Animation Jumpstart - Making a Character

Clay/Play-Doh
Materials:
• Non-drying Clay or Play-Doh in mul4ple colors.

• Aluminum Armature Wire and wire-cu>er (op4onal).

• Clay sculp4ng tools (op4onal).

Achievement Goals:
• Demonstrate ability to build a clay character that can stand upright, and have it’s
limbs moved to different posi4ons without sagging or breaking off.

Instructions:
You probably don’t need to demonstrate for your student how to play with clay, but what
you will want to demonstrate is how to make a clay character suitable for stop-mo4on.

Here’s some key features to shoot for if they are going to make their character from only
clay.

• The character needs to be able to stand. Try larger legs and feat, and a generally low
center of gravity.


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 • Limbs should be thick enough to be put in a pose and hold that new posi4on. This
means your character will probably be pre>y stumpy.

• Keep the character simple. Clay can be hard to manipulate and there’s poten4al to
break pieces off each 4me it’s moved, so keep the character simple so that there are
fewer parts to move and it’s easy to rebuild if it gets damaged.

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Creating armature
If you want to get a li>le more sophis4cated, and allow your student to make a character
with less limita4ons that’s poten4ally easier to pose, you can use armature wire to make a
skeleton for a clay character.

You’ll want to get aluminum armature wire. This wire is flexible enough to be easily poses,
but won’t wear out and snap off from repeated bending.

The gauge (thickness) of wire you want to use depends on the size of the character you
want to make. 16 gauge is good for characters who are going to be over 5 inches (12cm)
tall. For smaller characters you’ll want a thinner wire; 18 gauge wire is be>er.

The simplest way to make an armature is to make it all from a single piece of wire. Start by
cu]ng off a long length of armature wire, and bending it in half.

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Then, start by twis4ng it at the bend to make support for the head and neck.

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Then bend the rest of the wire into a general star shape, this will give you a sense of how
long your arms and legs will be.

Then twist the arms of the star to create the arms of the character.

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Then hook the loose ends around the body at where you want the hips to be.

Then twist the legs. Leave fairly large loops at the end and bend them up to act as feet.

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For the por4on in the middle where the body is, you can either leave that open, or twist it
into a spine, if you want the character to be more flexible.

From there you can mold the clay around the wire to build up your character.

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This gives you a character that is flexible and can hold a pose, with much less risk of it
coming apart.

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Activity:
• Have the student experiment with the clay and build some figures with it. Challenge
them to see how many different poses they can put the character into. Try to do at
least 10. This will give them a sense of how sturdy and stable their figure is.

• If you’re using armature wire, have your student repeat the process you
demonstrated for them of making an armature, and building a clay body around it.
Have them prac4ce pu]ng the character into at least 10 poses, and check that the
character is able to stand.

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