Drink glasses

From the beginning of the concept I thought of using real tiny drink glasses in my film. But it was impossible to find different kind of glass on the right scale. I was in contact with a friend of mine who said to know someone with the right glass blow skills to make the tiny drink glasses I had in mind. His name is Robert Lambermont, a spatial designer with a broad range of skills. He makes objects made of wood, plastic, glass and metal. 

Check out his website too see all the awesome projects he has made: http://www.robertlambermont.nl

I made every kind of glass I needed out of clay on the right scale

Inside glassworks 'Van Glas' in Amsterdam - http://www.vanglas.nl

In deep concentration...

The clay version and the final result

All the final drink glasses in a row

I thought of putting some liquid silicone in it, or even real water with a colour pigment. But that would not match the rest of the design of the characters and the set and it would even not be handy using a liquid solution when animating the shots. So used coloured paper to depict the drinks.

Two shots from the film with filled drink glasses

Necks and facial replacement

I used the same modelling and moulding technique to make to necks of the puppets.

Afterwards I started to make a first detailed model with plastiline clay. I liked the result. It pretty much looks like the 2D character Julia Jager drew for me.

I had to make a decision where to make the cutting line for the jaw replacement. I also carved away the mouth to make a hole to put white plasticine in, so I can in-between the animation of the mouth.

The next casting steps were almost the same as when I made the hands and feet of the puppets, but this time I made a silicone mould for the plasticine head and replacement.

 I made a few tests to know for sure I could get rid of the bubbles in the PU resin.

And eventually put the neck into the silicone mould and casted the PU resin head.

A recording that shows how the magnetic jaw replacement works

Plasticine mouth tests

Facial replacement, from Norbert's to Molly's

Failed replacement castings... 

Mostly because of air captured inside the mould

 Modelling Molly's hair

 Casting of Molly's hair

Colour tests on replacements and hair

 All kinds of expressions; the replacements are finally finished!

Expression sheets

These are the expression sheets I made of Norbert and Molly for each scene in the film. By making these sheets I know which facial expression I have to model in plasticine clay on the PU resin jaw replacements of each puppet.

Feet

The hands are finished! Now I am going to make the feet of both Molly and Norbert. The design of the feet is not that important, because they are not often to be seen on screen. That's why they don't have to be too detailed. I didn't want to lose a lot of time modelling a left and right leg, so I made one universal foot for both characters. I started with Molly's feet because it was the most difficult model to make.

The two parts are ready. So let's clean then up.

First foot done! It worked out just fine. 

Just had to add some extra black silicone on the shoe to fill up the white moulding lines.

Let's model Norbert's feet

First part and second part of the mould

Drying, waiting, ping!

It wants to break free!

I made a quick casting test with transparant silicone

 Adding the first layer of coloured silicone

Norbert's left (or right) foot is finished! 

The second foot is in the making

Et voilà!

UP NEXT: Modelling and casting the Poly Urethane resin heads of Norbert and Molly.