Advanced Syncing

This is an update to show the progress of the synchronization.  The test subject is 7th Doctor Sylvester McCoy.  Instead of stationary lip movement, the entire puppet is beginning to come to life.  I haven't rigged his arms yet, which is why they are still out to his sides.

The work continues.  Stay tuned.

Rigging Hartnell

William Hartnell is being rigged for animation.  

Class Photo

Every character involved has now been designed.

General Cutler's son is also designed, but he's just a head on a screen, and not worth putting up right now.  There are a few things still the be drawn - The TARDIS, the radiation suits, the dreaded Z-Bomb (pronounced Zed), various props, and the very frightening and not at all ridiculous Cyber Ships!

The focus now shifts towards making a few storyboards.  The conceit of this animation is that it is very very simple.  It's meant to be like watching an animated Punch and Judy show.  Characters will bob up and down, flail their arms, and act like puppets.  But I still need to set up just how the characters will interact: who will be on stage together, how they will flail, and all that.  We'll see.  I'm just pleased to have reached this milestone.

Dr. Barclay

I've begun working on some of the more minor (can something be more minor?) characters.  Here we've got Dr. Barclay, a civilian scientist at Snowcap Base.  

The plain clothes make a welcome change!  

General Cutler forgot that it was Casual Friday.

Animated Anneke

Now Polly is properly color corrected.  Did a few minor tweaks and smoothed out some edges.  I think this is pretty much the final version of her template.

And with that, I'm pretty sure that I will make The Tenth Planet episode 4 my first full animation puppet project.  Now on to Ben Jackson!

Polly Part 2

I got started and didn't want to stop until I got this finished.  I'll look at it again tomorrow with fresh eyes to find all the mistakes I probably made.

I don't have a color reference for Polly's Tenth Planet outfit, so pink will do for now.  The more I think about it, the more I'm leaning towards doing The Tenth Planet.  We'll see.

Polly

Just getting started on my next character.  This is the earliest stage of designing Polly Wright.

Much more work to do.  But I think this design is off to a good start.  Stay tuned.

10th Planet Cyberman work in progress

This is a nearly completed 10th Planet Cyberman head on top of the rough sketch for his body.

This gives me a rough idea of the proportions of the body which I will go back and clean up.  I may either shrink the head or expand the body, because the proportions aren't quite in proportion.

I've been considering trying to animate the 4th episode of The 10th Planet, since that story is missing only that episode.  We shall see.

Refining Bill

Hartnell's face is now much closer to how I want it.

The hair has been darkened, his eyes lowered, his expression calmed down, and his cheek bone defined.  He's still clearly a work in progress.  I've roughly sketched his outfit, which is bound to change a little.

Making Hartnell Cute

Patrick Troughton lent himself to caricature more easily than his predecessor, William Hartnell.  Troughton had impish features and a mischievous face.  Hartnell had patrician dignity and a hawkish aspect.  In other words, his template is taking a little more time to perfect.  In the meantime, here he is in extremely rough draft form.  The face still needs work.  The curls in the back of the hair need tightening up.  Once he's got a frock coat, it may help to pull it all together.

He may look better with slight eyelids.  His current expression makes it look as though he's mistakenly seen Chesterton naked.  I may also go over the borders of his hair in a darker gray to make them stand out more.

This is going to take some work.

No McCrimmonations

Over the last day I've been drawing and tweaking the 2nd Doctor companion, Jamie McCrimmon.

The project is still in its infancy, which means that now is the time that I need to figure out how like and how unlike I want these characters.  I want them to be recognizable, certainly, but also simplified and exaggerated.  I still need to tartan up the kilt, and I may or may not be altering the face.  I'm not overly designing the outfit because I want a base model that can be easily adjusted and have features added to it.  If I wanted to give him a sash, it would be a separate feature layered on top of him, rather than drawn onto the template.

This Cyberman is an example of the balancing between attention to detail and avoiding too much detail.  If these characters were being made as actual puppets, you wouldn't see every last bit and piece of the original design.  The trick is to make it look like it has as much detail as it needs, but absolutely no more than it needs.