During the production of When We Sleep, I was in charge of making the body of two of the clown characters for the carnival scene. the process of creating the puppets was arduous and lengthy, but we believed that this particular style would help the scene look more wonderous and dream-like, and serve as a homage for the stop-motion genre!
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Character Design
We began by designing the characters for the carnival scene, narrowing it down to the Tiger and Seal, later named "Patches" and "Proto"
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Sketching the Rig and
Head
After finalizing the character design, we began to sketch out the design of the rig for the body, and the structure of the head, which were made separately from one another as we wanted to keep the head detachable.
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Building the Body
We built the body using armature wire, Jewelry wire, and a 2 part Epoxy Sculpt to make the hands, chest and feet, and add detail.
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Making the Clothes
After the body is done, we measured the length of the arms and legs, and hand-sowed the tiny clown clothes according to each character's unique design. The hands and feet are painted as well.
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The head of the characters were made using a technique called Needle-Felting, and were done by the artist Annalise Gomez.
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Final Look!
