Armature

[DESIGNS] 

Following the clay head I made, i decided to create the same character and make a matching body. The look I was going for was a militant general of some sort. I also drew the design of the armature frame.

Inspiration

Back

Front

Side

Armature movement

Different wires

[ARMATURE FRAME]

 This was my first armature which did not work very well at all. His limbs were too weak and had no support whatsoever. Unfortunately I had to start again, but it taught me what to do right next time.

My second armature frame was much better and was a much stronger support. I decided to experiment and use plasticine instead of epoxy putty to fill the limbs and torso. I wanted the plastacine to become hard, so i placed a little ball of plasticine in my freezer as a test. 

 

After leaving the ball in the freezer for 24 hours I took a look, at first the ball was really hard but after 2 minutes of touching and playing with the ball, it went back to its normal rubber-like state and slowly started to deform. This concluded with not to use plasticine in epoxy's place to hold the limbs together!

This was my first armature and I found it really annoying working with wire, as it was quite fidgety and wouldn't bend the way i wanted it to. I encountered many problems when creating my armature, including having to restart all over. I didn't plan the size of my armature very well either, so it is quite big. I also used plasticine instead of epoxy on the body as an experiment, this made my model quite heavy, which makes it impossible for him to stand, I could solve this problem by using a stronger wire for the limbs or removing some of the plasticine.

Besides the problems I am happy with the armature's appearance, his overall structure and the proportion of the different body parts, especially the hands which i find the most effective. As this was my first armature, it gave me an insight into how to create an armature using only the basic materials, for the next time I would take into consideration the good and bad points from this armature into creating a more successful one.