The Captain's Armature

With Jangles sculpted I'm now trying to figure out how I should paint him. Oddly his colouring is something I've neglected until now and this has caused a bit of a problem. I think it's the size of his pants, if I paint them a vibrant colour/pattern they will detract attention from the face, but if I make them too drab then I have a large part of my character painted in an uninteresting way.

In the meantime I've started work on what will be my second and final character for this project; the Captain. As with Jangles I wrote a short list of defining attributes and described his actions and behavior. I've decided on his name being Captain Orton Titch, because titch is old english slang for a short person and the name 'Little Tich' originated from the name of a short english comedian who bore a resemblance to Arthur Orton the Tichborne claimant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tichborne_case).

"Orton Titch is the captain of the Mary Lou a small privateer vessel crewed by himself and four others. He identifies as a pirate, yet both he and his crew are all quite benign, preferring tricks and mischief to violence. They are the archetypical friendly pirates often associated with children's stories, tys, and films."

I've described him as being: Prone to illusions of grandeur, capricious, neurotic/irrational, lucky/fluky, a benign Napoleon, boisterous/energetic/lively, and cheeky/mischievous.

After this I then began work on his armature, I first drew up a quick map , going for the same techniques I developed through the creation of Jangles (and I was much quicker this time).

[Above]: The armature map for the Captain.

Through the lack of my usual thick armature, and a problem with 'shifting clay' that I encountered with Jangles (the clay slides along the armature instead of clinging to it) I decided to make my own thick armature wire with some light gauge wire and a power drill which I used to twist the folded wire together tightly.

This I then measured, cut to size, bent and then bound together to make the following armature.

The armature is little over 12cm tall and considerably small when compared with Jangles, yet both characters should still seem to be of the same scale. The size of this armature is quite deceptive due to the fact that his hat will be made almost entirely out of clay and carry a considerable weight.

Next I shall be bulking out the character with tin foil and beginning to build up the basic form with clay.