CLAY or PLASTICINE… which one is better?

Unfortunately, there is no simple answer. Each product has its pros and cons, and which type to use is best determined by you and your needs.

The nature of the substance: Both clay and plasticine are oil-based products, and as a result, neither will dry out nor crumble if left uncovered. Yet, because they are oil-based, both will begin to secrete oil over time…plasticine will become oily more quickly. But, because your animations aren’t a 3-year work-in-progress, this shouldn’t be a major concern.

Colour: Both clay and plasticine come in a wide variety of colours, however, plasticine tends to be more of a pastel hue. Clay, on the other hand is very saturated, and very true to the primary and complimentary colour wheel. In this case, it really depends what kind of look you’re going for. It is fine to mix clay and plasticine – you don’t have to choose one or the other for your animation.

Texture: Plasticine is, for the most part, very firm, and holds up pretty well under heat. So does Clay. The problem I found with clay, was that the richer the colour, the more the dye, the pastier the clay. Colours like Red and Black weren’t very firm, and the immense amount of dye used to colour the clay stained my hands for days.

ARMATURES

Armatures are the support for your new creation. Basically, it is the skeleton underneath the clay, which will allow you to move your character in small increments for animation.

Before you begin building the armature, you need to have an idea what it will look like. Draw your character on a piece of paper (to scale), and draw where you want the armature to be roughly. Then get out the armature wire and begin to follow your design. There are a number of different ways to create armatures, so design an armature that is best going to support the weight of your character, and create ease in movement.

Foam Balls and Wire: This is they type of armature that I prefer to use most. By using foam balls to fill out the large portions of the body, you reduce the overall weight of the character, and give it a definite shape. To create a foam/wire armature, do the following:

Use foam balls to fill the large portions of the body (i.e. the torso and the head). If you plan on making your character speak, then filling the head with foam is probably not a good idea. Essentially, you want to fill the parts of the body that aren’t going to move – the foam will create a greater support for those parts that do more.

Cover the foam with clay. It is usually a good idea to roll out a sheet of clay and ‘wrap’ it around the foam, rather than pressing the clay onto the foam ball. This will reduce the amount of clay used, and will also provide a smooth and even ‘skin’ for your character.

Create your ‘moveable parts’ with wire. Using pieces of wire create the legs, arms, tails, necks (or any other moveable part) and cover it with clay. Some people will suggest that you melt down some clay and then dip or pour the hot clay onto the wire – this will ensure the clay is in absolute contact with the clay. Then, built the clay up around the wire. If your limbs are a tubular shape, you may want to just ‘poke’ the wire through the solid tube of clay.

Put all the pieces together. Using wire or toothpicks, put each piece of your character together, carefully guiding it into the foam.

Touch up the joints. Use small pieces of clay to cover the joints, and also to build up external support – ie. using a large piece of clay under the ‘armpit’ of the character will help give the arms more support.

*** When putting your character together, it is important that you keep the weight of the character in mind. Keep the body parts aligned to prevent your character from becoming top-heavy.

Wire armatures are great if your character will be moving its entire body, however, they tend to use more clay than the foam/wire configuration. Wire armatures are made using one large piece of wire, rather than individual pieces of wire. To create a wire armature, do the following:

Using the wire, start with the head and form a loop then proceed to twist the wire and form the neck. Continue doing this until you have the legs and the arms.

Additional tips:

Some people suggest covering all the pressure points (ie. where the neck meets the shoulders, where the spine meets the legs) with a firm substance like Propoxy. This will prevent the wire from breaking under stress.

Some people suggest attaching doweling to the sections that don’t bend (ie. the forearm or thigh). This will prevent your character’s body parts from moving too freely.

Garnishing your character:

Having a character completely made out of clay can sometimes be a bad idea. Small details, such as buttons, hair pieces, etc, will gradually get squished throughout the course of your animation. Furthermore, small pieces of lightly coloured clay on top of dark clay will eventually absorb the dye from the darker colour. Small details such as these should be replaced with non-clay accessories. Doll parts, cooked fimo and other such products will help to keep your character looking brand new!

Eyes: Plastic doll eyes work wonders! Because they have pegs (which insert very easily into the foam balls), it is easy to create interchangeable eyeballs – one set wide open, and one set closed. You can use these interchangeable eyeballs to create a ‘blink’.

*** I wouldn’t advise using glitter on your character. It is very messy, and the camera doesn’t read it too well. Rather than looking sparkly, it just tends to look dirty.

Lip Synching can be a tedious process, that will ultimately take quite a bit more time than one without. In addition to logging the movements your character will make, you also have to log how often, and what shape in which to move your character’s mouth.

The best way, would be to grab a video camera, and record a CU of your face reciting the lines or singing the song in real time. Then, while you’re animating, play back the footage of you frame-by-frame to translate your mouth movements to the character. The following is a diagram of the common mouth shapes for each of the vowels and consonants:

For example, the word ‘Lamb’ would look like this:

*** It is not necessary for you to sculpt a transition from each mouth shape, but rather sculpt only each individual shape. Through ‘persistence of vision’, the human brain will link each image together, and we will perceive it as a continuous motion.

Another way to plan out your lip-synching is to use a "Bar Sheet":

A bar sheet allows you to see which part of the word will fall on which frame so that you can sculpt your character’s mouth accordingly. The ‘feet’ scale on this bar sheet refers to the length of film, which is obviously irrelevant to video. What is useful though, is the division of frames. From this diagram, we can see that on the 23^rd frame, we will need to create the ‘s’ shape with our mouth, or the shape.

Mirrors are also helpful in allowing you to observe the shapes of your mouth. All in all, it’s once again all about timing. Do the math, and you should be fine!

Trying to time out your character’s movements can be a tricky process – mostly because we don’t tend to think of movements as a series of smaller movements. It is important to consider the nature of your character when determining how often you wish to move your character.

Pick an interval at which to move your character, and keep it consistent. Capturing your stills at a rate of 2-3 frames/movement is ideal. This means that the computer will capture 2 or 3 stills of your character after each movement.

Time out your movement. The best way to do this is to do the actual movement yourself. How long does it take you to walk across the room? Make a note of all the movements you wish for your character to make, time them out using a stopwatch, and make a log.

Translate these movements to your character. Take your timed log of movements and deal with them one at a time, and do the math:

Time it took me to walk across room: 3 seconds

Multiply that by the number of frames (30 frames/second): 90 frames

Divide that by your chosen frames/movement rate (2 frames): 45