I made sure with this sculpt to have the grain of the wood running from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin so that it was easier to carve the detailing into the face. It worked! I was able to control the tools alot better and create something which looked a lot more like my designs!
Once I was happy with the sculpt, I stained it roughly with coffe and then added pencil to the deeper crevices in the wood.
Perfect size!:
I then added pins for his eyes and glued on the book pages which I then filed away roughly again. Et voila!
I decided to add bits of torn up book pages to the wood here and there and then sanded them back a bit to make it look like it is growing naturally ontop of the wood. I didn't want to hid the wood and it's texture completely so this technique works well.
I had also bought two jump rings in different sizes with extension chains to try and create a monocle. This works quite well but I will decide on the size when I have made the final head.
I decided to stick with the pins for eyes but thought they needed something to make them look more like they belonged to the puppet so I covered them in book pages as well.
I wanted to see whether eyebrows would work on this head like I tried on the foam latex one, so twisted two very fine bits of wire and glued these into the head. I then wrapped wadding around them to give the eyebrow effect, I was considering more book pages but thought this might be a bit of overkill on the book page front!
Finally I had a go at darkening the crevices of the face with a pencil and thought this worked quite well. I had experienced with the coffee that the wood was just going to soak up anything liquid that I applied to it but the pencil obviously stayed put and I was able to blend and smudge it aswell.
| | I am pleased with the general look of this head using the balsa wood and how I have treated it. I am going to make a new head making sure the grain of the wood is facing the right way this time so that I can carve better detail into the facial features.
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I tested the two head that worked well under camera and lighting to see how they looked on screen.
Balsa Wood:
Sculpey, foam and latex:
I thought they both worked well on screen. I do slightly prefer the balsa wood for a few reasons, the main one being that it is a really light material and doesn't affect the movement of the body armature. It is also really nice to work with and the definition of the face showed up a lot better than I thought it would. The sculpey, foam and latex head does look really visually nice, however it is really quite heavy and had an impact on the body armature. It was also shiney in places because of the latex and I want to try and avoid this.
What I want to try next is adding book pages to the balsa wood, like I did to the foam and see if this adds the nice textural quality that the foam head has.
After my meeting with the stop motion technician I tried out her different suggestions for eyes in my balsa wood head:
Dowling balls
I quite liked these but they are too round in terms of what I want the aesthetic to look like.
Black pins - raised out of head
I really liked the suggestion of using pins and in particular thought the black pins raised out of the head worked particularly well.
Black pins - set in head
White pins - raised out of head
White pins - set in head
| Staining test.
| Staining
I wanted to try and stain the wood so as to give a bit more definition around specific features. After a coffee break I saved a bit of coffee at the bottom of my cup so as the use this to paint onto the wood. It worked ok but as the wood is very absorbent it tended to expand over the area I wanted it to be so I had to cut more of the wood back afterwards.
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I've started to carve a head out of balsa wood, it was a material suggested to me that might work well in a previous feedback session.
Here's how I got on:
| | I really liked working with the wood, the only problem I came across which I didn't realise when I had started was that I was carving the wrong way into the wood. I had positioned the grain at the front where his face is so would do this again with it on top so as not so affect the carving. I'm not sure if this will be the material I will use yet, I still want to test other methods. The two main concerns I have for the balsa wood are whether the detail of the face will show up well under camera and what I will do about the eyes. I shall test these both!
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