Thursday 23 April 2015

Third Year Final Brief- Armature Construction Sophia



As you can maybe tell from my armature plan I intend to use Ball and Socket joints for this character (EXCITING!) I haven't had the opportunity to try ball and socket joints before mainly because I felt that for my previous projects it wasn't essential, however for my 3rd year final I really wanted to push to working with these tools.

I was recommended to use Malvern Armatures by other students who have used them and are using them now on their own projects. Jeff was exceedingly helpful when purchasing my armature and parts which he gave me more than enough information about preparation and cleaning with loctite during assembly, this was because I wanted to resize the armature myself. I would definitely recommend them and use them again.

At the beginning I was really bad with taking photos of the original armature, so I will try and explain what I did before the stage photographed below :) 



so I got delivered a standard Pro 2 Armature fully assembled in its box, I then cut and sanded all the M3 threaded bar to fit the armature of my character using a hacksaw, Files and some fine sandpaper making sure to leave at least 3mm for the ball to the sockets. Once this was all done I carefully added Loctite into the balls and threaded in the bars and this created each limb. I also filed down the foot plates using a file because they were a little to big for my characters feet.

I added K&S with epoxy to the threads for the arms and head, giving myself allowance on the hands to insert more K&S for when I construct the palms.


from this photo you can vaguely see how I made the hands, I used 3 strands of thin aluminium wire to make up some fingers which I attached K&S to and then this to a plate of aluminium using epoxy, along with one long strand that made up the last 2 fingers. Once it was all dried I then also added epoxy to the tips of the fingers so that when cast in silicon it does not tear through. 

I took this Idea of making hands from the blogs of model makers with great knowledge of puppet making which I will refer to a lot in my posts, check out there blogs here :)




I added miliput to the hands to make them super attached.

I also added a rig to the side and back of the character, I first filed down the side and bottom part of the upper torso joint and then soldered 2 pieces of K&S together which I epoxied onto the armature.

Lastly I added PTFE tape (plumbers tape) to and around the ball and socket joints ready for me to sculpt on top of. :)

Thatas about it.

Stayed tuned for my sculpty sculpting posts later!!! :D





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