1. Group Project: Pedro, John and Walter
In The Walls Of Eryx
Group Project: Pedro, John and Walter

2. The Story
The story is all about a man that wants to escape and go home
The main character is losing oxygen quickly and is on a time limit to get to the ship and evacuate the planet.
The main theme of the story is survival, the reason for this is because the main character must find a way to escape from the alien lizard.
The explorer has crystal which is the key to powering up his ship.
The tone of the movie is going to be serious and the lighting will help with this tone since the story is taking place at night time

3. The storyboard has stayed the same with only a minor tweak to it with adding the scenes of the explorer wrapping the vines around the device.

4. Puppet: Explorer
My partner started on the explorer originally by making the wired frames. After that I added on to it with milliput to strengthen certain body parts to make it easy to articulate.

5. The Clothing
Later on I would cut out the body shape of the puppet from my partner’s old shirt and then stitch it together. An issue occurred where the character looked very skinny and the hips was very prominent, so I solved it with adding cotton which gave meat to the bones.

6. Hands & Feet
After adding the clothing I moved on to adding the hands and feet. For the base I used a 5p coin so it’ll be easier for me to put the fingers in. Once I added the fingers I waited for the palm to dry and then added finger tips so it looks like actual fingers. I also used the 5p coins to the feet to make it flat and easy to stand.

7. Helmet Issue
The helmet is made out of Styrofoam and the visor was made with hot glue. However the issue is that when I applied spray paint to the Styrofoam, it damaged the shape. Before the paint was added the helmet was a big sphere but when the paint was added, it was like the paint was eating the Styrofoam. Certain parts are more damaged than others but it can be easily solved with milliput or clay.

8. Accessories
I used spray paint to paint the hands, feet, belt, helmet and tubes. The tubes are made out of sponge and is cut out as a rectangle and then cut the edges to give it a curve and look more like a tube. The tube that has been cut off has a small wire inside. The reason for this is because when the sponge is left by itself it can flale about not stay in the pose you want and it can hinder the stop motion process, so by having a wire it will keep the tube in the positon it needs to be in.

9. Final Result
This is the final result with everything included. These pictures are to show both the character and the ship. From the final design, it is very easy move since the materials are soft. The crystal colour is still up for debate but I’m worried painting due to a previous issue with the helmet.

10. The Ship
The ship is something that blends with the enviroment, there isn’t a heavy focus on the ship so there doesn’t need to be a lot of detail put into it. The camera shots are going to be from far away or a close up.

11. Puppet: Alien Lizard
First of I made the basic frame of the lizard using a metal wire provided by the Animation department, I made sure that the legs were double wired for extra strength, however I was unable to add an extra wire to the arms and spine. I also used pen tubes to create joints in order for them to move separately later on.  To create a basic anatomy for the frame I used Miliput that was provided by my group partner. In order to stabilise  the puppet I used an Idea from Rob to use coins as the base for the feet and glued it in using Miliput.

12. Shaping the Body
Using sponge I cutted them into shape, mainly for the legs and torso. I had PVA glue but it was not very effective in sticking the sponge to the metal frame so I used tissue that was dipped in PVA glue and wrapped in around the sponge until the glue settled. I covered some of the obvious joints such as the knee with a small circular cut-out to hide the huge space. To further stabilise the puppet I stuck on 3 coiled up metal wires on the feet acting as its toes with Miliput and since there was an excess wire at the back I used that as the Lizards heel which made it easier for it to stand by itself.

13. Head & Skin
To cover up the joints to act as the skin, I used some of my old clothes and sewn it in place. In order to lessen the crease, especially near the ends of the joints, I stuffed them with cotton, specifically for the legs and tail. For the head I experimented with the glue gun and found that it dries very quickly so I made the head of the lizard using metal wiring as a template then filled the the gaps in with Hot-glue and waited until it settled and used the tip of the glue gun- since it's very hot- to smooth out any excess glue.

14. Final Result
Finally I used Latex paint on the fabric and it made a very rubbery feel to the skin, which was good since it made it very flexible and overall looks more lizard-like. The Latex paint was originally white so I mixed in black acrylic paint and painted that in. We ran out of Miliput so I used my glue-gun and applied them to areas that were too skinny, like the hands and claws of its feet and covered it up with Latex paint and as for the eyes I cut a piece of red cloth into the shape of an eye and over I think it looks scarier that way. Since our set is gonna be dark ( lighting) I thought if I made the Lizard a little darker then it would be easier to hide some faults.

15. Set: Rocky Cave
The first thing I created was the hard rocky cave. For the cave I started with a white clear balloon and glued it to a cardboard paper. I then proceeded to create a rocky texture by using foam spray. Once the foam dried which took a day, I then started painting using a dark brown acrylic paint. I also used a lighter brown to add more detail to the cave.

16. Set: Rocks
For the rocks the process was the same but without the white balloon. For the rocks I also made each of them in different sizes to give the set a more realistic look. Also used different shades of grey to give the rocks more depth.

17. Set: Base/Tree Logs
For the surface I used cardboard paper  and painted the surface white. I then used tiny pebbles and spray painted them green using green spray paint. Once that was done I then proceeded to stick them to the surface using pva glue.
For the Tree Logs I used two toilet rolls and stuck them together using glue. I then sprayed the toilet rolls with foam spray. A problem did occur while doing this process. The problem was the trees would stand straight on the surface so I had to improvise and changed the scene from trees to broken tree logs which had leaves growing on them.

18. Final Set
This is how the final set turned out: