Flumpy
Every month, loopdeloop.org holds a looping animation competition based on a theme. For January 2019, the theme was "window". My wife Alexis and I (aka Threadwood) quickly came up with an idea, and she put together a production schedule. I did the lighting, built the puppets, and animated, while Alexis built the sets, props, and did the VFX. The characters were made of clay and the set was MDF coated in an air-drying clay.
Flumpy
We made a quick sketch of what the short animation should generally look like.
Then we put together some quick storyboards to inform what we needed to build.
We slapped together an animatic to get the timing down.
Alexis did these color studies.
Alexis drew up a plan for our set.
I drew up character designs and armature plans. Since both cats were basically blobs of clay the needed lots of room for deformation, I kept it minimal but also made sure to add rig points for airborne frames.
Here's the skinny outdoor cat. Nothing fancy here.
I always start puppet building with a clay "sketch". It helps me get a feel for the puppet design and may help me see problems I might run into that can't be seen in a drawing.
All set up for the build.
I decided make the puppet a little bigger than planned. This is the armature and extra paws.
I covered the armature with Sculpey III clay. I've tried a bunch of different clays and Sculpey works best for me in terms of availability and feel.
The skinny cat's legs were just wire with a heat shrink tubing.
Meanwhile, Alexis was roughing in the set.
The set was built using mostly MDF. Stand-in puppets were used to make sure they'd look right in the set.
Looking good!
Alexis painted everything.
Before animating, I did a quick 2D animated test using FlipaClip for reference. Reference helps eliminate the guesswork of stop-motion animation.
The hanging plant was shot separately so I could focus on the characters for the main pass.