1st Year Character Design, Modelling & Animation

Here is the armature I made for my final 1st year project in University.

The aim of the project was to design and make a character and animate them.

This included a walk, a trait, lip sync and a final performance.

The character I made is meant to be a jazz band player which was inspired by my mother as she was in a jazz band when she was young.

I used photos of her for ideas for the costume and poses.

The armatures skeleton was made up of foam for the chest and torso and were joined together by twisted aluminium wire for the joints.

The head and eyes are made from Sculpey.

The neck, hands and legs were covered in flesh coloured funky foam.

Also, the shoes were made from black funky foam.

The material is flexible and was recommended to me.

All the clothes and accessories were sewn by myself.

I am not much a sewer (I used to hate textiles in school strangely enough haha) but I don’t think I did a bad job.

One part of the armature I was particularly proud of was the hair.

I made the hair but buying a synthetic wig online and cutting it down to size to fit the armatures small head.

It was then attached to the head using evo stick.

One of my lecturer’s liked the fact the hair had a parting like normal hair would as he said it was hard to accomplish. 

So it’s nice to know he was pleased with how I’d gone about it :)

Animating this puppet was fun but a challenge aswell. Even though I have improved my armature making skills there were still a few flaws in the design which made the animating difficult at times. But now I know what to do different next time :)