Made With Peace & Love

stop motion animation
2023-2024

^{If you were a coffee bean in a glass jar with other coffee beans, how would you process the everpresent, looming feeling of impending doom?}

_Process

Puppet Fabrication - Main Characters

note: the bear character “Mike” was cut from the final film but went through all the development stages

For the main characters the armatures were made with brass tubing, aluminum armature wire, copper wire, floral wire which was attached together with epoxy. Each puppet has tie down in the feet. Foam was applied with sprayable glue and cut to the desired shape of each puppet. Next their “skin/fur” was added by the methods of sewing fabric over the foam or dry needle felting. Finally they got personally tailored outfits and their polymer clay eyes got glued on and replacement mouths were also made for them.

Puppet Fabrication - Background characters

I used barbie dolls, action figures, stuffed animals and all sorts of toys from my childhood to fill the background with chaos.

I repainted and restyled the dolls and action figures and put tie-downs in their feets.

In the case of the stuffed animals, I cut them open and inserted wire armatures and tie-downs to allow them to be poseable.

Set Design

I wanted a very cute and styalized look. To achieve this I used fabrics with minimal pattern and painted only with solid bright colors. I primarily drew inspiration from children’s TV imagery and dollhouses.

There were 5 set pieces all together. Each was treated as an independent set, being animated separately in front of a green screen. In post production I composited each panel together to create one large image of a perfect little town. To ensure that the camera movements (the big zoom out) stayed the same throughout each pass, I used a motion control camera that I programed within Dragonframe.

Set Fabrication

I used foamcore for the houses, either spraypainting them or spray gluing fabric to them. For the windows and doors I used wooden dowels and plastic to make the glass reflective. The trees are made of wood pieces and various fabrics. Other background elements like roads were made out of painted plywood, and the mountains were made of foam with fabric glued to them.