Armatures

I bought four armatures from Animation Toolkit, three of the cheapest ones and one of the mid priced ones. I made the armature for Rumpelstiltskin with one of the cheaper armatures as he is quite small and so I wouldn't need to cut all new pieces of metal down as the mid priced armatures came with set lengths of metal. I followed the instructions that came with the armature to assemble it and measured out each stretch of wire against the clay maquette that I had made. The problem with this armature is that the hands can't be replaced very easily so if the hands break while animating it will be very difficult to replace them. However, my animation is very short so hopefully they won't be overworked to the point of them breaking in the short amount of animation.

The King's armature was more difficult. I used the mid priced armature as his character is very big and potentially quite heavy so I didn't want the wire to bend inside him. I assembled the armature by following the instructions provided, but the armature ended up too tall so I had to go to the metal workshop with the spare pieces of metal and get them cut down to the correct size to make the legs about 2cm shorter. This armature easily manages to loosen itself which will be really inconvenient when animating so I will need to use some glue to make the connections less likely to loosen themselves. I will have to be careful to not let the glue get into the joints making them unable to move as this will limit the movement too much.

The miller and the millers daughter armatures were both done with the cheaper armature as I found these easier to manipulate and, as my characters wont have to move too much and are unlikely to break in the short animation that I will be creating.