I made the basic armature for the Dr. Jangles sculpt today. After going over the old armature map, I decided that a 6 piece armature was probably a bit too fragile and fiddly, so I reworked it and managed to design a much stronger 3 piece armature.
I measured out the rough lengths of each of the parts, rolled and straightened roughly 95cm of heavy gauge armature wire, marked out the measurements and bending points, and then cut them all to size.
Armature wire, being made of aluminum, is incredibly hard to solder so I usually wrap thin copper wire around the various parts of the armature that need to be bound together (in this case the spinal area).
The copper does a surprisingly good job of holding everything together, but to be safe I added a few blobs of super glue to the spinal area and waited for it to dry, then wiped off any excess glue.
When measuring I made sure to leave a bit of extra wire in the feet so that I could bend down the ends to insert into a base.
After drilling a couple of suitable holes into my 'work bench' (just a plank of MDF) I inserted the armature into the holes and made some fine posture adjustments with my hands. It's sturdy and - as far as I can tell - to the correct scale.
I'm not sure if I should give him a more dynamic pose, because I feel that it might compromise the dimensions of the sculpt and I want it to communicate his basic dimensions and shape at a glance.
This was all done in roughly an hour.
More updates to come. Progress shots below, I think I'll take more of future characters so you can see more of my process, but it's hard to stop working when you're 'in the zone'.
[Above]: The workbench with armature.
No comments:
Post a Comment