My primary goal for this short film was to show a change of emotion. My secondary goals were to incorporate dance and, of course, I wanted to create a chicken character.
I started with rough character sketches to explore personality and shape.
I settled on a bird with a shorter neck and eyes sitting closer together - an overall rounder and more anthropomorphic little chicken.
Next I tried different armatures. This was my first three-dimensional puppet so the first wire I used was much too thick and stiff. The second wire was more malleable. I initially wrapped the body in aluminum foil but that didn’t provide the bulk I needed. I ended up building the body with foam but keeping the foil for the head.
Since I wanted to be able to adjust the facial features in subtle ways, I decided to coat the head of my chicken in clay. I could have chosen a few different expressions and made papier mâché heads to swap out, but I am pleased with all the expressions and emotions I was able to create and convey in clay. In this photo the legs were also coated in clay, but I opted against this in my final character as the legs needed to move a lot and the clay kept peeling away from the wire. I ended up covering the legs with painter’s tape and painting it the same color as the clay head.
The final version of my chicken features a body covered in jute, and a pair of old wooden beads for the eyes.
For the set, I covered a crate with fabric, used a floor lamp, and I did my best to cover all the windows to control the light. Stop-motion is an extremely slow process and this film took several days to shoot.
And that was it! I shot in Dragonframe using my tethered iPad. Sometimes I used a metal shoe rack, sometimes a ream of printer paper and a rubber band to hold the camera in position. Someday... someday! I’ll shoot in a real, live studio.
I hope you love the film as much as I enjoyed making it.
