Model making is one of our most popular areas for visitors; it's where our characters come to life.
Our process starts as a director comes through from creatives department with 2d designs and from this our model makers sculpt and mould a 3d 'maquette' or prototype, usually in plasticene. This is then modified, adapted and fine-tuned. We can use this maquette to make a mould and cast pieces in different materials to create the puppet that can be animated.
We use a variety of materials in our workshop, plasticine, silicone/rubber, resin, foam latex, sculpey, milliput, and the list goes on, according to the requirements for particular characters. We use armatures made of ball and socket pieces (plates and drilled stainless steel balls) soldered/brazed to rods to create a metal skeleton. We use armatures in all our characters now, except very small incidental puppets, however, Morph has never had an armature, he is solid plasticine.
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Our characters generally have plasticine heads allowing easy manipulation and animation of expression, other materials are used for the rest of the puppet. With animated speech, if there is only a small amount of expression from the character an animator may sculpt the mouth shapes on the puppet's head, however, if more speech is required we will make mouth replacements. A separate mouth is sculpted for each consonant and vowel and the animator replaces each mouth, to achieve different word shapes and blends the plasticine to hide the seams.
We don't build sets or props in house, with the exception of immediate props like hats or suitcases and occasionally animatable props. The sets and props are built usually by specialist local companies.
From here it's into the studio for the shoot.
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