Mike Tharme, Continuing the Snowball.

I am very pleased to announce the arrival of my Anibuild armature parts from Animation Toolkit, which are based in the Manchester area. I am extremely grateful to also say that Animation Toolkit are sponsoring the construction of these armatures, an offer I am very humbled by and indebted to. Animation Toolkit have been a real friend to me since 2012 when they announced their Ray Harryhausen Armacreature kit, as well as all the opportunities they have offered me over the years, from assisting the build of  250+ armatures for the Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires feature film to making a custom Dragon armature to display the construction possibilities with their parts. I'll be publishing a future post about the construction of these armature. Here I want to talk a little bit more about the parts I have ordered, starting with the Ball joints, Chest & Hip plates and finishing on the Paddles and Rods. I hope for those of you who have seen their site and are thinking ...

When I began thinking about making Wildlife on Mars, I knew I wanted to make them in the form of Dinosaurs, but which Dinosaurs to choose from? The selection today ranges from Theropods, Sauropods and Ceratopsians to name a few, and of course, the non-Dinosaurs like Mammal-reptiles, Marine reptiles and Flying reptiles. I wanted to chose designs that would be iconic and recognizable to a child but different and interesting to an adult, so I created some rules to follow. ALWAYS use dated and retro prehistoric designs as a guide and take ideas from nature. Make sure to reference your peers and acknowledge their imagination. NO pure science fiction life forms, it must be within the realm of plausibility . Be realistic, you need to make an armature and animate it. This is NOT a cartoon, no talking animals or cute things. How would Ray do it? I also wanted to keep the emphasis on using dated designs of these dinosaurs as the main starting point, mainly because it kept the cha...

Until recently, my only knowledge on mould making was basic, rules such as not having undercuts to allow easy removal of a casting and using mold release. I also only had material experience with plaster and silicone, I was aware of fibreglass mould's, but I had never used it on any job or hobby project to date. I have recently discovered a material that the industry also use whilst I was employed at Telegael in Ireland, which is called Aluminium Resin (I refer to it as Alucast for short). It's stronger than plaster, but just as light as polyresin, it's virtually odorless, it can be sanded with a file or a belt sander, each casting cures in about 30-60 minutes and it can be used for silicone and foam latex casting. If you're working at home making your own stop-motion film, you can make your mold's in whatever fashion and material feels comfortable for you; However, if you are looking to work in the industry, they expect a level of skill that demonstrates...

In this list are short films, music videos and commercials that I have found over the years that have added to my collective of inspiration. These are sometimes to do with their story, their visuals or even their technical level of animation. Sometimes it's not always about the big budget feature films that brings that spark to my creative influences, I'm always in awe by how script writers, animators and and to tell a story in 30 minutes or less is a challenge at the best of times for me. "Chuck Steel: Raging Balls of Steel Justice" I became aware of the work of Mike Mort back in 2000 with the airing of the series "Gogs" on the BBC channels, and for me it was a visually attractive style, with classic "Tom and Jerry" violence mixed with slightly gross, playground antics, it was brilliant. Then in 2013 I discovered Chuck Steel, this was such a step up from Gogs, the adult humor, the action sequences, the animation smoothness and the clay sc...

In recent years I came across two videos on Youtube made by Special Effects artist and stop-motion enthusiast Tom Woodruff Jr. He had special permission to animate the original armatures of Mighty Joe Young and King Kong, both armatures made between the 1930's and 1940's.  Tom is one of the founding members of Studio ADI and a former artist of Stan Winston Studio. You may recognize his name from his creature suit performances from the films Aliens, Aliens Vs. Predator, Pumpkinhead and many other feature projects. It's interesting to see the movements of these armatures without the fur and bodies to conceal the mechanics of each joint and their relationship to the rest of the armature. Considering their age, they still hold up extremely well after nearly 90 years, which is a testament to the original creators of the armatures Marcel Delgado and Willis O'Brien. Understanding how these mechanics translate into the characters performance, especially when comparing to...