacements for all the characters ranging from animals to humans. For a dialogue driven feature film like Early Man or for a project that has no dialogue and relies on clear facial expressions.
Sculpting plasticine animals
For Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon and Shaun the Sheep: An Adventure from Mossy Bottom, I was in charge of sculpting, posing and maintaining the pig characters. To get the foam core into the plasticine body I used a press mould, this also gets a rough shape of the body. While making the pigs they often needed to be sculpted into a specific position to fit into a set piece like the flamingo rubber ring or the throne or clothes made by the puppet makers. This meant a lot of collaboration between all three departments to make sure all the components fitter together.
In-camera effects
Creating water effects from various materials like cling film or heated acrylic. Here is an animation test of the tea replacement shapes I made with glass painted cling film. I have also used various techniques to create paint splats with latex and acrylic paint, as well as red pressure marks on Nooth’s nose using red paint.
Building sets
I built a solid base for the stage, painted and textured the balsa wood floor panels as well as measured and cut the MDF walls with a circular saw. For this project the puppets used tie-downs so I made the floor panels replaceable to fix the drill holes.
