Finally, I am posting about how I made Adem. Although I have posted other things separately, this post is going to be a very long one. Ok, here Adem again;

Other pictures I posted previously are located here. And a walk cycle test is here to post everything all together about Adem.

I had a ball&socket armature made for this guy last year. I do not have much space for the set so, I wanted to make Adem as small as possible. But, as I was working on the puppet, I was not able to make him look like the way I wanted. I am glad I also ordered some additional parts in the first place. So, eventually I replaced his legs with the longer ones. You may notice in the following pictures; first he is short and then he gets taller as seen with the additions to his pants. Actually, making of Adem was such a long process because I tried many different things for everthing of him like the way I cover the armature, clothing, head,… I was both trying different designs and also getting used to working with this armature. Ok, let me start:

The Head and Covering Body with Foam

There was a double ball joint on his neck. This is the way it should be for a proper movement. But, as I was trying to make him short, I saw that he was going to have a very long neck. After couple of tries, I decided to cancel one of the joints on the neck. His head is made out of super sculpey. I covered the part of joint at the top with epoxy putty after cooking some sculpey. Then covered all with sculpey and cooked again. So, there is epoxy putty inside sculpey. It seems totally working fine. They cooked well together in the oven. There is one drawback so far, I can not change the tightness of that joint.

I covered some parts of the body with foam as it is shown on the pictures. I sewn the foam instead of gluing.

And neck.. that was another problem. Because there is a sculpey head, I was not able to use latex for the neck. Sculpey and liquid latex should not touch. I have learnt this recently after having a problem with the hands and claws which I posted about it yesterday. So, I just painted foam with acrylic to make the neck. He now has a short neck and it is looking okey. Also, I was not trying to make a total human like puppet and it was fine making the neck that way for me.

Clothing

Adem in my film represents human being. Nobody special, no hero,.. So, I wanted to make ordinary things for him.

The first pic on the left top shows my cat having fun with a box full of fabric Old clothes of ours and friends I collected over the years. The other pictures are self explanatory. when I was a child my mother used to sew clothes for us. She had a sewing machine. It was a lot of fun for me to watch her sew. By helping her out and watching her I learnt to sew some basic stuff. So, that was good for Adem. The vest and pants were easy but making of the jacket was kind of tricky. I googled for some mens jacket patterns. Then I created patterns for Adem’s by combining the ones I found. Just drop me a line in the comments section if you want me to send you patterns. I would be happy to do that.

Weathering

Although Adem did not like it, I had to weather his clothes to match the atmosphere. No place for brand new things in Chronos. Here is the part I most enjoyed doing:

The whole technic and the materials are from Shelley Noble! She sent me so many great materials for my film. Here I used two of those; walnut ink crystals and matte medium as she described in emails.

I first bleached the parts like the collar of the jacket, cuff,… Not much, just enough to give some shading. Mixed well acrylic matte medium, walnut ink cyrstals and a little water in a plate. Dipped the jacket. And then left it hanged overnight. As Shelley said it changes color as it dries. I applied same mixture to his shoes and vest. Just some with a brush and left for drying. I love the effect here. There is a closeup pic to his jacket at the bottom right. Thank you Shelley!!!!

Hands

Since I had problem with the hands I previously made, I am not going to post details about making of these hands here. There are temporary hands.

I painted with PAX here. You can find details here in my previous post. Even if this paint works fine (which I think so) I will make the hands again beacuse I am not totally happy with the design. I dont want the hands to be totally realistic but I want little detailed and thinner than these ones.

Mask

Adem has a real face like we all have. In the film you will see him both with and without a mask. But, he wants to hide his real face until the film is completed. I wanted him to wear a mask on some parts of the film like every human being does in her/his life. Dont we all have many masks… How many of us have seen our own face?…

I made 3 different masks and decided to go with this one. Actually this was the first one I created. The other 2 you see on the left bottom were based on real shaman masks. Design of this one was totally came out of my mind. I took a piece of super sculpey and started making. No sketch, no reference pictures… I did not want the mask to have any expression. Not happy, not sad, not angry,.. So, in a way something holding all different expressions of a human face in one mask. Not a man, not a woman.. just a human.

This is how I made the mask: First cooked the sculpey mask and then painted couple times with acrylic. When you paint acrylic directly onto the sculpey with a brush you may get some scratches. To get rid of those scratches after one or two layers of acrylic paint, I applied one coat of acrylic primer and left it to dry. Then couple more acrylic layers. When I was satisfied with the acrylic base I painted with a mixture of acrylic relief paste and wax. This was where I adjusted the color of the mask by adding some brown acrylic to that mixture. I put a lot of talcum powder before it was totally dry. Left it alone for about 15 minutes and then wiped off the talcum powder with a piece of soft cloth. So, there was some powder left around the eyes, mouth,.. giving the mask an old look.

And one more thing before I end this post. While I was working on the masks, I kept singing an old wonderful song of a friend Murat Hasarı. Name of the song is Insan Icin (For Human) Here some of the words both in Turkish and English(translated by me.. sorry..)

For Human – Insan Icin

Sky is fallen apart – Gökyüzü parça parça
Clouds are silent – Bulutlar sessiz
Whole world is a stage – Bir sahnedir bütün dünya
World is helpless – Dünya çaresiz
Players on the one hand, – Bir yanda oyuncular
Audience on the other – Bir yanda seyirciler
Mirrors are under the sky – Aynalar göğün altında
Masks are being painted – Boyanıyor maskeler
…

Here he is Adem’s armature. I received this armature couple weeks ago but did not have a chance to post here. It is simply beautiful. Many thanks to Erol Akbarci who made this armature for me. It works great!!! Very clean, carefully produced.

This is 5.5″ You see that he has very long arms. I also had some additional parts; longer leg, arm and body connection parts. So, in the future I will be able to replace the parts to have different armatures with different proportions. He can be 7″ longest.

Here is the drawings I sent him for production. (texts are in Turkish) If you like to download a larger size of this drawing you can go to downloads  page. There you will also find another drawing showing the additional parts.

I placed an order for a custom ball & socket armature for Adem. It has been an hard decision to make…

For me stop motion is a real art form. I do not expect to make money out of it. This is not my “job” instead this is my “art” that I am learning step by step. So, at first, it did not sound right to me to order an armature. I should have done everything in my hands. Here you can read how I decided to have someone else make the armature for me.

So, the choices were;
1-using the puppet with wire armature I made,
2-trying to build a ball & socket armature on my own,
3-buying one of those ready-made kits and modifying.
4-ordering a custom ball & socket armature

Let me explain… This is my first stop motion film. So, experimenting everything. Two steps forward, one step backwards.. Learning, learning.. I first started with building a wire armature for Adem. Using wire and epoxy putty for the armature, covering with foam to give a body form and sewing some clothes. Hands made out of silicone and the head made out of super sculpy. Before I finished the final Adem puppet you see under “Attempts”; I tried couple different wire armatures, different wires, epoxy putties,.. diffent clothing, couple different heads with sculpy.. So, after all, I did some animation tests. Those were okey but not as good as I expected…

I am not after a super cool, “successfull” animation here. But, I want to get a little smoother movement on the set. Regarding the smooth movement; I like to leave the feeling of stop motion on the puppets when animated (you know that little interval in between each frame telling the audience that -hey I am being animated here frame by frame and someone here working hard with her heart to make me alive…) But at the same time I dont want to get a mechanic look. I believe that each puppet has its own spirit and sometimes the spirit needs to be released to be free without considering the restrictions of being inside a puppet. This is how I approach stop motion as an art form.

Back to the armature… Many pros are out there working with puppets made out of wire armatures. They get great results. It is about experience, knowledge and ofcourse talent! I also have a bird character: kush and I am going to be making a wire armature and animating with that. It is going to be another long process, many attempts… I may try making my own wire, ball & socket mixture armature. but for Adem as a main character of my film; I do not want to ruin my animation because of the problems of wire armature I made.

So, second choice was trying to build a ball & socket armature on my own… Yeah, it could be done if I had the machinery and equipment or I could have tried with some ready made parts. This is whole another process. I imagine how much time I would have spent on trying to build good working ball & socket armature. I will DEFINETELY try for the next project. But not for this one. There are many other things I need to learn. Also, when I try making my own ball & socket armature; I will have a good one in my hand as a reference. (Hey, shhhh.. I have not hold any stop motion armature before. The only one I saw is the one with wire armature I made.)

Okey, why didn’t I prefer buying one of those ready-made kits?
There are many companies selling ball & socket armature kits in many different sizes and quality. Naming couple: Skeletoon, Armaverse, AnimationSupplies. These are the ones seem better among with many others. You buy one from them; modify as much as you can: change proportions, fix joints (change a double ball joint to a one ball joint where it is need such as in the arms..) Price range is $100-$400 depending on the brand, size, type. You can find more expensive ones or even cheaper ones. I have never used one of those. I read many forum posts of the people who purchased these kits on different sites. As far as I have seen the material used and the design may cause some problems. I was not convinced about those kits being worth the money. If you are trying to decide, you can also read the news-byte-commentary about Armature Kits at Stop Motion Works.

I decided to order a custom armature spending some of the money I left for expenses such as buying lights, stopmo software,… Using a good armature will add a lot to the film I will be shooting. So, it is all about your priority.

If you are a newbie, be sure to start with making a wire armature. Then go further with a ball & socket one, either buy an armature kit, try making your own or purchase a custom armature… This is a suggestion from someone who is new to stopmotion but taking it very seriously.

I am not going to be animating the head; just simple movement, turning. So, I made the head with super sculpy. I think making head is the hardest part of the puppet. You need to make it have a character. I tried 5 different heads with different size, expression, age,… Here is how final one came out. It is not finished yet.  I might make hair and painting at the end.

head made out of super sculpy

head

head

head

head

head

head

head

head

How hard can be making a little shirt and pants for a stopmo puppet? It seems pretty easy right?.. I tried couple different pants and shirts… One thing I have learnt; try to make the shirts and pants fit well and tight. When you animate you would not want the different parts of the fabric move unnaturally. I thought about making a shirt similar to one on Jack Sparrow on Pirates of the Caribbean. I actually did. There is no way to control the fabric from one shot to the other when it is not tight. Anyways, check below:

making the little shirt

When I was working on the outfit, I had already tried couple different heads. You see one of the heads behind in this picture. This is not the one I decided to use but you need to have a head to try the outfit.

shirt

shoes??

shoes

shirt & shoes

shirt & shoes

making pants

here he goes

Ok, where is my head ????

I could not find liquid latex here and did not know how to make the hands. I posted on stopmotionanimation.com asked pros about the latex substitudes. I was suggested to wrap the hands with yarn(as it was shown on my previous post) and cover with silicone sealant. I am not totally happy with the result but at least I have hands that can be animated. isomer at stopmotionanimation.com also suggested me to paint with permanent marker but I was not successful doing that.

silicone sealant for the hands