Saturday, March 26, 2011

Ball & Socket Replacement Mouths For Stop-Motion Puppet (gen.1.0)


This is the skull (and here, with the skins) for Animator/Director Nev Bezaire's stop-motion puppet "Emily". (Sculpting/Molding/Casting by Brenda Baumgarten)







The skull uses five replaceable mouth "cartridges", each with a b&s jaw joint and 6 wires in each lip (2 per hole). A silicone skin is fitted over each piece with the-lip wires sunken into the silicone from the inside.
The idea is that each mouth piece has a different mouth sculpted into it in some of the major phonetic shapes. Theoretically, most mouth shapes will be attainable using these five "base" mouths.




They're held into the head with a magnet and steel washer so they can be easily removed, yet they're on there tightly enough to stay put when they're being animated.
The seam between the head and the mouth pieces will be hidden digitally in post production.



6 comments:

Kathy MacDonald said...

Awesome work man! I can't wait to see how it looks with the skin.

Anonymous said...

WHAT ARE THE SKULLS MADE OUT OF?

Graham Read said...

The skulls are plastic.

Unknown said...

wow Graham these looks GREAT!

Suraj Sudhakar Dighe said...

that's the great work buddy. I really like that. How to create this all small kind of rigs??

Graham Read said...

Thanks Suraj!

The metal parts are machined on a Mill and soldered together.
The skull is sculpted and molded in silicone, then cast in plastic.