Running Like an Idiot

Bought a new animation rig for keeping McDonough upright. Some of the more sharp angled positions (like in the screen cap above) would force me to tighten his feet down to hold him up and the tightness and weight would pry the threaded rod from it's lock-tight base. No fun. He's a fairly heavy puppet. Here's a test with the rig removed.

Swishy Kilt Animation

Took about 5 hours to do this one. Working on my speed, which can start to level off now that I've stopped adding stuff to him. Still need to get the beard magnets to go in all the way, but that's not hard to do. Next I'll probably do some acrobatics to see how well his kilt does.

New Animation! MSHA Team Member Campaign

We just finished this two-minute promo for the MSHA Foundation. It's for their annual Team Member Campaign and they wanted something with a little more character this year. Mad props to Cory Parsons on coloring.

McDonough 2.0 COMPLETE!!

It's been a long road but he's finally fully clothed and painted! Expect to see some more test animations before the big plunge into the continuing adventures of McDonough! Thanks to Christine James for making the clothing for me and thank you all for your support. Check out some more glamour shots over on McDonough's facebook page.

Testin' this puppy out.

I've managed to get a couple shots done in my spare time with this new McDonough puppet. Here's a test scene I just finished...

I'm a lot happier with how he's moving now. It took some getting used to, working with the silicone over top of it, but i think I've got 2's down. The main issues I ran into were twisting up his joints unknowingly and keeping his mutton chops stuck in his mouth sockets. I'll be fixing him up with a coat of silicone to go behind the mouth and connect the mutton chops together so they'll wrap fit like a sock.

And just where have you been, young man?

Molding. Lots and lots of molding. I had done about all I could do with just a metal armature and needed to work on putting a body on the thing. It took a while, but please, allow me to introduce you to MCDONOUGH 2.0!



I'm finally ready to start test animation with the new puppet. There will be clothes and paint to come but for now we're back in the animation realm! I've documented the whole process on McDonough's Facebook page. Check it out if that's yo thang. Oh and if you happen to approve of the page, you're welcome to click that button that says "like", though I won't ask you to. I don't even really know what it's for.

Stop Motion Acting Exercises

So I thought I already had this up here, but since I just finished a new one tonight, y'all get two to look at.

Here's the first one. After I finished this, I started working on eliminating any pauses in my animation.

This is one I just finished tonight. I did a few takes on 4s before I did this one on 2s and it really helped. If you're struggling with going straight from pose test to animation, give it a shot.