Face

I decided to do a really simple design with the face, round eyes, triangle nose, so that when it came down to animating I could push the expression as much as possible.  Knowing that I would be doing the mouth in post made me realize that I needed to get as much emotion out of the eyes and brows as I could.  Here are a few still from a close up dialogue shot.  When the mouth is added the expression will become more defined.  The brows and lids are both sculpted frame by frame in clay.

Lighting

So as you may or not know stop motion is a lot like live action in the sense that lighting is a huge deal.  It can make or break the look of a production.  Here is my team of awesome lighting tech's.  Dan Magnus, Sean Harvey, and Craig Hornby. This is from our first set of tests we did to establish the look of the short.

Close up

Here is a still of Tip from a close up I shot last week.  As you can see she has no mouth, the lipsyc will be added in post.  I want to animate the mouth with a traditional 2D look, giving the lines a little boil so they always appear to move slightly. 

First Shot on "Stuck"

I've been shooting like mad and here is a still from the very first shot I animated.  The puppet is partially ball and socket, partially wire.  The armature was built by Graham Read and the sculpt was done by Monique Knisley.  The hair and costume was made by Molly Grundy.  I built and designed the set with help from Dan Magnus, Craig Horby and Chris Pounds.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Character Rotaion

This is the character rotation for TIP.  She is the main character in the stop motion short I am currently shooting.  The story revolves around a young girl (Tip) who finds herself trapped in a small room.  She soon comes to realize that all is not normal when the room begins to display supernatural elements.  She must discover the nature of the room before she can escape her prison.