Three weeks have gone by… I feel like there is a lot to cover! So let’s get in to it.
Obviously the title of this weeks post “This is Halloween” really only refers to this week just gone, but it has been a very festive time for us in the studio, so is at the forefront of my mind! I will attempt to move through these three weeks cronologically, but no promises… I am quite good at going off on tangents!
I honestly can not believe I am going in to month 10 in the studio! When? How? Huh? It has been such a rollercoaster of changing plans, changing dates… obviously a lot of us are experiencing that this year, but gosh it really is exhausting at times. I am so happy to be staying on and excited for what the next few months will bring.
It was a pretty reflective week this week actually (chronological order out the window already!) … My Screen Australia animation counterpart Amara has been back in the studio for the past few weeks which has been LOVELY, and it has given us both cause to look back and reflect on our experiences as hers nears its conclusion (She is leaving us in less than 2 weeks!). It was about this time last year that we got the call. THE CALL! To tell us we had been successful in our application for this placement, after months of waiting and hoping. I can not explain my joy in receiving the news (it was a big moment). Who’d a thunk we’d be here a year on, having had this particular kind of experience! It has been intense, with the world throwing the apocalypse at us all, but honestly I have had the most amazing experience. Oof, so much emotional gushiness building up, but we may save that for the conclusion of this blog series! Watch out!!
I was reminiscing with head of puppetry Georgina Hayns in the studio about my interview last year and she said some really wonderful, very complimentary things about her first impressions of me based on my application and my interview. It was such a wonderful boost, and I certainly hope I have lived up to those initial impressions! George is and has always been a wonderful support to me in the studio, as has everyone (the gushiness! it’s back… hold off Jhess!).
Ok, week 35! What was I up to!? Oh! I finished my second armature! I finalised everything, added all the final touches and got it signed off. You can see most of the details explained in the video included in my last blog post. It was a win for me for sure. I feel very proud. George commented that my armatures were looking really good and that she could tell I was in my element, always head down working hard! I do love making armatures. It makes sense to me. Though the metal smithing elements of the job have been entirely new to me (and challenging at times), the puzzle of creating movement and flexibility in a character is something I know well. Learning how to work with metal and creating gorgeous moving armatures… it has been such a joy. I have loved the challenge. Huge props must go to my armature mentor Alex Andrade, who has been such an amazing teacher and support, and also to my fellow armature trainee Winona Hwang who has offered lots of advice and been my comrade through all of my mistakes and successes!
In week 36, I spent the first half of the week sealing and registering my armature. What does that mean Jhess? Ok, well… there are several things you need to do to prepare your armature for the next phase of its life, when it gets passed on to casting. The casting team will use expanding foam in the mould to cast the body on top of the armature. They will then clip that back and do a silicone skin layer (you can read a little about this process in my week 13 & 14 posts). So what needs to happen before it gets passed on to casting? First we need to seal it. There are a few different ways you can do this, different materials that people like etc. But I will stick to the way that Alex taught me. First thing you need to do is coat all of the ball joints in unicorn tears or lanolube (will endeavour to figure out the equivalent Australian products in time!). This simply protects and lubricates the joints. Now it is time to register the armature in the mould. Registration is a fiddly process; basically you are just lining up your armature in the mould, making sure that there are no points of touch down on either side. It is a lot of wiggling things around, adjusting, tensioning, loosening etc. It can take several hours to register an armature in a mould. Hands are the trickiest thing to register in my experience!
Once your armature is registered in the mould perfectly (you can use a small flash light to check for any points of touch down), it is time to seal the armature. Starting off with some vaseline; cover all of the balls, and any gaps/ crevices on your armature (a toothpick is a handy tool for this). The vaseline is a barrier for the sealant (we use a product called 734) which will come next. Now use the 734 and cover all of the vaseline, and also all the tensioning points, both in and around the tiny bolts. The 734 prevents the expanding foam from getting in and compromising the movement of the puppet. Now use metal tape to cover all of the holes, which should mainly be your rigging points. Lastly, after double checking your registration, you coat the entire armature in grey primer. This helps to protect the armature from rust. Now your armature is ready to pass on to the casting team! Or to cast, if you are making something on your own!
And thus, my time in the armature department came to a close. I am quite sad to have left the armature department. Though I have loved my time in every department, I don’t think it will surprise anyone that armatures has been my favourite. But!! I am feeling ready for the new challenges that lie ahead! In the second half of week 35 I moved on to a new project (well, kind of an ongoing project). You may remember, those who have been reading along, that I built another armature a few weeks back. My first armature, which I may have described as “super secret” at some point; It is in fact no more secret than any other character in the film, but I can not tell you much about the character except to say, I am creating it! Now that I have moved on from the armature department, I am continuing my work on this “super secret” character. The aim is for me to create this entire character from the ground up. I successfully created the armature, and now I am on to creating it’s body so-to-speak. This character will not have a clay sculpt or a mould… it is being created as a one-off puppet and so is coming together in a different way. I am currently sculpting the body out of foam latex, a process called clip-foaming. It is in fact similar to the way I often build things at home, but of course with the added challenge of matching it perfectly to the design.
The latter has definitely been a challenge AND a bit of a throw back to my time in the sculpting department (way back at the beginning, see weeks 1-5). I have had to give myself a few pep-talks to keep me moving, but now feel I am making good progress. Sculpting to someone else’s design, and needing to get it quite precise is definitely out of my comfort zone, but I am determined to achieve it! George has been very supportive, and has reminded me to be patient. The process of clip-foaming, to get it to a smooth finish is very time consuming, but once I got the hang of it, pretty therapeutic. So in terms of the physical work I have been doing, week 37 was mostly clip foam!
But… Halloween! Oh what a wonderfully festive couple of days! So usually the stop motion community in Portland has a big party for halloween… Obviously not the case this year. But our crew were determined to make it as fun as possible! We had two dress up days at work, both Thursday and Friday and all of those working from home were encouraged to dress up and join in virtually. Thursday was a joint festivity with our Shadow Machine colleagues in L.A. Loads of people dressed up and we had a virtual party in the evening. A lot of us in the studio stayed back and had some drinks in the bar at work on Thursday night, and joined in the virtual party as a big group (socially distanced ofcourse). It was a lot of fun and felt almost like old times. Pre new-world we used to have drinks in the bar every Friday night.
Probably one of the most festive elements of our halloween (both days) was the amazing mini-carnival set up by the puppet production team. Our puppet production manager Jennifer Hammontree and the production team did a group costume with a carnival theme and also set up some fun carnival treats for us! Jennifer was the ring toss, and we all got a go at playing, throwing the rings over her arms and winning fabulous carnival prizes! There was also fairy floss (aka cotton candy here in the States), and production assistant Jess Crawford was dressed as fairy floss to match (super cute costume). The days were filled with yells and laughter as people from different departments came through to play at the carnival.
On the second day, I became a part of the chaos, bringing my big monster puppet Trudo to the party! I think I will have written about him previously, but for a bit of background. I built Trudo during our lock down, as a lip sync/ glove puppet (imagine Ernie but with only one hand) for a socially distanced birthday party appearance. Since then (I think that was in May), he has sat in the basement untouched. I had a plan in my head to make him in to a full suit puppet, but lacked the motivation. With one week to go till Halloween, I decided to go for it! I spent all day last Sunday working on him in my friend Winona’s studio, and then every night after work. Winona was both shocked and awed at my process haha. I make such a big mess when creating Trash Puppets like this, and it seems like absolute chaos… making stuff up as I go along. But somehow cool things do emerge from the chaos! I am quite proud of how Trudo came together! I even tried a new mechanism that I knew about but had never attempted. It is the same way big bird is operated; Big bird has a string running from one hand to the other, so that when Carrol Spinney (absolute legend, RIP) would move the hand he was operating with his own, the other would not just lay there limp but move as well in response to the tension of the string. I was delighted at how well this worked!
I always say how therapeutic I find making trash puppets, and it is still true! Especially now when the work I am doing daily at the studio is so small and so precise. Taking some time to make something big and quick and rough… with no real stakes attached… it was a nice contrast. I need to remind myself to do things like that more often! But when you are working full time in a creative job, I find it hard to muster creative energy outside of work hours. This has always been something I have struggled with (let alone during a pandemic)! I both envy and admire those who seem to have unlimited creative energy (my housemate/ colleague Mattzilla Duron is one of those).
Trudo was a big hit at the studio! I have not performed in so long… it was a lot of fun! Trudo has his own big personality and his own voice, and it was nice to take a break from me to be honest! It is one of the things I love about performing with puppets, that time where you are immersed in the character… it is so nice. You can forget about you, your life, your worries, and just be this character. Trudo is such a big, innocent, silly, friendly guy too. He was very well received! Obviously I did take him off at certain times to give myself a break, and also to attempt to get some work done… he doesn’t really have the dexterity to clip foam!
Everyones costumes were so amazing, and spirits were so high! It was so much fun! Mind you, we all crashed pretty hard late Friday afternoon. I think the combination of lots of sweets and lots of high energy shenanigans, everyone needed a nap!
On top of that, I have been having lots of lovely social time with my colleagues/ friends both in and outside of work. A couple of weekends ago my friend/ colleague (One of our AD’s on Pinocchio) Josh Winegarner and I went out for a walk at Bridal Veil Falls which was absolutely stunning, Winona and I have been hanging out and making stuff in her studio, and my new friend Magda Biesczak (highly experienced stop-mo puppet fabricator) who just started work with us about three weeks ago in the puppetry department… She and I went on a really long skate along the river and through SE Portland yesterday (Magda on her long board and me on skates) which was so glorious. Plus my wonderful housemates Mattzilla and Chris are looking after me as per usual! Last night we carved pumpkins and watched Hocus Pocus! So spoopy!
All in all, I have been great! Of course I still have my bad days mental health wise… but I have lots of great people and resources (both here and at home in Aus) that help me to keep on track.
And I think that’s it! Well, there is probably plenty more I could say… but I won’t! That’ll do pig. That’ll do.
Sending love out to everyone! Thanks for reading!!
Till next time!
Oh and lastly, shout out to my amazing company Trash Puppets for whom Trudo is an ambassador of course! I started Trash Puppets over 5 years ago now and we are still going strong! Follow @trashpuppetsaus on instagram and Trash Puppets on Facebook for updates of what we are up to!
