Long Time No Post!

WOW!
I really didn't realise that it had been this long since I posted last! My apologies, let me give you a quick recap of the last 4 weeks,
I turned 22
Alex turned 22
Much puppet, set and prop making.

The major changes are with the sets. such as, the mud or mulchy woodland floor. I first built up a bit of a slope using pink insulation foam to help the set look less flat then I added the mud.
I got this effect by mixing hamster bedding sawdust stuff, PVA glue, paint, a splash of water and a sprinkle of paper leaves. The PVA glue will make it all set nice and stiff so it doesn't move around if it's touched. The path was done using sand instead of sawdust because Barney only ever walks on the path so the magnets need to be able to get through it.
I left some gaps to add in the trees which i will then cover over the bases with another thin layer of mud, this time of a different colour to get a nice effect.
Talking of trees, we have begun to add a few branches to them, and branches mean leaves!! luckily we found some nifty craft punches which did most of the work for us, except for the glueing on!! Quite a relaxing job in a mind numbing kind of way. We made the branches out of twisted florists wire, you know the stuff that has the paper over it, and then glued each leaf on one by one. There are still many branches to make.

As far as puppets go, paint seems to be the issue. Alex did a test on the not so great badger puppet with acrylic and an air brush, which looks really nice until you move the puppet and the paint cracks. Whereas Jon used latex paint which essentially gave the fox a thick orange skin that creased really badly when the puppet was posed. Jon is currently experimenting with recasting the fox with ink in the foam latex mixture, hopefully that will work. In the mean time, I told Alex to stick with the acrylic and any cracks can be editted out in post.

Tom has made an amazing start on Barney's front room especially as we have 2 lots of props to make for it. The before and after money furniture is looking great! Barney goes from having a manky bean bag to a lush leather sofa. It's all starting to come together now and it's all down to the fine details.
Barney himself is not looking too shabby either. Tom did a few test animations and he's looking good.

Right now I'm working on Jack the dog. Instead of a single puppet, he will be a series of replacements, and boy is it hard to get them all looking the same!
More news and picks as I get them folks so stay tuned!