FXU Animation Props

For the recent stop motion adverts I made for the Falmouth and Exeter Students' Union, I required a variety of props, and here they are in all their glory, with my personal favourite, the disgruntled piggy bank, first.

I made the piggy bank from polymer clay and painted it with acrylic paint.

To illustrate the money troubles of Steph, value baked beans, the staple food of a penniless student, just had to play a part. Poymer clay was used to make the tin, painted with waterolours, with a card label and plasticine for the baked beans. The spoon was made by third year Falmouth Animation and Visual Effects student Alasdair Montgomery, from polymer clay.

The books were made from pieces of cardboard stacked on top of each other (forming the pages) and then more cardboard was folded over them, forming the book cover. I then used papier-mache to coat the whole thing, creating an old, wrinkled paper kind of texture, before painting them with watercolours. The phone was sculpted by Alasdair from polymer clay and was painted with acrylics by me. I also overlaid a piece of acetate over the screen area, to create a shinier surface.

The used paint tubes were constructed from pieces of tinfoil that I screwed up in the shape of the tubes, as it was good for getting that squashed and twisted look, like all the paint had been squeezed out of them. I coated this in latex tinted with white acrylic ink and once dry, coloured it with gel pens. The paintbrushes were made by Alasdair from cocktail sticks, embroidery thread and the bristles from actual paintbrushes.

The mug was made from polymer clay, painted with watercolours.

The laptop was a pretty cool prop to make, as it was a practical prop. I needed to be able to turn it on and off, mid shot. 

The laptop was made from polymer clay painted with watercolours. It did not have a screen, as this would be put on digitally in post. For the shots where the laptop needed to turn on, I stuck a small mains powered LED light on the screen and tried to tuck the wire away as discreetly as possible in each shot, as any exposed wire would have to be edited out in post. I loved the shots with the lit up laptop, as it cast really cool shadows and illuminated the puppet's face.

The bed was made from balsa wood with rumpled fabric stuck on top for the sheet and duvet. The pillow is foam with fabric suck round it.

By the time I made the desk I had run out of balsa wood, so I cut up some polystyrene in the shape I wanted and then placed a sheet of card on for the desktop. To get a wooden texture, I coated the whole thing in papier mache, keeping it quite neat but with choice wrinkles to show the wood grain. I painted it with watercolour.

The chests of drawers were carved from balsa wood by Alasdair and I then painted them with watercolour, sticking some beads on for the knobs.

I wanted Steph's bedroom to look quite cluttered, with a slightly messy student feel. The props and set have a slight lopsided, off kilter style, to help convey this sense of a student bedroom.