Koala Town

Hey everyone!  Thanks for sticking around if you have.  If you’ll recall, the Koala and Snake puppets are finished and are just waiting around for a stage to perform on.

Well!  It’s almost done.  Tonight I’ve been working hard for the past many hours cannibalizing wood from here and there (just from blocks and boards and other junk) to build a raised platform that would serve as the stage.  I found some moldy old boards lying around as well as some thick blocks from a previous, dropped project and sawed them down into what would become the frame for the platform.  Next, I needed to get something to cover the frame that would be used as the tie-down board for the puppets.  The tie-down board is what you use to, well, tie the puppets to the “floor” so they don’t wobble or fall over while you’re animating them.  I was originally going to just use cardboard and hope for the best but I needed something sturdier and found an old sheet of ehh…whatever that wood panel is called that has the holes in it you use to stick your tools up on the wall with.  You’ll know it in the upcoming photos.  So I used that as well as a broken down canvas frame from an old, crappy painting I did and that went into the finished product.  Now, I can start doing walk cycle tests and other test movements.  :D

I tried to make a quick Koala walk test but unfortunately the papier-mache feet weren’t sturdy enough and she kept falling over.  Now that I have some wood scraps though  I can easily break those down into little puppet feet and get that to work.  Shouldn’t be too hard.  I think I’m done for the night though.  I stopped to make something to eat and everything is intensely sore.  I don’t have a vice unfortunately so when I saw I have to manually hold the wood in place with my hand.  It’s a serious pain.  The same goes for hammering.

So, what’s next on the list of to-dos?  Well, after I refix the feet I’ll try to get some new test animations done and then after that, I’ll start building our first set.  :D  We still don’t have a script yet, sadly, for our very first Koala Town cartoon sketch but hopefully we’ll think of something!