Monday, October 02, 2006

A promise is a promise.....

Hey, I promised to get back to the puppets tonight, and I delivered. I can happily report that the slip casting latex is indeed a little thicker than the dipping stuff, and works pretty nicely for knuckle dribbling. Man, this is some difficult stuff though.... or I should probably say completely unpredictable. Some of them look pretty decent, some are bizzare abominations against man and puppet. I also tried to fill in some of the wrists and elbows that were sort of deflated looking. I still need to define some of the knuckles one more time and then I think I'll dip a layer or two to try to smooth everything out.

10 comments:

mefull said...

Mike, how are you applying the knuckle dribble? I have not worked with this stuff so I may be talking nonsense, but could you apply it with a thick tipped syringe? might give more control. Then dip again in the thin stuff to coat and blend it all together? pictures must see pictures.

UbaTuber said...

ooooh, lookee all the posts! Glad your puppets are still progressing. I have trouble with controlling the latex too, I was using a paintbruch, cheapy fake bristle brush....once I left the brush out without cleaning it, and actually found the point of the dried brush to be better for applying the latex blobs...they do tend to change as they dry though, at least the latex that I'm using....looks great when applied, dries all....farkled....abominations as you say :)

Shelley Noble said...

Man of your word. postin postin postin yay.

It sounds like you are getting the hang of that there dippity doo latex. w00t.

Darkmatters said...

Mark, I started out just using the tip of a paintbrush handle (not the bristles) but it was too big, so then I switched to a piece of wire. Depending on how much latex you load on it you can get a big drop or a little one, and you can kind of drag it around a little. It's weird stuff to (try to work) with.... it acts kind of like mercury (I don't know if you guys got to bust open the el-cheapo thermometers in science class, but that was a fun day!). You can put it on and it forms like a big drop, just thick enough not to spread out or flatten, and then you can add another drop next to it and they'll sort of join together and run into each other to form a new drop. Weird and hard to control.

Ok, I'll post some pics tonight. Heh, every time I make a post without pics it messes up the proto-blog on my Darkstrider site! I get this empty space at the top of the page....

Darkmatters said...

I don't think a hypo would be very good... it would be hard to dole out exactly the right amount each time. Doing it by dipping a wire in the 'tex you can see how big of a drop is on it.

Shelley, to once again paraphrase Dave Sim he said the way he finally got productive was to get a calendar and write on it what he accomplished each day. That made him face the fact that most days he wasn't doing anything. After a while he just started putting X's on the days when he actually pencilled inked and lettered two pages... anything less was left blank. All or nothing baby! I guess I'm using my blog as a calendar. Don't think I'll switch to just X's though... might lose some of my readership that way!

And hey, since I installed my Clustermap (got the idea from Halfland) I'm doingf the same thing you did in the beginning.... studying world maps to figure out where all these people are. I see you (and I guess some of the LA area animators too), Jeffrey, Ale way down there in Argentina, that must be Nick in Melbourne, and I'm seeing dots in Turkey, Spain, Germany, Italy, The UK and Ireland, Korea, Japan, China (looks like Beijing) and... had to scratch my head over that funny little island down under Australia... turns out it's new Zealand. Could it be Peter Jackson reads Darmatters??!!? Ok, maybe it's somebody else. I think I'll put a Clustermap on my Darkstrider site too. Should be fun.

Shelley Noble said...

I know! Cluster maps rule--and make the world much more personally interesting--even when wars, death, and mayhem should--but often don't! That's my ad, what'ya think?.

I spent a year two years ago writing everything I did down, but I mean EVERYTHING. Every task, every meal, amount of water intake, every every. I wrote down where every single minute of every single day went for that entire year for the same reason Sim did his tracking, so I would get a clue as to what rabbit hole my days were falling down! (I stopped after the year because to continue was counterproductive, diminishing returnville and I didn't want to be that person. You know the one with all the newspaper stacks. Sorry, my apologies if anyone is currently reading from within their stack surrounded desks. I actually understand.)

Upshot: Knowing where my days go didn't help me do more but trying to make daily progress on projects like you are does.

Darkmatters said...

Yeah, I think endless self-examination is like chasing your own tail... you just go round and round. If you want to make progress you need to have a goal and keep moving toward it. There's nothing wrong with chasing tail mind you, as long as it's not your own!

Shelley Noble said...

"There's nothing wrong with chasing tail mind you, as long as it's not your own!"

That's quotable and truer for more than the naughty way it sounds! Well done.!

Darkmatters said...

Hm... yes, I hadn't considered the Yin/Yang symbolism of chasing another's tail. Very acute of you to pick up on that! Leave it to you to turn one of my naughty jokes into profound wisdom!

Shelley Noble said...

The duality image you favor is good too but I was thinking you were making the point about the benefit of having an external focus. That was Brent wisdom I thought.