Play-Do

Today myself, Alec and Tom experimented with the wonderful invention that is play DO. We figured that if we are to make this film in a clay mation style then what better way to study the material than to play with it. We first took note of its texture and appearance, the way light reacted to it, its flexibility, feel, etc etc. We found out that by modelling with it, your hands leave finger and palm prints all over its surface. It is quite a dull/non reflective material, aswell as being very soft and easy to mould. It is hard to achieve a sompletely spherical smooth shape as the Playdo naturally is bumpy and has an un even look about it. Aswell as prints we also found that smaller objects and fine details could be seen on the outer exterior of the Do, such as hairs, scratches and dust. We took note of all the properties we observed in order for us to achieve the same texture in maya. The more you know about a texture the easier it is to replicate.

Next up we played around with character design. I have never used any other medium than 2D for concept designs in the past however I can safely say Play Do is an excellent way of experimenting with primilnary designs! Again part of the reason for using the play do was because we need our characters to look like they have been modelled out of it anyway but it soon became clear that it is also incredibly easy to knock out quick ideas. You are able to change, re mould, add to, remove, squish, expand or demolish any idea you come up with quickly rather than by pencil having to rub out or re draw. We spent the good part of a day modelling gorillas and the scottish zoo keeper, only focusing on head design for the time being. The brief stated we must include very expressional animation so we wanted the face features to be adaptable to crazy feature expressions. We came up with about 11 or so Gorilla concepts and 5 or 6 scotsman heads. All in all it was a fun session and we have already got an idea for the kind of style we want to go for, and few favourite heads! Group moral is up, we must keep working at this rate!

"Every day is Precious" Alec Smith 2009