Armature Making..

I am cooking some foam latex on Monday (as long as it gets delivered in time... ) So I wanted to get everything ready for then. My fingers are in pain, and my skin is falling apart,I am very tired, but it was worth it.
I have made a lot of armatures today, and good looking ones too.

First thing I did though, was open the mould I left curing yesterday to see the final result:

 Then I took the plasticine hands out, and washed the mould with plenty of water:

Now I was ready to make armatures that will fit in this mould in the future:

And after making some hands, I've made a couple of heads:

Those two wires that stick to the side with a brown blob in the end, are the wires that are going to make the puppet smile (I hope). And I am not putting eyes in this armature 'cause I've decided to put the blobs of clay directly in the mould, to place the eyes after the latex is cooked.

After the heads, I went for the body, but this time, I made the final design of the armature, with replaceable hands and head:

And to sum up, this is a picture of today's work, all very tidy!!:

Before I finish this post, I wanted to point out the top pair of hands on the top of the previous picture, basically this ones:

 Notice they have a couple of nuts in the armature. This is because in early stages of preproduction, while I was doing some animation tests and I came across this shot:

I think the animation is not bad, but if you look at the hands, the keep moving around all over the place. In order to maintain them always in the same position, I needed the same tie downs I use for the feet. I simply chose a smaller size nut so they fitted inside the mould along with the armature. When I start animating (hopefully soon) I'll show the tie down system (to those of you how are not animators).

.........I just got  an e-mail from my foam latex suppliers saying they are out of stock until the 18th of April, this makes me very sad...and a bit stressed out!!! My schedule is getting a bit tight....but anyway, this means that I have to get ready (make A LOT of armatures) for as soon as I came back from Spain on the 28th of April, make three consecutive runs of foam latex and  rush to London to get everything painted..Then I'll go back to Spain to shoot the film!!

Nothing more for today...just have a nice weekend and be aware, I might be animating expressions in my puppet tomorrow!!!