Exeter model making course

In week 5 I made some more changes to the scale drawing and prepared to start building. On Tuesday I had a first go getting familiar again with the machines in the fabrication centre and drilling some ball bearings with the 'kit' for ball and socket armature making that was there, developed by someone not working there anymore. I figured out that I could not use this kit for the smaller holes I wanted to drill, neither for the smaller ball bearings I wanted to use. So I knew I would have to make a tool myself.

Most week I've been in Exeter for a three day model making course, leaded by model maker Gill Bliss from Aardman. Below are some pictures from the work I've been doing at the course (I'm looking really angry, let's call it concentration...).

Each day we had separate assignments. The first day was about research and designing on paper, then transferring the 2D design into a 3D clay maquette. I choose to follow up on the bird character in the hope it could give me some fresh ideas for the design, but this may not have been the best choice for the course. I learned that I would have to let go of what had been in my head all time for these three days to make most from the course. Still it did give me the opportunity to sculpt a more detailed version of a possible head design. See picture below for a close-up of the final sculpt.

The second day was about making a full figure that was half maquette, but should have 2 moving parts. I choose to work not work from my own design this time and tried sculpting/building from the sketches for a tiger inspired character from Andy. It was a useful exercise to try and interpret the 2D design of someone else, not having any more information then what is to be seen in the drawings.

I had a portfolio session this day as well. I got some really good advice on naming of skills on my cv and the organizing of work on my model making page of my portfolio. I definitely want to spend some time soon improving my portfolio and cv from the given advice.

Last day of the course we worked on wire armatures with replaceable parts. To make the exercise most useful I decided to work closely from female proportions, as my latest puppets were all male characters. I'd like to finish the armature another time and possibly skin it and give it some tests, trying to give it some female character in the animation as well. We also talked about job roles and careers in model making and watched a behind the scenes documentary on Aardman. Especially a lot of the talking and advice in between has been really useful, and it has been good to practice some sculpting and designing again as well, and to be forced to produce something in a given (short) time.