It is fitting that I have titled this week’s post “trials” as I am testing myself now with a bit of a time trial! It usually takes me several hours to write my blog posts, and this weekend, I have left it quite late, and now have about an hour before dinner (Zilla and I take turns cooking and luckily tonight is his night). Can she do it!? The timer is on. It Is currently 5:49pm. Here we go!

This week I continued working with armaturist Alex Andrade, assisting him in the creation of a brand new full body armature for a featured character who shall remain anonymous! The challenge with this armature (one of) is that this character is quite small (as though the full size characters weren’t small enough), so everything needs to be very precise, and fitting it all in is a very finicky process.

I learned that some other stop motion studios have patterns or recipes for their armatures, meaning that the job of the armaturists for the most part is assembly. For this film however, the job is a little different, with every character being unique, making the task a little more difficult. My fellow trainee Winona Hwang asked Alex which process he preferred, and he said, though it can be stressful at times, he much prefers the latter. The problem solving, the innovative thinking and the creativity required is what appeals to Alex, (and myself). I am very glad I am learning this way and not in the former. I feel that this way of learning is more valuable for the future; it will allow me to create my own stop motion puppets with a good understanding and a more organic approach.

I remember years ago, while living in the UK, doing a short course at the Norwich Puppet Theatre in joints and mechanisms. It was a two or three day course, and we covered a variety of different joints and mechanisms that can be utilised in puppets. Obviously you cannot learn everything there is to know in just three days, and I remember coming away from that course and thinking that the most valuable lesson I had learned was Confidence (yes, with a capital C). Prior to that course I had always thought mechanisms were my weakness, and in just one weekend, I gained the confidence that if I didn’t know how to do something, I could figure it out! I feel the same about my time here; Obviously there is no way I can learn everything there is to know about stop motion puppets in just eight months, but I am gaining so much insight and understanding and Confidence! I am very excited to see how everything I am learning here informs my work back home. I believe there is even an old blog post about my experience at the Norwich Puppet Theatre (see Mark Pitman Masterclass).

6:09pm! Come on Jhess! Stop reminiscing!

Ok, so… Alex. Armatures. Trials. Let’s do this!

Why do I say “Armature Trials”? Well, as I mentioned, it is very much a game of problem solving as you go, and plenty of trial and error. The problem is, because the puppets are so small, and the movement has to be so precise, the margin for error is TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINY! Like if your joint is off by a millimetre, you’re fucked! Flip the table, the movie is cancelled! No, no, not quite that dramatic, but it is very very VERY tight. So consider all of that, and then add on top of that Jhess being a bit of a novice when it comes to metal smithing… and you might get a sense of how tricky it has been.

The wonderful thing is that actually my stress level has been incredibly low, and I attribute that to Alex. Cool, calm and collected with a good sense of humour, Alex is so patient and always willing to laugh at the pickles I find myself in. On Wednesday, I spent all day redoing one section of the armature (three times!) I just couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. It was a piece for the puppets forearm that consisted of a piece of hollow brass square stock and a small metal plate.

I needed to cut the square stock and the plate to their tiny dimensions using the jewellers saw (this bit I could manage), solder the plate on to the square stock in just the right place (this was the bit I really struggled with), drill a hole in precisely the right place, and then tap that hole to the right size for the tiny tiny bolt to screw in to. Seems straight forward enough? Well, the soldering was a challenge for me. Soldering is new to me in general, and this day actually gave me some great practice (silver linings… LITERALLY! And the Dad jokes continue haha). By the end of the day my soldering was looking pretty neat (for my standards) so I was happy with that. On one version, I accidentally used the vice grips (aka locking pliers) on the piece of hollow square stock and squished it. Very devastating as I had everything else looking schmick. I was getting ready to shape down some of the edges of the plate on the wheel grinder, and made this fatal (for the square stock) error. But now I know; Do not use vice grips on hollow square stock (unless you put the right size piece of solid square stock inside to help hold it’s shape). Later I had my pieces looking lovely once again, and then accidentally drilled the wrong size hole! Gah! The lesson there was always double check what you pull out of the drawer with the callipers, as sometimes people put things away in the wrong place.

The lovely thing is that Alex also makes mistakes and he always discusses them with me and lets me be a part of his problem solving process. As mentioned, every character is different, so Alex is figuring out how to create the armature from scratch. It’s like baking a cake without a recipe… and though Alex is a very seasoned baker, there is still plenty of room for error. What’s that? You needed to prove the dough for 5 more minutes and the bread would have been perfect!?

Apologies, I may have been binge watching The Great Brittish Bake Off and have baking on the brain. You were watching Bake Off instead of writing your blog!? Jhessica Anne Knight!

Jeepers, 6:34pm! Only 15 minutes left to go! What else?!

*Upon reflection this time trial vibe may also be a reflection of my Bake Off binge. I can hear Sue Perkins yelling my 15 minute warning!

Oh gosh, just realising I need to fit in adding some pictures to this ramble. That’s the final decorating part of the cake that they are always scrambling to do in the last five minutes!

On Tuesday I made elbow joints and had a similar situation of redoing them a couple of times before getting them mostly right (passably right).

Oh, on Thursday I learned to make… gosh, I keep calling them “press points” but that is not what they’re called. Grip locks! Grip locks are flat plates attached to certain parts of the armature (eg hips, chest) to give the animators something to hold on to while they manipulate the puppet. I think I renamed them “press points” as I imagine the animators holding the puppet, pressing down on those points (makes all sorts of sense to me). I created grip locks for the pelvis of our puppet, four in total. Two on the sides of the hips and one on the front and the back. This required cutting the plates out to the right size, drilling a hole the right size to fit it on to the armature and soldering it in place. You want your grip locks to have smooth edges (in fact everything on your armature) as sharp edges may pierce through the puppet. Soldering the plates in place was incredibly tricky, and luckily for me, Alex offered to do this while I observed. Phew!

The pelvis already had so much going on, that attempting to solder these four plates in place, you had to be really careful not to knock anything else askew while heating up the piece. Another challenge when soldering for armatures in general, is not getting solder in places you don’t want it to go, eg. inside holes, on the inside of ball joints or on the balls themselves! This is where (as mentioned last week) white out comes in handy as a barrier. The balls themselves are sacred generally and you need to be very careful not to knick, scratch or mark them in any way, as it may impede the smoothness of the movement in that joint.

6:44pm! Oh my gosh!

Another technique I learned this week is “relieving” the joint. When working with a ball joint, you may want the range of movement in that joint to be a little more than what the ball joint allows. To open up that movement, you simply shave away the inside edges of the ball joint to allow the rod to move a little more freely. It’s a little hard to explain (especially under this time pressure), but I do have a photo or two which will help. It is a little finicky as the joint is SO SMALL, but I managed to do it in a less than perfect, but passable manner. You grind away the side of the joint using the wheel grinder. I tried to use the vice grips to assist in holding the tiny joint, but in the end just needed to get my fingers in there and go very slowly and carefully.

My Mum will tell you that I was always very accident prone when it came to machinery as a teenager, so I am proud to say there was only one injury this week! And it was not to do with any machinery. I got a metal splinter stuck in my thumb, and nurse Zilla helped to yank it out with the tweezers that evening while I winced.

Fun fact about armaturists: They spend a lot of time crawling on the floor. Why? Because it is very easy to drop the tiny things you are working on, and very hard to find them on the floor! I spent a lot of time crawling on the floor this week haha!

6.49pm … I think I am nearly there! Want to fit in a proof read though, and add some photos!! YOU HAVE 10 MINUTES BAKERS!

This week was great. As I have mentioned before, I have been wanting to learn more about armatures from the very beginning. I believe even way back in… gosh was it October… when I had my interview for this placement… when George asked what I was most interested in, I answered “Armatures”. And now finally I am getting to play. It is very exciting, and just as much fun as I had hoped.

6:55pm! Oh no!! Quick! Photos! 4 minutes bakers!!

Ok, photos are added, and it is 7:08pm! We didn’t make it! *sobs in to elbow!

Note that the armature pictured below is not the one we are working on. The one we are working on is SMALLER! This is an average size puppet.