Development : Green Screen test

After creating some puppets to work with we decided to try out the green screen studio and see how they looked on film. We picked the green screen as well so we could edit the background since we weren't sure of what type of backgrounds we wanted to use. We set up the studio with lighting and set up the camera to do some simple shots.

Mark brought in a toy he altered for another project to do a another test with to see if we could end up using other types of puppets and effects in the long run. We attached rods with green screen tape on the ends and tried to do a walk cycle of the puppet. As well as recording clips of our puppets talking on camera and how just by simple camera tricks you can hide the performers (us).

It let us learn about how to become in sync with each other and working together especially working with puppets and doing a walk cycle with one. It's all about timing and communication through body language which takes a bit of getting use to since were putting it through a non living object. We will look into this further with some research and of course practice with our puppets.

We edited the footage in final cut pro and adobe after effects to get rid of the green screen and tried out some simple and silly effects.

Felt this simple film test worked out quite successfully and it gave us a good hands on approach to how long filming and editing will take us. This one didn't really take that long at all and were considering doing a few short skits with ours puppets with audio and possibly better backgrounds.

We will develop this process further and look into some more resources and I'll start to make a better looking puppet.

Development : Constructing puppets

We started to seek out some materials that could be cheap and easy to obtain to make puppets I looked at some tutorial's online. They showed how to make simple hand puppets with everyday house hold objects. There pretty straight forward and very useful on what materials to us and how to even make eyes. It seemed to be that felt/fleece was a great material for making them and using everyday sponge to construct the head shape or features.

We got some materials and spent a weekend trying to make some puppets sometimes it was a little tricky but we got the hand of the basic shape and way to move the mouth. We got some fleece, sponge, felt, oven mitts, fluffy scarf, plastic spoons and used sewing, pins and a hot glue gun to put it all together. It took us a while to get the hang of how the materials worked especially the sponge as we cut it up and chopped into it to get some shapes.

We made some heads Marks came out a lot better than mine so I will redo mine to suite his puppets style a bit better eventually. But it was a very fruitful test and it let us get to play around with the materials and see there pros and cons. It seemed that fleece works really well for stretching over the sponge and the over mitts work really well for using as a jaw. We will do some film tests with these guys and see how we get on with them.

Here's us having a chat about Jim Henson and how he created puppets and inspiration for creating our own.

Development : sketches, first tutorial and early tests

From our idea about the two small and tall characters we discussed this quite a lot and ended up doing a lot of notes and examples of the two characters. How these two characters could compliment each other despite the contrast like other well known duos. We also watched some making of videos/DVD's of puppets mostly inspired from stop motion and ways to film a performance. As well as a type of plan of tasks which would could try to achieve in the next couple of weeks.

For some inspiration we were thinking of having our characters like living breathing being's such as the power of puppetry bringing objects to life. I really enjoy character design such as this and looked a lot into the art work of the video games of the 'Oddworld' series. They always design there characters from a biological type of view point if they lived in another world and had animal characteristics. Much like the puppets in 'The Dark Crystal' which I felt was strong if we were going down that route.

I even did some simple character designs of the tall and small how we thought our characters could look like since it is early stages.

Here's us even having a chat about different types of fairy tales of our characters and fables based around the idea of puppet scale and how we would create them. Another idea that we would probably like to make in the future if not for this project. (Character drawings drawn by Deborah)

Eventually we had so many ideas and different types of stories, characters and plots that it all got very over whelming. We sort of hit a brick wall for a while but this was near the time of getting a tutorial with Ellie. We explained our ideas and concept and that we were considering making normal hand puppets instead since the pressure and time constraints of stop motion/animatronics was to much.
As well as all our ideas and characters we thought about doing films about. On the side for a laugh we kept talking about how funny it would be to make puppets of our selves. And Ellie thought this was a great idea and suggested we just make the project about ourselves instead of all these weird characters and creatures.

Some sketches I did for cartoony looking puppets.

This was a very positive tutorial and let me and Mark feel a lot better of the direction of the project. So we decided to do some tests with different materials to make some simple puppets.

To our horror and hilarity Mark started to cut up the Mickey Mouse toy to see how it was made from the inside with the intention of making it into a person. Instead he destroyed Mickey Mouse and ended up sitting with his decapitated head for a couple of hours not really sure where to go from there.

It was pretty funny and made some type of progress with it considering it let us see how he was made on the inside. I made a paper puppet in the mean time to just try out some stuff with limb joints and for something simple of myself. Then eventually a simple paper one that's mouth can move with wires and pins in a simple style.

I also made a simple type puppet out of plastic bottle ends, cardboard and taping them together then I could put my hand inside and make a simple talking mouth.

This is just early stages at this point till we both try a bit more with materials such as fabric or ways to shape a bigger moving puppet head. We will continue this process and see if we can create some puppet heads that look like ourselves.