Beaten Roadblock

I was stuck for a while. Mainly I think because it's summer and it's taking forever for my 5 year old to get to sleep. 

But also I started laying things out too far, setting it all up to knock it all down at once. Namely I had been latexing Kongs fingers, and got to the point where I want to dip the whole hand-but I don't have a lot of latex so it made sense to be ready to dip the humans at the same time-but when I started making them they were super ugly.

I took them into photoshop and figured out that their heads were too tiny and their eyes to high up. (hard to see with this angle but left human is old version, middle human is new version) Then I baked a human because I was worried that my clever plan of using sculpy as bones may not work, and hey, it didn't (the pieces are spinning on the wire.) So maybe the latex would hold them in place, but then I did a test with my old standby, masking tape and newspaper (rightest humanoid leg). It's dumb looking, but not really any worse then the rest of the project, and may have the added benifit of working as clothing as well (just paint or marker it to the new look) (cuz the plan is to start the humans out as dancing girls, then switch their paint and use them as cops and military). It also worked for the joint (middle humans hip joint).

I'm excited. Have all 5 humans heads on, they're baking right now (that was another block, didn't want to bake while the kids are awake and inhaling fumes (it's only sculpy, but still)) I have no hesitation about slapping some masking tape around so I should lay them out next time I get to the project. It's kind of making me wish I'd done Kong with masking tape too. (it's so simple that I don't have any worries about it being right, it gets gold star for good enough). Hopefully human eyes are gonna work out, they're actually little brads I had laying around, the baked test guy I took them out to bake, but they didn't go back in, so the rest of the humans I left the eyes in to bake. The plan was to swap out eyes, so I could have eyes open, eyes closed, and half lidded. Bead eyes. (also a Jon trick). We'll see if they are removable once baked.

As you can see, Kong's still been hanging out at the paper tailor. But I think I've got it worked out good enough to hit it with cloth. I'm thinking the gluegun may be involved as much as the needle and thread.

That's the mantra of the whole project. I haven't animated very much in stopmotion, so it's probably not going to look that great movement wise, so why bother slaving over everything if it's just gonna move clunky. Good enough is the goal, so I can get to animating, so I can have a purpose to animate instead of random tests, so I can work off my rough edges and actually do a good job on the next project. Cult of done.

Also I've been messing with poi spinning, and am currently plotting out a 1 page comic as a creative challenge. Really hoping I actually tie the Kong project up this year, it's not good enough to stretch longer than that.