So I am now elbow deep into the Aardman masterclass. I am enjoying myself a ton. It is rough, but I am learning a lot. The whole point is to stretch myself and learn how to be a better animator. That is not comfortable. Growth is rarely comfortable. :) I am still figuring out how to fit in full time work, taking care of a sick doggo, personal stuff and the class. Because I live in a townhouse with no yard and only a small portable washing machine, this has been hard. Cleaning takes forever. Trying to get doggo to where he can go outside when he is having a digestive emergency is hard. It frequently has resulted in the need for deep cleaning. Unfortunately. I am guilty of tossing an area rug instead of trying to clean it. Just cause I was already taking hours to wash bedding (mine) multiple times, clothes, towels, etc. At least I have the portable washer, and don't have to haul it all to a laundromat. I love my doggo. Really I do. This just emphasizes how much I need to find a house with a yard. If there was a yard I could just open the back door for him to run through, instead of trying to attach a leash to an already distressed doggo in time to open the front door and get to the pet area. Add to that servers going down at work necessitating long working hours, and there is not a ton of time, energy or brainpower left to apply to class. I am hoping I can regroup and get on top of everything this week. Doggo seems to have calmed a bit. Servers are running. I still haven't caught up on sleep, but things are loosening up a bit so I can figure out a schedule that will allow me to do everything I need and want to do.

Anyway...

As I don't really have much right now, and I do want to try to be better at keeping up this blog, I thought I would do a deeper dive into my experiments with Cosclay.



Cosclay is a rubberized polymer clay, similar to Sculpy. The biggest difference being that after it has been baked, it is pliable though no longer sculptable.



I first heard about it when the YouTuber Ace of Clay used it on one of his sculptures. He uses it when he has a lot of thin bits that stick out and are in danger of breaking if he uses the regular Sculpy. He demonstrated how much the pieces can bend after baking. He also was successful painting it after baking it.

So it got me thinking...I wonder how hard it would be to use in animation puppets. I did some googling, and really no one has any opinions on it. No one really had a searchable post on them testing it for this purpose. Someone asked in a stop motion forum about it, and was shot down by a lot of people who haven't tried it. that just seemed...inaccurate at best.

But Cosclay, though worth the expense if it works, is kind of spendy to just buy as an experiment. I was waffling about whether or not I should try it...whether it was worth it to me to have clay I may not be able to use.

Then another YouTuber tried it for sculpting. And he loved it. And when he decided to do a set of art boxes, he decided to include a small batch of it in the sculpture box. There were other things included in the sculpture box I wanted, so I decided to get that and if the Cosclay worked I would buy more to use for animation puppets.

This was just a rought hand, to see how well it animated. It is not in proportion to anything. I used 18 gague aluminum wire to rough out fingers and palm, then sculpted the clay over it. Not too difficult. Then I played with animating it. It was really not bad for animating. Here is my test sequence...

So then THAT got me thinking. Can I make a character puppet completely out of Cosclay? I was and am pretty sure a full 12 inch puppet would not work very well. Not a whole Wallace from Wallace and Grommet...though maybe, if the clay is layered on thin. So I decided to start with something simple...an earthworm.

The first iteration turned out being way too thick. While it is bendable, it does not easily stay where I put it. I just bent an 18 gage wire in half, twisted it with my hand crank drill and covered it with cosclay. This one also baked just fine in the toaster oven. Also took paint really well.

So back to the drawingboard. I redesigned the worm to be thinner and longer. And a little bit more realistic, though still cartoonish. The thinner worm worked great! Fully articulated. Stays in the pose I place it in. I even textured it a bit by putting a thread on my handy helper and rolling the worm over it down the length of the worm. That worked way better than I expected as well.

So...conclusion? I LOVE LOVE LOVE this stuff! In my opinion it works great for stop motion animation puppets, with the caveate that you need to be choosy about where you use it and how thick you build up the clay.

Also...I am currently making replacement hands out of Cosclay for my Wade puppet. My plan is to play around with him and see how well it goes. Have several more twisted wire humanoid puppets in process, and if I can figure out how to make it work well with Wade I will use the same technique with them.

Well.

This has been a dark and crazy year. I have lost people. I have gained people. Things went from bad to worse, while also wierdly getting better at the same time. My job is going well. I now have an income that sustains me. Covid in my state has increased sharply, enough our governer has closed down the state again for at least 2 weeks. As a person in the at risk catergory, this is kind of scary.

Amidst this scary time, I sat back an evaluated my life and where I am. Who am I? Where have I come from? Do I like who I am? When I am on my deathbed (whether it be next month, next year, 10 years from now or 30 years from now), will I be able to feel satisfied. Or will I feel regret.

I came to the conclusion I want to be able to look back and see 3 things. I did more good than harm. I loved more than I hated. And I broke away from my fear and did what made me joyful.

I realized I really do love stop motion animation. A lot. It makes me happy while I am struggling to mold it to what I want. It makes me laugh when I watch a clip back and see my little jokes in action. Even if I am the only one who thinks they are funny, it tickles me to death. I wrote and animated the damn thing, and I still laugh when I watch the Dalek one and see him put the sign on the Daleks back. :D Honestly, it also warms my heart to remember showing that at the 50 year Doctor Who do here in Portland, and listening to the ENTIRE AUDIENCE laugh spontaneously where I do. And later in the day, hearing a kid walking past with a presumed parent retelling the story of the Dalek knocking over Stonehenge in my video, having issues because they were laughing so hard they couldn't finish a sentance. I want others to enjoy what I do too. Not think it is good, or give me accolades....just...enjoy it for what it is.

Of course, I want to be better. I want to learn more. I am now in a financial place where I can up my game technically. So as an addition to that, I applied for the Stop Motion 1 program put on by Aardman, the people who do Wallace and Grommet, etc. I have always wanted to do a program with them, but they were all on prem in Bristol UK, which along with the tuition fees and time required to be in the country, has always put it out of reach for me. I don't even have a passport. But one good thing this horrid pandemic has done is brought that program online, and the class fees lower to a point I can afford it.

I got an email yesterday that they have accepted me. Now, I don't know if this means they are taking everyone, or if they looked at my YouTubes and video pages and decided I desperately need the help. Or if they see potential. And I felt something I did not expect. After the elation, I immediately started in to trepidation. My brain first said they aren't really serious about teaching people, they are just trying to get money and will take everyone who will pay money. As a consequence you will get no instruction, or if you have issues instead of getting help you will be chastised for not being able to figure it out yourself. Yup...I went to college for IT training with a bunch of guys, some teachers, who didn't feel I belonged there. I talked myself out of that, then immediately my brain fell back on the good old "you aren't really good enough. Why are you going to put yourself out there, and putting yourself in debt to do it?"

I am still calming my brain down from that one. But seriously.....All the reasons I outlined earlier in this post.....

Life is too short to hide from what brings you joy.

Not everything you expend money on needs to bring a financial return.

Once more for the people in the back

Not everything you expend money on needs to bring a financial return.


If I do actually get better, get some good pointers, etc GREAT. It will help me do better, express my weirdness better, help entertain people better. And bring me even more joy.

But even if I don't....I can go to my grave (whenever that is) knowing I pursued what made me happy. I am helping people I know with bills. I am buying from small businesses to help them keep afloat during this hard time. I am paying for online comedy shows and concerts, even if I can't make them, to help those who need it. I am contributing to go fund me's. I am throwing bits at Twitch streamers. I am complimenting people genuinely every chance I get.

And I am pursuing my happiness.

End of story.

So I needed to test out my theory on how to make my puppets work for my next video. So I built a head, mouths and eyes. The point is that the face can be more expressive, even if I am not syncing to dialog.

I started with an alluminum foil ball as a base.

For some reason I didn't get any pics of the next few steps, but I did Periscope it if you wanna go to my channel at teaweaselstopmo and watch me build it. I put an outer layer of clay on, then I marked where I wanted the eyes and mouth to be. Then I built it up a bit around those areas then sculpted the face. I think it looks a little bit like Armin Shimerman, the guy who played Quark on Deep Space Nine. Symmetry is not my strong suit. The ears ended up unbalanced. And I made the chin way too long. I needed to move the mouth down a bit, further away from the nose. Otherwise not bad for a first try. As I used SuperSculpey, the next thing I did was bake in the toaster oven. It is brand new for this purpose, so I burnt his head a bit on the top.

Next I made the different mouths. This was the difficult part. I just didn't feel that sausage mouths were the right style, but how to make them without the heavy lips? Well, I tried...

So then I wanted to test it out, see if it worked. I did 3 tests, then I painted it and did one more. Here are the videos:

Then I did some painting. Yeah, it is a bit creepy. Needs some eyelids. And hair or a hat. And eyebrows.

So overall I think this will work, I just need to practice it so I get better at it. Just for shits and giggles, here is the test video I did in color. I didn't bother with sound though.

See? Creepy without eyelids, huh. Well, when I get further along I will share more of my epic fails. :)

So now I am working on playing around with what I got. I tried making a proof of concept for the mouth idea I had. The clay I used was way too heavy, and didn't work very well. So I ordered some Supersculpey. It came in last night, so I decided to play a little bit with it. I made a short video with my phone in the Animate It! app. I didn't really care for how poorly it was centered, so I decided to use this opportunity to figure out how to fix it in Pinnacle. I did one just without doing anything but adding credit cards. Then I did one with just a static zoom. Then I did one with a animated pan and zoom. I think it is ok. I still contend it is better to do it right in camera, but it is fun to learn how to do things in post.

So here is the original unedited one:

Was kind of fun. I shot about 2 seconds worth and manipulated the length in the app.

Here is the one I did with the static zoom:

A tad flaily, but otherwise not bad. It did not get as mushy as I expected it to.

Here is the one with the animated pan and zoom:

It didn't hit exactly the points I wanted it to, but I am putting that up tp my inexperience. I added a couple of keyframes and it did basically what I wanted it to.

Always fun to learn new things.

So my lighting setup finally got here. It didn't contain everything I thought it did, but enough that I don't care. The umbrellas are very fragile. I accidentally sat on one of the black/reflective ones and the post broke clean through. I don't know how I will fix it yet.

Of course I had to play with it a bit. I set up the background frame, clamped a bedsheet to  it, tacked a black foamboard to the table, set up the lights and played. Here are pics of the rig/ setup.

Here is the resulting video. It isn't great, but not too bad. I don't like the color of the bulbs that came with this setup. Too blue. I want something warmer.

I shot this video on my Android phone using the Animate It! app from Aardman. I love this app. I like Osnap for my ipad, but for my phone this is the best one out there for free. You can pay for $5 add-ons. But it allows you to lock focus, white balance, and exposure. It also includes onion skinning in the standard app. And if you pay for the add-on package you can shoot in 4k. My phone acts weird when I check 4k option, though. It will take one picture normal, next way too overexposed. Even if I have exposure lock on. May be I need to do something I am not aware of yet. I will play with it more later.

Well....I don't have a whole lot to post about. I have been busy and sick and tired and allerging. I have not completed the video yet, nor have I had time to do any real shooting. My computer had issues yesterday. It crashed 3 times, the 3rd time I had to recover it. I am glad I set restore points and backup images. It has been teetering for months now. About once a week it crashes and tells me it can't recognize the BIOS. Well, duh...mainly that is because it does not have a BIOS. It's firmware, as it is for most 64 bit machines, is EFI. If I open the computer in safe mode, then restart it from safe mode, it has been able to fix tiself. I am not really sure "fix" is the word I want to use here. This is a refurbished laptop. I am sure someone probably flashed a BIOS machine with an EFI, and now the workarounds to make that work are crumbling down. When I go to the system window, it says I have a BIOS installed. I have been in the firmware...it is most definitely not BIOS, it is EFI. Computers is usually my job. I know how to tell. What I don't know is why the discrepentcy. Even if it was flashed with EFI, Windows should read it as an EFI, not a BIOS. And yup...people who thought EFI and BIOS were the same thing...they are very different. A BIOS uses a master boot record table to tell your computer how to load the OS. EFI uses a GPT table to tell your computer how to load the OS. If it is looking for a MBR table, and it ia an EFI firmware, it will not find it and think it can't load. Because it is getting the wrong instructions. Probably more than you wanted to know, but this is my blog and I wanted to impart my knowledge. :P

Anyway...so after months of this happening, yesterday it finally crashed enough times in a row that I had to recover it, which is not a good thing. As I am unsure how to fix the workaround, I can't really fix this permanently. As I am worried about my cmputer quitting completely on me, I hesitate to use it for anything heavy duty, like filming.

I bit the bullet and decided I needed to replace this mess. I don't have a lot of money, as I am still unemployed, but I have been socking a little bit away every month so I can have deposit money for when I get a job and am ready to get my own place again. Through my school I get a discount on Dells, and Dell is currently in addition running a back to school discount. I was able to find a gaming laptop with all the bells and whistles I want and need for $750. I checked the Dell site not logged into the school's portal or using the student discount. It would have cost me $1000. So I decided that it was worth it to make sure I have a laptop I can use for school, and something I can use afterward. If I wait until I have a job, which may be after I am done with school, I would have to pay the full price for it. And I wouldn't have something to use when this one finally is unrecoverable. It will have a dedicated graphics card, 12GB of RAM, and 1 TB of storage. And the processor is good enough I can up it to 32GB of RAM if I want to later. So when that arrives I will do some more filming, and post it up here. But it will have to wait now until that is possible. I don't dare kill this thing before I have something else to do school with. And the new laptop probably will work with Dragonframe. Extra bonus. So why do I feel so guilty about spending money on it? :P

I also have been writing and perfecting some songs, which I intend to record and put up on Soundcloud when I get the new computer. I will link them in my music tab. I am excited to play music at Orycon again this year. Last year I was newly laid off and trying to figure out how  to make ends meet and how to get schooling. This year I am still unemployed, but living in town so I don't have to worry about where to stay. I was already planning on going...bought my membership a few months ago. This will just be the icing on the cake. I love doing panels too. We'll see if they allow me to do any. I put in to do a few at Anglicon too. We'll see if they want me. I am not a Seattlite, and don't know any of the concom, so probably not. But I thought I would throw my hat in there anyway.

Ok...back to homework and research paper. Will post back here when I have more to report.

I think I am finally getting the dragon eyes down. I have obsessively bought nail polish, looking for the right colors. They are not exactly how I want them, but they are looking better. I think I can finally just play around and see if I can get the sequence I want for the film for Anglicon. Here is the latest: