Stop-Motion How To: Making Puppets Talk, Part 1 of 2

Over the years, many ways have been developed to make a stop-motion puppet talk. One of the earlier and more difficult methods is one in which the animator re-sculpts his puppet's mouth to the desired shape while in the middle of the animating process. Doing so doubles or triples the time the animator spends on a scene. This technique can look great if you're good at re-sculpting, but it isn't a good idea to have your focus on sculpting when it should be on animating.

Probably the easiest technique is one in which the animator creates a puppet whose mouth can be opened and closed and then animates his speech by just propping the mouth open and then closing it, without worrying about the lips, teeth, or tongue. This technique is easy to accomplish, but it usually makes the puppet look like a weird robot from a B horror movie. Unless that's what you're going for I would strongly recommend avoiding this technique.

The best technique I have seen uses the the replacement mouth method which has been adopted by almost all of the larger stop-motion studios. In the replacement mouth method, the sculptor cuts out the puppet's mouth and sculpts replacement mouths that fit where he cut out the original mouth. After he's finished sculpting all his mouths, he gives them to the animator, who then inserts the correct mouth shape in each frame in order to shape the words his puppet is saying. This way, the animator and the sculptor have plenty of time to add as much detail as they want. When I first heard of this method I thought it would take a tremendous amount of time sculpting 26 different mouths. But I was soon enlightened to the fact that the mouth only needs to make 8 basic shapes to speak fluently. Check out this paper, which shows which mouth shapes sound the same and how to sculpt them.

A technique similar to replacement mouths is drawing the mouth shapes on a piece of paper and adhering it to the puppet's mouth area. Surprisingly, this method tends to be quite cartoonish and funny looking.



One of the hardest things in the process of making puppet's talk is getting the recorded voice to match up with the lip movements. In Part Two of this post, we will look into some of the ways to archive lip syncing.

Stop-Motion Fun Stuff: The Animated Animation Tutorial

Check out Battenball's cute very basic Animated stop-motion tutorial.

Stop Motion News: MorphMation Contest

Aardman has teamed up with Firebox.com for a new stop-motion contest. The animation must be focused on the world of Aardman's Morph and be two minutes or less.The contest is open to all ages and will end April 30. Firebox will pick the five best animations, then post them on Aardman's YouTube page. From there Aardman will pick the best one out of the bunch.

First place prize is a framed, signed sketch by Peter Lord of a scene from the winning film. The second place prize is a copy of Stop Motion Pro6.5 High Definition software (as used by Aardman), and an Animation Station. The runners-up get an Animation Station.

You can check out the the official rules and the entries here.

Stop-Motion How to: Illusion and Delusions

Animation is really all about creating illusions and even delusions. The illusion, of course, is the process of taking an inanimate puppet and making it an animated puppet. Creating the delusions is a bit trickier. What I would define as a delusion, at least in this case, would be when you're sitting in the theater watching an animated movie and, in the middle of it, you forget you are just watching an animated movie. You forget the person on the screen is nothing more than a sketch on a paper, a CG model, or a lump of clay. You forget that he doesn't even have any feelings or thoughts. You forget all these things, and, because of that you love, hate, abhor,despise or adore them. That is what i would define as a delusion.

Without these delusions, you would not care about what you're watching. Therefore, these delusions are just as important as the illusions. The delusions come from big things as well as small: the voice of your character, his facial expressions, his posture, his walk, his gestures, his twitches. Quirks are all these things smashed together to match your character's attitude. This is what creates the delusions.

Stop Motion News: Lewi Bolton's The Great Hat Heist

While looking through KramerKlaymation's blog I came across a very interesting post about 15-year-old Lewi Bolton, who made a fantastic 8-minute short film entitled The Great Hat Heist. The animation and story are both extremely well done, and the whole article was very inspiring. I really recommend you check it out for yourself here. Also, make sure to watch his short either at the bottom of this post or on Kramer's blog.

Stop Motion Fun Stuff: Aardman's Weetabix Pirates.

Done in 2D clay animation Aardman's Weetabix pirate commercial could possibly be one of my favorite stop-motion videos on YouTube. It features great stylized characters and a song that you will be humming in your head for the rest of the day. Check it out below:

Stop Motion How-To: Rigs

Have you ever wondered how animators suspend a puppet in midair? The answer is a handy device called a rig. A rig works like a crane; it anchors the puppet in the sky. Most of the more pro rigs look and work like a large ball and socket arm that attaches to the back of a puppet. After shooting the required frames, the rig is removed digitally with a program like Photoshop.

Unfortunately, because most professional rigs are hand built, much like ball and socket armatures, they can be expensive. Armature animators, like me, who can't afford the pro rigs have to resort to making cheap home made rigs. These rigs will work, but you can bet you'll develop a headache or two while using it.

A good way to make a rig is to take a heavy weight plate (the kind found on a dumbbell), some kind of pole that fits securely in the weight's hole, and a long strand of wire strong enough to suspend your entire model. Stick the pole in the weight's hole and wrap about half of your wire tightly around the pole, leaving the other half hanging out.

The tricky part is finding a way to attach the wire to your puppet. A simple way to accomplish this is to create a separate model for the suspended shot using epoxy to secure the wire to the the back of your armature. Make sure you still have enough wire to suspend your model in the air. If you can shoot against a green screen, I would recommend painting the wire green also to make the subsequent Photoshop work easier.