Modelling Workshop - Plasticine

After we completed our character design we were required to create an armature and model, similar to what they create for stop motion however this model wasn't required for us to move it to such extreme extents, so we didn't have to worry about walk cycles of the sort.

To start we needed to have an understanding of how the body of the armature would be like so i redrew the rough t-pose of my character again. afterwards i drew in how i was going to stabilise it and give it moving limbs. Something that had been bothering me was how i was going to achieve this. I considered material, the idea of CGI or making it out of the plasticine which is what i chose to do in the end as it was the only possibility and the most convenient at the time. I also wanted to make the beak move because it was such a prominent part of his design so i figured out how the beak would be connected to the head in a way that wouldn't cause the plasticine to break or that halts the movement of the beak. I succeeded this by connecting the beak in two places, parallel of each other causing the beak to move up and down, but i didn't connect the top rim of the beak as it would restrict its movement .

Started the armature making, we had two types of wire to work with, a more heavy less flexible wire and a more flexible but less durable wire. I used mostly the less durable wire by wrapping to pieces of it together to get the flexibility but with some sense of security, this was used mostly on the limbs while the core body is made using the thicker wire so that he had a sturdy structure below.

So that the armature could stand i gave him legs which would eventually get covered any way by the plasticine and clothes. Along with this we had to bulk out the characters in places where it was needed however my character had a very skinny and meek design so i decided to just add some width to his chest area, but just barely so the plasticine had something to cling to.

Having wrapped the wires in bandage tape and masking tape so the plasticine wouldn't fall off i started applying the mist and bone to him. the mist was especially difficult as i had to think of a way to make it look fluid. Initially i wrapped it around the body in strips, this gave a nice effect when it came to the ripples, but it used too much in one place as well as being very bulky so i took it off and made multiple round plasticine balls. I cut these in half and stretched them out to make larger ones set around the base of my character. I then proceeded to smooth them together, trying to get smooth transitions between each one as well as adding small flicks a top of the smoke to try and emphasise that its smoke and not a dress. His 'bone' was a lot easier to do as it just had to be moulded around the armature, i had to take great caution with the beak and the plasticine is quite thin there. I tried to add extra little details like bone definition, however i don't think it looks very good, it looks very tacked on and naff.


I chose to make his clothing out of cloth instead of plasticine as it is a robe with a very interesting design so it needs to be more natural or to try and fit the original medium. I had spare purple material for the lining but i had to stain some pale old scraps for the black material, that was a lot of messy ink!

His staff was also carved in the wood work shop as i was using more accurate materials i wanted to work with the correct respective materials present in the design.