ARMATURES

I'm talking about:

Twisted aluminium wire, heat shrink tube, electric dice (terminal blocks), Milliput©, K&S©, chemical metal (metal epoxy resin),
Polymorph©, doll armature

When doing an armature I take two things in consideration:
- What is the puppet going to do? (get this information from the animatic)
- What if the armature breaks while I’m shooting? Every part of the armature should be replaceable.

During the making of the film, I did two kind of armature.
Both of them were mainly made of twisted aluminium wire covered with heat shrink tubing (see the twisted aluminium wires post)

For the first armature the hips and the rib cage were made with a combination of electric dice hold together with Milliput©

This system allows the parts to be unscrewed and replaced in case of breakage.

On the second armature (the one I actually used in the film), the spine was made of a plastic articulated tube used in doll making (doll armature)

I attached the legs and arms to the spine with Polymorph©:

in case of breakage, I supposedly could melt the Polymorph© with a heat gun, replace the broken member, and put it back by heating the Polymorph© again (I was lucky nothing actually broke, because I’m not entirely sure I could have done that)
The upper arms and the hands fitted together with a K&S© referencing.

So was the head: I attached a piece of K&S© on the top of the spine with some Milliput©. This piece fit in another one I placed inside the head.

K&S© and aluminium wire were glued together with metal epoxy resin.

Neither Emily nor Albert was attached to the floor like most puppets are: the size of their head wouldn’t allow me to do it (I actually tried, and Emily’s feet broke). I therefore put a rig at the bottom of their spine:

a K&S© tube where I would fit the extremity of an articulated rig.
That way, the puppet's weight didn’t have to be supported by the feet.