Old News and Updates: or ...Welcome to my Blog archive May 26 2005 Who tuted? Forgive me father.... it's been 6 days since I last blogged.... ...And I aint got much today either. So thankfully, I'll continue the tradition of passing on the hard won fruits of other people's labors. I just ran across this excellent tuorial and thought I ought to archive it in here. It's on the Sculptor's Forum (formerly Sculpting with the Shifletts), and I believe you have to have a (free) account to see the threads in there, so I'll transfer it here bodily. Here's a link to the entire thread for those who are already members, or want to go ahead and sign up. I recommend it most highly... this place is amazing!!: Styrene shaping tut. And, for those who don't care to go for the gusto, here's the nitty gritty, posted by Brian Baity. The only tool he uses in this demo is a heat gun, made for stripping paint: The coolest factor about a thin styrene cape is it is light as a feather and won't weigh down your piece. Alright guys here we go. I'll do a styrene demo. I'll just use a small 5x8 piece here. Now I'll cut it out all cape shaped-like. This is .030 in thickness so it can easily be cut with a pair of sissors or an xacto knife. I'm then ready for heating and shaping. My advice is to put your heat gun on the lower setting, you don't wanna melt the sheet just soften it. The stryrene sheet will get pretty warm in the areas you're directing the heat when it softens, so you might wanna wear a pair of basic cloth utility gloves. The heated area will become as limp as fabric, this is when you wanna do your shaping. You'll wanna quickly hold it to your desired shape because the area will cool back off and harden within ten seconds. Don't try to do the whole piece at once because you just will not have enough time before it cools. If you are unhappy with a certain area just reapply heat to it and reshape! All I gotta say is just try it. Pinch and fold the stuff to your desired shape. If you're worried about molding issues you can always fill in or thicken up areas on the inside of the cape with some Apoxie or even castilene. I wouldn't suggest SS because you've gotten heat that to cure it and you'll mess up you're shaped Styrene by softening it again. Here's what I came up with on this small sheet. It took all but 3 mintues or so. In this tutorial Brian used the technique for making a cape for a superhero sculpt, but I think this could be used for lots of applications... like possibly surfacing hillsides on a set, or draping over a chickenwire form to make a tree... whatever you can dream up. The right thickness of styrene might be strong enough to support tiedowns (not sure about that... don't quote me on it). Here's a little additional info also taken from that thread: Anyone who needs styrene look in the yellow pages for "sign supplies". You can buy styrene in sheets of 4' x 8' for about $15.00 and in different thickness too. I worked in the sign business for about 10 years and had to order this stuff all the time. Heck some of the suppliers have scrap pieces and will be glad for you to take it off their hands. Hope this helps. You can pick up polystyrene at McMaster Carr in huge sheets... I think it's the same stuff... You'll find it at the bottom of the index listed under Raw Materials and Springs; Plastics. Or for small sheets like the one in the demo, try Micro Mark. Comments Everyone be sure to use these sorts of materials with either a suitable respirator or out of doors. All plastics and foams "off gas" highly toxic fumes, especially when heated, that our dear bodies can absorb through skin and breath and then have to try to eliminate. Even the greatest masterpiece isn't worth even a little of that eh?! Let's be smart about it, be heathier, to enable us to create even more!-Shelley May 20 2005 Advice to photographers...(and animators) This comes via Shelley, discovered somewehre by her husband and passed through me for your approval... Never forget that all the great photographs in history were made with more primitive camera equipment than you currently own. Ultimately, your real work is to connect your Self to the world. Think clearly about your objectives. Which is more important to you: earning an income or getting your work distributed? Which do you care about more: making images the public loves or making images that you must? If you are lucky, these are the same, but if they are not, clearly knowing which is more important to you makes everything else easier. There are no right answers here. There is only confusion when you work at cross-purposes to your objectives. Learn to work alone. Learn to work without distractions. Turn off the music. Surround yourself with silence. Each one of us has a muse within us who tries to communicate and advise us on the creative path. There are no exceptions to this. But there is also a universality that all muses tend to whisper. To hear them clearly one must reside in a very still place. Finish it... There is a universal Law of Audience that says if you finish work, the universe cannot stand that it remains unseen. Shoot more than you do; print more than you do; and be a ruthless editor. I'm serious. There is a great deal to be gained in sheer volume - not that volume itself is any virtue, but practice is. Besides, relentless practice does have a twin sister known as luck. Art is supposed to have meaning, emotion, power, or magic. Don't merely show what the subject is; show what it isn't, show what it means, show why it is, how it is, for whom it is, where it is, and/or when it is. Remember art is not about artwork. Art is about life. To become a better artist, first and foremost become a better person - not in the moral sense, but rather in the complete sense. Remember that the greatest artist is not the one with the best technique, but the one with the most human heart. Comments Ok, my mistake... it was actually Shelley who discovered this gem, not her husband. And, modest person she is, she told me not to worry about making a correction. But I did it anyway, so there! And what's more, she has now dug up a link to the complete essay, unadulterated and in its full glory: 21 ways to improve your photographs. The condensed version hits all the basics, but this fills in a lot of additional greatness. -Mike May 17 2005 Recovery Sorry this page takes forever to load... I wanted those funeral pictures to be good and clear, but I'll do something about it tonight, promise. It takes a while even on broadband! I've begun to disassemble the unfortunate puppet, and I plan to rebuild him... make him better, faster.... stronger. Nothing to really blog on it yet though. There's a pretty good explanation in the comments under the entry for the 15th. Meanwhile, I was intrigued by the insistence on using silk thread over all other kinds... I figured it was stronger, but wanted to research a bit, cause I know nothing about it. I had some vague notion that it was made from webs spun by worms or spiders, but that's about it. I found a couple of cool sites that give some interesting historical and modern information on the subject... click on the two pictures to check them out. In other news, the new films are up over at StopMoShorts. Once again, Nick really wowed everybody! In fact, all the entries are great... everybody seems to be improving dramatically! Eric used his iDshot for his, and the result looks fantastic. The other big standout is John Lewis' The Boy Who Wanted to Touch the Moon. What's going on over there in the land of Oz? Is it something in the water or what? These guys are seriously good at the stopmo! Comments May 15 2005 Epitaph for a puppet He had been in existence for only a few moments.... his hands and arms were hardly dry when it happened. It was his neck... his long, beautiful neck, lovingly crafted from a tube of foam and the finger of a latex glove. On the left, its normal state, showing some folds, and on the right, I found that when stretched and held in place, it didn't wrinkle, and twisted like living flesh when the head was turned. I was thinking of making some kind of clamp to hold it like that. The before and the after.... I can't bear to look again. I'll never forget the sickening feeling when it broke in my hand.... that awful feeling. I dared to hope maybe the set screw had just come loose... but deep inside I knew. And as I was undressing the cadaver for these funeral pictures, an arm snapped off at the shoulder. It's the lead wire, I'm sure. It moved with buttery smoothness, and had absolutely no bounceback. At all. It was too good to be true. By far the finest movement of any armature I've ever handled. It was like a dream, and like a dream, it ended too soon. In tribute to a fine puppet and a wonderful human being, here are some pics of the hands under construction. Aluminum wire, epoxy putty, and little sleeves of surgical latex tubing that served to keep them nicely aligned in the forearm tubing, where they were glued with epoxy gel. I dipped them in mask making latex to the elbows. I was hoping for the best, and on the hands themselves it worked pretty well, but it made the foam shrink and pucker horribly, and the ugly paint job completes the effect of 3rd degree burns. 5 pieces of sofa foam... 6 if you count the unfortunate neck. I devised a technique for driving an X-Acto knife straight through a block of foam to pierce a small hole through it. I then fed a length of aluminum tubing through the hole, so I could see exactly where the center line was, and began shaping it with shears. Rough shaping is all that was necessary for the parts that would be under cloth, but for the arms I finished with some tiny sewing scissors for a good smooth surface. I pulled the arms, legs and neck piece on like sleeves over the armature. The main body was one thick block folded over the top of the torso, holding the arm pieces down tight, held together with Barge flexible contact cement. One valuable lesson; choose pieces of foam carefully, as if you were selecting prime grade lumber for furniture. Stretch it and bend it around, looking for any splits or tears... they will come back and haunt you. Just for comparison's sake, here's Ahab, naked as a jaybird. My techniques were primitive then, I basically cut flat pads of foam and wrapped them around the armature. It was messy and difficult to hold together as it dried, and the layer of foam was too thin to allow for much shaping. He's been through hell and back, and his tattered flesh shows the wear and tear, but he's a tough old salt. I've had to rip away parts of the foam to get to the screws for tensioning, and in places there were thick knots of Barge (armpits in particular) and it had to be torn open to give him better freedom of movement. I hardly used any cement on the newer model above... only to hold the big chunk of foam on his torso and to attach the neck to his head. I've decided the less cement you can get away with using- and the fewer pieces of foam- the better. I don't consider the tragedy to be a complete loss. At least I learned a lot from it, and I've come to a decision... No More Wire Armatures.... EVER!!! Comments Awww Jeeez! Welcome to the hell that is bringing the inanimate to life! I remember one of my first armatures was crappily created from hacked and epoxied Barbie and GI Joe dolls...whew! Yes the beloved and cursed lead wire... The trick I learned years ago from the Master Fabricator Rob "Sir Foamy Jones" Ronning, is that each type of wire, lead, aluminum or steel all have distinct characteristics of hold, smoothness of movement and springback, as well as breaking at different rates! The key is using multiple strands of wire. One lead for smoothness, one steel for strength and if needed an additional aluminum strand for a combo of both. NEVER TWIST WIRES all this does is compound the stress points, wire should ALWAYS be strait strands running in parallel, that are liberally coated with Barge then lashed together with SILK thread. The thickness of the combo of wires is based on the amount of strength needed for that particular part of the armature. As to your question of my puppets hands...The hands of my puppets are sculpted first in clay, then molded in hydrastone, then cast in silicone. Silicone is the GREATEST as it does not wrinkle like foam latex and is great for small little fingers. But it has to be tinted to the right color as painting it is a pain in the arse, and it does not repair easily like painted foam latex does. You can also inject foam latex into the hard molds same as silicone, or use a two part flexible urethane foam. Each have there own problems and benefits. Keep the faith my brother!!-T Excellent! So cool of you to take time out from your extremely busy schedule Ten! I promise I won't make a habit of bugging you like this (heh... this comment wasn't entirely unsolicited!) but I really needed some support right now, and this (as well as a lot of great advice on the SMA board) really helped get me through. The multiple types of wire idea is new to me... must experiment! A few other people also mentioned not twisting, and lashing with thread rather than using hard tubing for bones. I'm liking that. ~M Great puppet, Mike, No way to repair/replace the arm and put seam under clothing eh?-Shelley Not impossible, but it requires basically complete disassembly and rebuilding of the arm (because the hands are built on integrally). Now that I'm in recovery from the grief, I've begun the rebuilding process. I plan to replace the lead wire with aluminum, and play around with some combo stuff like Tennessee mentioned. And this time I'll try to make the head and hands more easily removeable/replaceable.~M Next page Ψ