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After my trip to abakahns.

I went to the place of wonders…. So much fabric everywhere.

I have chosen 3 different fabrics one for the rain coat, one for the shirt and one for the trousers Joseph will be wearing.

The yellow fabric is actually waterproof and usually used for thinner rain coats which I think is perfect for what I’m creating, the colour is perfect and it will be easy to sew it will be layered of course so an inner layer and outer layer will be added to this fabric. I will be adding animation wire into the coat so I can pose the coat easier when it’s on display.

The checkered fabric will be Joseph’s trousers this fabric is lovely and usually used for trouser making or suit making, I chose checkered fabric as it will give variation to the character of Joseph and I can add patches to make it look older and worn and they will be noticeable form a distance.

The plain cream fabric is for Joseph’s shirt which is cotton again used for making suits and shirts, I will be adding little buttons and again some patches. He will have some suspenders over his shoulders which is quite accurate for the time period.

What can I say this little trip has set me up for making the clothing easier and to make it look a good quality to match my armature.

I used my student discount too so I got this for a lot cheaper than I would’ve if I didn’t use it.

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This is my figuring out a pattern for my rain coat I will be making for Joseph and testing out different fabrics. But after a good seminar session with my lecturer I had decided I needed to go to a fabric shop and find the correct material for what outcome I want. There was 3 different fabrics here:

1. Soft leather shammy for cleaning cars.

2. Microfibre cloth again for cleaning cars

3. Linen

The leather shammy fabric was nice for an outer layer but because it was a single piece of leather it had differing thicknesses which wasn’t great for sewing as leather can be quite tough to get through without the correct tools. It would’ve been really nice but hard to work with.

The microfibre cloth was soft and easy to sew but not the correct colour or really what I wanted my outcome to look like so I decided against it.

The linen although really good to work with in a sewing setting was to thin for what I wanted and was very see through for outerwear.

This gave me the intuition to go to abakahns in Preston which is a fabric shop.

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Here you will see my first attempt at sewing on my newest addition to my sewing kit, a brother LS14s sewing machine which actually scared me at first. I bought it brand new from Amazon at a wonderful price of £80 which I think is a bargain especially because it’s just like all of the other technical sewing machines you see around all singing and dancing. I had to set it up first by carefully following the instructions which did baffle me for a good while, but eventually I managed to get it actually working which made me very excited. First I did a few test stitches to see what worked and what didn’t, the smaller the better for my work I guess. I did a very rough outer jacket design for my armature with the correct sizing which obviously didn’t go right on the first try as I’d just started using a sewing machine after just over 8 years of not using one at all, but for my first attempt back at it it was OK.

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A small test with felting to see if it would be suitable to create hair for my armature.

I have come to the conclusion that it would be very very thick hair and also less tamable than I thought it would be. This would not be very suitable for creating hair unless it was really short and easily tameable

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recently I acquired a Anibild Three pro armature kit from the animation toolkit company. This kit was quite simple put to together with a mixture of metal bones, ball joints and connecting pieces I followed the instructions step by step to ensure it was correct. The armature will give me full movement of my character once I have finally moulded it on to the armature with foam latex.

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Here is my model for my character Joseph it took me a couple of hours to do to make sure I got the proportions right and how I want him to look although there might be a few changes later on due to the armature I have recently acquired.

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Here you can see a slide show video of my trip to London to visit The World Of Tim Burton.

This was very inspirational for me as Tim Burton is by far so one who has influenced my art style and who I am as a person, being able to see all of his original art, armatures and designs up close in person was more than amazing for me the excitement couldn’t be handled.

I put it in a different order to what the exhibition was set out like but that’s because of me concentrating on the animation side of the artwork but it began with his earliest work and drawings all the way from when Tim Burton started college and having his own delve in to the art world. It then progressed in to his armature work on his most iconic films such as “A nightmare before Christmas”, “Corpse bride”, ‘frakenweenie’ and many others from his animation career.

You take a trip down his live action scene of his life with films featured and clothing items from them films such as “Alien Attacks”, “Charlie and the chocolate factory” , “Sweeney Todd”, “Edward scissor hands” and yet again many more of his live action films, you also see some clothing pieces and storyboard work from his most recent series “Wednesday” based from the Adam’s family’s little mysterious girl Wednesday Adam’s.

Finally, you follow a tunnel of wonky entrances through all of his personal work which he does in his own time and his own projects which people never usually get to see this includes models, photography, paintings and his original idea which never made it to the big screen.

This experience was amazing, unfortunately this is the only time Tim Burtons exhibition would be in London which I had the upmost pleasure of going visiting finally.

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Here you can see different clothing from the period I’m wanting my project to be set in, you can see how the upper class citizens had very fashionable clothing made from the finest materials such as silks whereas, lower class working men and women had to wear cheaper more affordable materials such as linen, wool and cotton. The lower class certainly look like working class as their clothing isn’t always clean and top of the notch fashion which really gives you an idea of the social ladder back in the 1800s.

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I found this wonderful video of the head of the puppet department in LAIKA, talking about the production of armatures and what it entails.

This was very informative and has given me a better idea of how I would like to fabricate my armatures to bring my characters to life.

LAIKA usually 3D print replacement faces so each print is a different movement of the mouth which seems rather complicated for my liking but I like the effect it gives off in the final production. Most of the limbs are moulded in silicone which gives the armature better movement and a more definite look to them. The head of the department explains that not only are the faces replaceable but costumes, feet, arms and head are all interchangeable which makes it easier to shoot the film in the long run because you always have the replacements to hand if something goes wrong.