Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Finished painting the arms at last!

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Man, it took a long time and a lot of applications of paint to get the arms to *somewhat* match the heads! It was a matter of trial and error.... I'd mix up some paint to what I thought might look right, mix in the Pro Adhesive and a little water, dab it on the arms with a folded over piece of paper towel, and see what it looked like. Sometimes it was close, sometimes nowhere near. So after that's dry, do it all over again. At first I was having problems because all the colors had a lot of white mixed in, and the arms had this pale pastel look like they were glowing compared to the heads. Then I remembered the way to combat that is by applying watered down washes of pure color, with no white in it. And of course everything changes a little when you powder it up to get the shine off. It turns a little whitish and - well - powdery or chalky. So you have to have a little extra strength in your colors before powdering. I'm using colorless makeup powder, which minimizes the problem, but doesn't do away with it entirely.

12 comments:

Tomislav Torjanac said...

genuine stopmotion animation (and related) inevitably rings childhood bells, while at the same time being a wonderful source of present-day inspiration and motivation.

what you do fits this category.

Shelley Noble said...

Mike, these look absolutely PERFECT!!! No small task to accomplish that either I'll wager. This film... is going to be da bomb.

Darkmatters said...

Many thanks to both of you!

Shelley, there are lots of problems.... the arms you see here are probably the best (meaning least mutant-esque).

And Torjanac! Wow, I checked out your blog, and I'm blown away!!! Your paintings are fantastic! The latest one looks like a stopmotion puppet. Well, they all would make great puppets.

Anybody wanting to see some excellent illustration work by a Croatian (from the heart of Eastern European puppetland) who has made it into Spectrum, one of the top honors for a fantasy/sc fi type artist, should definitely bookmark this: Torjanac.com.

Shelley Noble said...

An experienced hand indeed! Beautiful paintings Tomislav. I wonder, can we persuade him to make puppets, Mike?

Darkmatters said...

Yes. He must stop painting now and make puppets. Um... you tell him. ;)

Darkmatters said...

OOooooooo - Shelley's stuck in a box! Is that the one Tori Amos was in? The box thing is okay, but please don't start walking against the wind or pulling on an invisible rope, ok?

Tomislav Torjanac said...

Thank you very much, Mike and Shelley, for all the kind words (Shelley, you have a lot of great stuff on your blog - count me subscribed). As for making the puppets, I always wanted to do that, but the closest thing I did was modelling these small heads for reference - just an extension of my doodling/sketching process (an absolutely inferior version of Honore Daumier's clay sculptures). This obviously can't escape the trained eye - kudos for noticing it, Mike.
Anyway, enough about me. Let's get on with the Darkmatters show.

UbaTuber said...

Mike: The puppets are rockin', bar scene, here they come :) good job with the color-match!

Shell: Love the new ava, it is very Tori

Torjanac: Fabulous work! The hands in 'Vacio' are incredible!

Ethan said...

Hi Mike-

The puppets are looking great- I think you did a great job with the arms! I can't wait to see these puppets in action- they are so expressive just sitting still.

Shelley Noble said...

Doh! Walking against the wind was going to be my avatar for next month, darn it!

My poor plog has turned into a craft blog. I WISH there were neat animation action happening over there.
argh. weep. sniff. Gotta go gird my loins.

Darkmatters said...

Hey, thanks Ethan!

Hang in there Shelley. I think you're on a really tough part of your build right now with that cottage. Especially the window. Once you've got that knocked out, it'll all fall into place.

Shelley Noble said...

What a relief to hear you say that, Mike. We'll see, if it's true, oh, how I wish it to be.