For two weeks I was working on this set, and now it's done:

The set is approx. 70 cm wide and each 50 cm high and deep.

HORRAY!
A few weeks ago I already showed you some furniture that I made for Orpheus' house. Now that house is fully equipped: I built the room with a door, a window and wallpapers, and I added a bed, curtains, and some smaller light sources.

The door is made of strong cardboard, and the Tiffany glass-like window is a strong cel material painted with acrylics. I made the door's joints from strong paper and tooth picks. The little paper lantern is made of, well, paper. To be more precise, it's my all-time favorite sandwich paper. The sandwich paper offers a tactile experience similar to these fine Chinese papers which I like for its subtle quality. There's a small ballon LED inside so I don't need to hide any cables or batteries. (Hat tip to Shelley!)

In the picture above, you'll get an impression of the wallpaper. I originally designed a floral pattern for Eurydice's skirt, and here I used it for some of the furnishing details as well. I had the idea that the audience may not see the pattern here consciously, but somehow remembers and connects it to Eurydice when meeting her in the underworld. I printed the pattern in small stripes on 120gr office paper, and decorated the walls with them.

Like the door, the window is made of strong cardboard. The glass is the strong cel again, and the curtains are made of soft tissue paper. There is some wire in there to keep it in shape. I actually sewed the paper with my sewing machine – but I guess it's hard to see that in a picture of this quality. The curtain rack is simply twisted wire covered with paper.

The bed mainly contains of a box of cardboard. To give the impression of crinkled fabric, I ripped of the upper layer of paper from a piece of corrugated card board, so you now can see its flutes (it's visible in the picture of the dresser). I pretty much like the bed because I had the idea of using handmade paper for the linen and pillows.

The special thing about this paper is, that it also contains rags next to the typical paper ingredients (it's called Bütten in German). It's very strong and has a nearly textile quality. So I sewed the pillows and the blanket, and worked some wire in them to keep them animatable or in shape.

The little candle is made of wax and black yarn. The candleholder is made of several brass thingies from my tool box, and covered in acrylics. I'm not sure if I'm gonna animate a flame or if it's just too much. I think I'll decide that while shooting. I also added a small lamp from my old doll house to the scenery. It's still working, and I ripped of the old fabric and added a new one made of paper.

I now just need to paint a background landscape to hide my studio if anyone is looking through the door or the window, and to tailor Eurydice's bridal dress. I already tested all the camera angles and they seem to work pretty good.

I hope I don't miss a thing. If you want to know anything else, feel free to ask in a comment. I'm so happy because I finished another set. There are still two sets to go, and then I'm nearly done in preproduction.

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Oh, and I just stumbled about this picture:

This is from 2008, and I'm quite glad to see how the things are developing…

Here is the 2010 version again:

Remember that little bird? I finished another animal puppet today, a cat:

The cat puppet is about 6 cm high and fully moveable.

Like the bird, the cat's "just" a minor character. Together, both of them are supposed to carry a distinctive atmosphere in one of the scenes, and that's why they're not really unimportant.
– And they're a kind of warm-up or dry run for the last two major characters I have to build, too. (Well, there are a few dead souls more to make, but those puppets are going to be pretty basic cut-out models without armatures…)

Since I want the world-of-the living-characters look completely different from the underworld silhouette puppets, I try to apply a similar style to them such as I did to the cemetery set.

Basically, you'll find an armature made of twisted wire and a lot of hot glue inside the puppet, wrapped in thin cardboard covered with sandwich paper and some colour finish on top. I've got the weird feeling that I start repeating myself… Is this still interesting for you?

While it's so paralyzing hot outside, I spend a lot of time in my basement studio to work on the film. It's great: down there I don't sweat myself to death and the film is progressing continuously as well. I worked the whole weekend on the final three silhouette puppets, and here we are: yesterday I finished Orpheus (two puppets, each heading for opposite directions) and Eurydice.

The puppets are made as usual: thin black cardboard is cut into silhouettes which is then attached to aluminium wire. This time I chose very thin wire because the puppets are much smaller than the models I made before. My idea was that the Gods and the God-like characters should be slightly taller than the mortals.

For Eurydice's skirt I designed a floral pattern which I like so much that I designed a digital wallpaper, and which now adorns my computer desktop (in 1920x1080 resolution). If you like it too, feel free to download it either in green or in grey:

You'll find the full resolution images by just clicking into one of the small Wallpaper pictures above. To download one of them, right-click into it, and choose "save picture as…"

My school projects are finished due to the holidays, and I have a lot of time to work on the film. This seems to be a puppet making week, more to come...

Yesterday, something totally unbelievable happened: I finished the cemetery set for my Orpheus film project. I finished it completely. Done. This is just crazy! Now I only have to build the Orpheus puppet, and then I can start animating (though I’m a bit afraid of that for whatever reason…)

I already was nearly there two weeks ago but then Lukas and I went to to London for holidays, inspiration and visiting our friends Weng and Betty, and Simon and Anna. Instead, I did some drawing studies during that time:

1. Tree at the Hyde Park; 2. Girl at Tottenham Court Road; 3. Girl reading (Big Head); 4. Lukas sleeping at the beach; 5. Seaside landscape at Climping Beach.

After being home again, I directly started completing the set:

Nils suggested to add some structure to the cemetery’s landscape and sent me a quick sketch to illustrate his idea:

I pretty much liked and like the idea of the plateau-like hills which are indeed still very flat but provide some rhythm to the set. An important point here is that our eyes need a kind of visual anchor to clearly recognize a perspective. Else the viewer could get visually lost. Thanks to Nils for this is a perfectly matching idea! I’m absolutely pleased with its outcome. (Thank you, again!) My initial idea was to use the plain plywood for the ground but after coming back home with a refreshed view, I decided to give it the same look as the one I use in my drawings.

I also drew the street to the ground, glued everything down and added some grass, stones and other tiny details. Before I finally fixed everything in place, I did quick test shots with the camera to see if all the takes are going to work properly, and well they do!

So the biggest set of the film is done, the progress bar shows 65% on set building, and I’d like to give you some impressions (these are not the final takes!):

I still can’t believe it!

For more details of the close to finished graveyard set click into the image.

I am utterly speechless, sorry!

If you have any question about the set, feel free to ask. I need some sleep, I feel stunned and exhausted but happy...

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Supplemental

After sleeping very sound for several hours, I thought it would be nice to share some more information with you about the graveyard set. At the weekend I bought 3 sqm of 19 mm chipboard and and some stands from a DYS store. Since I now have a table, I started to assemble the finished props to it though they aren’t fixed finally yet.

I cut the mountains from strong paper and glued them down in front of the greenscreen which is attached to the wall. I also cut and placed the little wall in the background from paper to achieve a smooth transition from the middleground to the mountains in the background. The paper wall is colored with pencil and watercolors. The other little wall in front of the entry to the underworld is made of foam board covered with paper and the fence is made of wire covered with acrylics plugged into the foam.

The set is now approximately 1.5 m in depth. The problem is that my studio isn’t that big and I have to find a way to deal with that without renting a new room. Next I have to add some more tiny details like a road and some grass and the stairs down to the underworld. Oh, and not to forget an Orpheus puppet…

Today I discovered that I have to solve some technical issues before I could start filming… After yesterday’s ecstasy I thought I could start animating soon, but today I guess there are still few things to do… So, with this little work-hangover I go back to the studio…

Sometimes I don't even notice how quick time is running by. It's been two weeks since my last post, and I've been working on the film every minute I could spare. Else, I talked to my music composer Felipe who is going to develop a soundtrack for my film and we discussed the details and issues. I planned my film as a silent movie, so the music will be nearly as important as the visuals.

Now, this is going to be grave… (oh, and what a pun!)
I'm going to complete the cemetery soon. The graveyard's missing just a few single elements and they'll be finished soon. The last two weeks I spent working on graves and crypts, the entry to the underworld and the final scale of the setting.

Yesterday I put the finishing touches on the graves and a small crypt for the background. For testing purposes I assembled all the single pieces so far and I was stunned – it looks pretty convincing… It's a completely stylized world, but it's definitely working as a whole. Next I need some new table boards because the set is going to be much bigger than I expected it to be. I'll provide you a shot of the set directly after I brought all the props together.

Like all the other props before, these graves are made of different layers of cardboard covered with sandwich paper and colors. This bigger ones are approx. 12 cm high, the small ones about 5 cm.

I use a lot of varying colors: acrylics, watercolors, pastels, China ink, pencils… Most of the time I combine several of them to induce the impression of texture.

The crypt is lit by a single ballon LED which is a great device because those little thingies don't need cables and stuff (hat tip to Shelley, Queen of Halfland)… I covered the building with aluminum foil from its inside to reflect as much light as possible. At the same time I covered the door with semi-transparent tracing paper to achieve a more indirect or spread light.

Now I still have to build the grave of Eurydice and the landscape, finish the entry to the underworld and then it's done. Some more puppet making and I could begin with the first animation, although there are three more sets to build or finish… Wow, that feels crazy (and weird and frightening and cracking good at the same time)… The film now is like a butterfly waiting for its transformation from idea to reality…

This is one thing I love most about art and even more so about animation (and I guess I told it you before): giving birth to something which is artificial but then real, and which influences reality eventually. I stand here watching in unbelieving amazement what we human beings are capable of to create… Sorry for being that pathetic…

Though most of the tomb stones aren't finished until now, the atmosphere is raising.

I simply love the progress bars... Sometimes I don’t like to talk to much about what I’m doing right now, but the bars show the progress anyway. And today I suddenly realized how much I’ve already completed! I put the cemetery setting together as far as I’ve finished the single pieces and it looked like a real setting... Horray!

I had been to two film festivals as a visitor last week, to the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and to the Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film. I had a great time there, saw countless numbers of (animated) short films, had the oppotunity to talk to animation artists like Bruce Bickford personally and yet I’m still inspired by all the artworks I’ve seen – some of them were just amazing!

I had a few new ideas for my film there, too, and after having a heavy cold for few days, I spent the last weekend completely in my studio to work on the settings. I made some props for the graveyard: a tree, a pieta-like sculpture of an angel, about twenty graves (which aren’ finished yet) and two picture frames of Orpheus and Eurydice for their home.

The sculpture is about 20 cm in height, and it’s one of my most favourite pieces so far. It’s important for the graveyrd’s atmosphere since I want it to be somewhat like Le Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris which is perhaps the most beautiful cemetery I’ve ever been to. Again, everything is made of cardboard, paper and wire covered with a thin layer of acrylics, watercolours and/or pastels.

Little, little things: the picture on the left is approx. 3,5 cm high. I used pin needles as nails to hang the pictures onto the wall.

Today I finished the very next to last character (re)design. It’s Orpheus, the main character of my film (finally!):

Orpheus: character design 2010

Orpheus: silhouette character design

The re-design was necessary due to my decision for a paper look and feel. And after my successful bird animation, I feel confident enough to make a bigger character with these materials. Orpheus now looks a bit more adult or mature, very sad and somehow fragile...

If you’re reading my blog for years now, you’ll perhaps remember that I had a very clear idea of how Orpheus should look like before:

Orpheus: character design 2007

Orpheus: character design 2008

I like the new one much better, it just feels right now. I had never been 100% happy with the old concept, but now I am.

Did you notice the new progress bars on the right, below the navigation (I found them via Shelley Noble’s blog)? I’m nearly done with all the character design. – Unbelievable! Still, there are many things to do but it’s nice to see the progress so clearly...

It’s always a little celebration if I’m going to change the figures... And it’s amazingly motivating to see how much I’ve already finished...

Well, I don’t. But someone else does:
After several posts about other stuff I’m now back working on my Orpheus film project. Last Friday I finished another puppet, a tiny bird. This time it’s a minor character from the world of the living and that’s why it isn’t just a silhouette:

The picture above shows the puppet with rigging wire attached. I used 1.5mm aluminium wire here. The top picture shows the scale drawing. I designed the puppet very small (about 2.5 cm), but it wasn’t possible to build it that size from the materials I’d chosen, so it’s now approx. 3.5 cm in height.
Orpheus is suffering from Eurydice’s death and he plays his lyra for the sake of forgetting his grief for a moment. His music is the only thing he loves as much as he loves dead Eurydice. The bird and one or two other animals are attracted by the sad play and our feathered friend lands on the window ledge and listens to the melody.

I did a small test animation to see if the puppet works:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

The bird is made of an armature of twisted 1.0 mm aluminium wire, covered with thin cardboard and paper. The eyes are tiny beads and it’s painted with ink and acrylics. It is the tiniest and yet animateable puppet I have ever made, and I found it a real cutie.

This is what the armature basically looks like.

Though it’s a minor character it was so very important to make it. I was thinking about how to make the upper world character’s design for weeks now, and at the same time I hadn’t any clou. I wanted them clearly made of paper but with a stable armature inside. So, right now: Heureka! I think I’ve got the solution!

Then I checked all my To Do lists for the project yesterday as well, and saw that I finished nearly one third of all sets and puppets which is absolutely great and more than I had expected so far. I’m only a few weeks behind my schedule...

When do you know you’re overworked?
This time I knew it because I hadn’t any time to work on my film since there were millions of other things to do which seems to be much more important... And when I eventually had the time, I sat at my desk in my studio and wasn’t able to do anything because I was so tired, exhausted and angry with myself...

At this very moment I felt and remembered how important this film project is for me, and how much I want it to be a great piece of art – something that touches your soul while you’re watching it... And yes, I know, that’s what they usually call “high expectations”... But nevertheless, that’s what I want...

After feeling sorry for myself for some time and a huge amount of sleep, I finally began to work again, and I came up with some elements for the graveyard setting: I made several trees and finished the wall which surrounds the cemetry today.

Each part of the wall is approximately 25 cm high, and 50 cm long. I used foam board to build its main shape, and different kind of cardboards for the details. As I did with the furniture, I covered the piles with sandwich paper, and the stones with a thin layer of white acrylics. Finally, I added some more drawn details with a pencil and ink to achieve an impression of depth between the bricks and the stones.

I sometimes just like the atmosphere these pictures have....

The hinges are simply made of curved aluminium wire I plugged into the soft foam board. I literally had this wall in my head for weeks now, and I’m so glad I finally build it. I still need some graves, the entry to the unterworld, perhaps a few more trees and I also need a nice background landscape. Altogether I already finished nearly 50% of all the graveyard pieces...

However, today I have no idea how I’d be ever going to finish this film... But I remember former projects: there’s always this point when I think it was a stupid idea to even start such a project. In the majority of these cases, it was nonsense. Each time simply moving on worked best as an antidote...

Unbelievably, two weeks has already passed since my last post... How is this possible? I guess I know. Instead of working on the Orpheus film I did a lot of other, important as well as unimportant things... At some point I was so annoyed by myself that I simply started making backdrops again.

Remember? Two weeks agao I finished a small bedside cabinet, and today finally some other fittings followed: I finished a dresser and a table, two chairs and a vase of flowers with their heads hanging down sadly.

After finishing the pieces I thought it would be great to take some pictures to see how they’d work in front of a camera. And what should I say? I’m absolutely thrilled by how well it all comes together! This is exactly the dreamy and organic paper world I want to create.

I used cardboard in different thicknesses for all plain surfaces as I did for the bedside stand. Even the vase is made of a food storage carton (I guess it was a frozen pizza box...) and it wasn’t as easy to make as it now seems to be. Organic elements like the table’s legs are made of several strings of loosely twisted wire which I covered with a thin layer of sandwich paper.

For the floral elements attached to the table and the flowers in the vase I used tiny branches of a corkscrew hazel. I coated them in a semi-opaque layer of white acrylics to achieve a papery look. I found it very difficult to design the house of a wood nymph because they’d normally live, well, in the woods... But this one, Eurydice, married and moved into a house... So I try to make it as organica and close to nature as possible but yet house-like.

Their home still needs some more attention, furniture and details. At the moment it doesn’t provide

• a door
  
• a window
  
• a bed
  
• curtains
  
• a fireplace
  
• a picture frame
  
• a bridal dress
  
• some light sources and
  
• the room itself with walls and floor.
  

Since I took the pictures today, I’m soo enthusiastic about moving on. I’d love to see the final setting as soon as possible. I am as ecited as you are to see what I’m going to finish next week... What do you think about a window and some curtains?

It’s almost two weeks ago since I last posted about my film’s progress. Since then, I not only ordered new materials to continue the puppet making process finally, I also had another breakthrough in the design concept of the world of the living. That took me some time to develop since I wanted a papery look and feel here but didn’t really have clue how to achieve that.

I tested lots of different kind of papers to find something appealing and now I have a beautiful (and probably cheap) solution:

Orpheus’ bedside cabinet is approx. 73 mm high, 53 mm wide and 38 mm in depth. The scale of the puppets and the props is about 1:8 compared to human size.

The bedside cabinet above is a kind of general furniture prototype. Its basic shape is made of different cardboards (frozen pizza boxes, the back of a sketch pad, 2mm grey cardboard… just what I had around). I cut out the single elements and assembled them with wood glue. It dries transparently and is one of my favourite adhesives.

After that I covered each the door, the body and the top panel with bookbinding glue and sandwich paper. Yes, sandwich paper. After some tests I decided to use it because sandwich paper isn’t 100% opaque. It looks a bit feathery and has its own texture which suits well to the look I’d like to have in the house.

I also want some deeper shadows between the door and the cabinent’s body for example, so I added green watercolors and black ink. Ideally, you’d get a slight impression of a house in which nature is at home somehow.

The door knob is made of a pin needle with a tiny green ball attached to its end. I fixed a small bead between the needle’s head and the door and painted both bead and needle white with acrylics. The acrylics doesn’t stick to the plastic surface perfectly, so the green of the bead and the needle shines through which gives a nice and fitting effect. At the very end I simply drew the floral design on the door with a fineline pencil. This absolutely is the look I was after, so another problem is eventually solved.

Speaking of drawing, I also finished the boat’s (re-)design in which Orpheus is going to cross the river Styx and the interior’s design as well. I’ll post about the boat soon. Next step is to build the sets. I have one more month to go for preproduction... This week I’d like to finish most of the furnitures... But perhaps this is too ambitious...

Cheerleading, anyone?

Today I finished the concept design of my Eurydice character. She's just a minor one, but she'll have to walk in two directions though. Minor character is a very unprecise description, since Eurydice somewhat like a MacGuffin: she's the reason why the story is going to be told.

The main time she'll be moving to the left when Orpheus and she try to leave the Underworld. But in one situation she'll be moving towards the audience, so that part of puppetmaking (and then animation) could become a little challenging.

Eurydice is an oak nymph, a pure and graceful creature. Nature and wild life are part of her, and she loves to play and dance. She is grounded and lives close to nature, and everything around her is in simple and clear balance. She is married to Orpheus, who tries to free her from the Underworld after she had died.

I assembledd two pictures I shot during my time in Bristol and Vienna to have a nice background. The character's sketch is placed into the picture to get a good impression of what she's like. That tree really exists!

I traced the character's vector outlines by hand, and coloured them black to get an idea of how she'll look like as a shadow puppet. My scale drawing will be based on this picture.

Below you'd see the character design I drew two and half a year ago... I'm much more pleased with the new one, not to say I really like her. I think it won't be easy to build a front-view silhouette puppet but I'll definitely give it a try.

This week I entirely assembled the Charon puppet as I'd announced to do last Sunday. More precisely, I finished two puppets of this character since he's not able to turn his head completely otherwise. He's going to move in two different directions and so I simply mirrored his design which seems to be the easiest solution.

What's next then?
There are only two other silhouette puppets to make, Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice is a silhouette-only character, like Hermes, Hades and Cerberus. I already had a charater design of her, which I had drawn almost two years ago. I wasn't pleased with my first ideas of her design anymore, so I want (and need) to redesign Eurydice. This is going to be one of my next week's tasks.

Else, I still have issues with the concept of the Orpheus puppet. He definitively is the main character and has the widest range of possible movements, so that I have to construct his puppet accurately.

After finishing the silhouette puppets, it's time to design the characters who walk the earth in the world of the living people, namely Orpheus and Charon. Up to now I don't really have a clue how to build them. I've got some general ideas but I guess this needs some more time to breed in the lab...

Furthermore I finished the research on materials and visual references for the house setting and Charon's boat which is great. I'm going to publish the concept drawings as soon as they're done.

My To Do lists on 14 February, 2010. The first one is my modell making list, the four others are for the different settings.

You can see the current state of my To Do lists above. There are still a lot of things to do, but I also see and feel the progress... For a long time I wasn't sure if I'd ever finish the film, but today I'm quite optimistic... Next week I'm going to have more spare time to work on the project, and I hope to complete some more tasks.

Things I absolutely want to get done by the end of oncoming week:

• concept and silhouette concept drawing Eurydice
  
• scale drawing of her
  
• concept drawings of the house's interior like furnitures and stuff
  
• buy new modell making materials and
  
• work on the living puppets' concept.
  

Sorry for this dry report...

A week can be very short.

Last sunday I announced to finish the silhouette concept of Hermes, his scale drawing and his armature. These public deadlines work great for me and I finished it all. So big thanks to Shelley Noble on whose blog we evolved the idea of adding some external pressure to our productions .

This week's achievements: the finished Hermes silhouette puppet. It wasn't much more work to finish it completely.

Since I also work in schools and museums, I had just a minimum of time to work on the film the last days. I don't know how I managed to be in schedule, but I did it.

Actually, I even finished some more things I didn't announce: I assembled the Cerberus silhouette puppet, too, and I did some more research for the house's interieur, its furnitures and details.

Heck, I'm too tired to tell you all the details, but the process is always the same with the silhouette puppet making:

• brainstorm
  
• find references
  
• make concept drawings
  
• vectorize concept drawing
  
• assemble (paper) prototype
  
• correct vector drawings if necessary
  
• make scale drawings
  
• build aluminium wire armature with bones made of milliput
  
• cut out single pieces from black cardboard
  
• glue cardboard to armature
  
• spraypaint black from behind
  

The illustration above was absolutely a happy accident: when I spraypainted the puppet's back, I laid it on a sheet of paper to avoid stains on the floor. I really love the result, and that's why it made its way directly to another mood board...

Those are my finished puppets so far. I'm still surprised but pleased how well they look together...

For next week, I'm going to work on Charon's silhouette character. I have to design his silhouette concept, a scale drawing and his armature... It's pretty much a routine workflow now...

My friend Shelley Noble and I agreed that it would be nice to report the progress of each's film project on our blogs weekly. The idea behind this is to increase a kind of outside deadline pressure since self-set deadlines for some reason never really seem to work...

So I announced to finish the Hades silhouette puppet and the armature for Cerberus this week, and what should I say? I did it! Ha! I must admit that getting things done leaves a pretty pleasant aftertaste. To celebrate I'd like to share some pics:

The finished Hades silhouette puppet before he was spraypainted black from behind.

...and a look behind the scenes.

At first glance Hades looks like a cut-out puppet and to some degree he is. I glued his silhouette to a simple wire armature. Though I use silhouettes in the Underworld's setting, I also want to employ delicate lighting and depth of field.

I decided to combine the flat visuals with an aluminium wire armature to use the advanteges of classical puppet animation (its bones are made of super-fine Milliput). I finally sprayed all parts with a thin layer of black colour from behind to avoid reflections during the animation.

Cerberus scale drwaing...

...and the finished armature.

The Cerberus puppet is going to be pretty much the same, despite he's a quadruped character. Eventually, the naked armature will be hidden behind all the single black cardboard pieces and also painted black from behind.

I did some more research on props and characters, too. My final preproduction deadline is at the beginning of April. I have a little countdown widget for my Mac's Dashboard, and it says that there are 61 days left.

Next week I'm going to finish the silhouette concept of Hermes, his scale drawing and his armature as well.

Have a nice week, everybody!

Today was a succesful day, at least so far. I'd given the Hermes charakter design several tries before, but I still wasn't satisfied with the results yet. I decided to go back to the very beginning of his character development, and started brainstorming again.

I swiftly wrote a list of 100 features I associate with him, ancient Greek's Great Messenger. During this process I wouldn't edit myself, and it's very important to do it as quickly as possible. This one is about creativity and I don't want my left brain to question my ideas at this point.

The next step is to find connections between the different catchwords. I ordered them by categories like with regards to content, materials and textures or character's appearance. I then employed these keywords in my research on visual references.

Here's a brief description of what he's going to be alike in my film:

"My" Hermes is a boyish man and the incarnated message or news. He's young and in good shape. He looks somehow birdlike, and his clothing is light and has a lot of feathers attached. He' bright and honest, passive and neutral like Switzerland in WWII. Deep down he's sensitive and lonely.

So I collected pictures of

• Hermes sculptures from several centuries
• ballet dancers
• differnet types of helmets and caps
• travelling cloaks
• angels
• birds, especially raven, and their wings
• silk and
• old newspapers.

From these collection I took single elements and assembled them in a drawing. After a visit to the Photoshop department, I now have a nice concept drawing of the Hermes character (I placed him into a picture of Vienna's Central Cemetery):

Well, this sketch is a lie.

The final puppet will be animated in the Land of the Dead, so he'll eventually be only a shadow of his former self. I'm going to work on his silhouette next.

It's been three weeks now since I've started working on the Orpheus project continously again. I got stuck during the puppet making process and did some research instead to find visual references for the backdrops and for some of the other puppets as well. I decided not to have only one huge reference wall but a smaller one for each setting of the film to find the specific look and feel for every single take, somehow like that one:

My reference walls are collections of photos and drawings I took or made myself, pictures from the internet, and sometimes found materials like little pieces of lace, paper or else. First of all, I collect them intuitively and without editing. Eventually I sort them according to categories like colours, textures or function of their respective kind of stage prop, for example. This mood board gives a nice impression of how the look and feel of the cemetery setting is going to be alike.

I also wrote several to do lists to get an overview of all the things which need to be done before I could start animating. It seems like there is still much to do but I can see the progress more clearly now. Since everything is listed I'm not afraid of missing something important any more. Aaand: Ticking items off the lists is always so very satisfying...

My puppet-making to do list is one out of only six checklists so far, though it feels like several dozens of them. Mhmmm, lists! Lists make progess visible... Progress is gooood!

So... Back to progress. – Back to work!

From time to time I'm reading a blog called Zen Habits on which Leo Babauta, the founder and main author of this website, writes about finding simplicity in the daily chaos of our lives, personal developement and accomplishing self-setted goals. With great interest I read Leo's post written to assist his readers to stick to their New Year’s resolutions. I decided to give it a try.

Why? – Well, you know, it's been two and a half year since I began working on the Orpheus project and I now really. want. to finish it. I want to have it done by the end of the year which sounds quite ambitious then, hm? But by telling you this I make sure that failing is a sort of embarrassing which hopefully keeps me away from doing so.

Last week I started working on the puppets again but only for a tiny amount of my day's time. However, I did it daily. This week I expanded the time window and I haven't missed a day which really makes me feel great. Though I always believed I havn't got much done up to now, I learned this wasn't true. After decluttering all the former results I now have a much better idea of how the silhouette puppets are going to be. I get used to the quotidian work in my studio and it started feeling like a job.

I reorganized the production time schedule and I absolutely think it's possible to finish the film within this year. I want to give my own artistic and personal development more room in my life since I want it to be more important than all the other things I do. Hell, that's what I always wanted to do, but for the last six months I just denied it. So again I decided to be an animation artist. – We'll see if I'll stick to this.

As a small foretaste of the silhouette puppets I'm working on have a look at these picuters of recently created prototypes:

Hades is the god or king of the Ancient Greek underworld. This silhouette puppet dummy is made of thin cardboard and approx. 35 cm at full height.

Cerberus is the three-headed hellhound who secures the entry to the underworld. This dummy is made of paper, and its shoulder height is about 10 cm high. I took this picture while the model was lying on my light table to get an impression of how it may look as a sihouette.

Especially the cerberus puppet moves nicely. And I'm really looking forward to animate the finally assembled puppets...

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PS Tomorrow is the second birthday of einfachanimation.de. Horray! – Though I'm neither in the mood for a party nor for any review this time. But I promise we're going to celebrate next year!

Since I decided to work with paper puppets again, processes had speeded up a bit, and they also had been much more focussed so far. During the last weekend I worked on the Charon puppet design.

Charon is a former prince of Arcardia who now owns the great job of ferrying the souls of the dead across the River Styx down to their new home, the underworld. He himself is neither dead nor alive. He's something in between without any chance to escape from his situation. Beyond that he's inconceivably old, has no joy at all and he surely is a pretty cynical and unpleasant person.

Current character design of Charon (2009)

I'd like to share those two pictures with you because they perfectly illustrates a process. The drawing above shows the current design after I had thought a lot how I'd love the puppet to be like. Although this is just a rough drawing and not the very last version of Charon, you'll get a clear idea of him.

The one below shows my first ideas of the puppet when I had started thinking about it two years ago. Plenty of things had happen inbetween – my trips to Bristol and Vienna, for example – and somehow I was bold enough to overcome my wish for realistic puppets and to go for something more stylistic.

Former character design of Charon (2007)

I was totally surprised when I compared the drawings for the first time. But to me, the general idea of the character still is the same no matter how different they seem to be at the first glance. Somehow the new Charon is much more precise. What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts within the comments!