Building Pikku part four, hands

Pikku will need two pair of hands in the film. One pair of regular rod controlled hands. I make them with a jeansbutton to attach the rod, wich I make from a wire hanger. The second pair have to have movable fingers for som subtle movement in a couple of scenes. The two pairs also have to be easy to switch.

Regular hands

I make the arm of some thicker foam that I cut a little bit rounder. I also cut a bit in the elbow to make the arm more bendable. In the shoulder I attach a leather strap that I make a small hole in. on the inside of Pikku I put a wedge through the hole. By removing the wedge I can easily exchange arms.

Gripping hands

The pair of hands that have to be able to grip I cut out aof a piece of puzzlemat from Rusta. I cut grooves where the fingers are going to bend and put a thread through the fingers and the hand.

The wrist of the foam hand I attach to the tube of a 100 yen toy nunchucku. This will be the lower arm. I reinforce the hand with a piece of stiff plastick and put some foam around the nunchucku pipe and attach an upper arm of foam (just like the upper part of the regular arm. then I cover the arm in fur.

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Building Pikku Iso part three, I hate sewing

Building Pikku part three, sewing

It’s time for the worst part of puppetmaking, it’s time to bring out the thread and needle and I hate sewing. It’s tough on my shoulders and neck, it’s hard to see with black thread on black fur and it’s just as much job to undo if something has gone wrong.

I hate sewing

Yes, I hate sewing

I chose a short haired sheep like fur for Pikku, complimented with some longer fur in special places klike on his head, shoulders and elbows. Fur is quite forgiving and atleast it’s nice that the seams aren’t so visible..

I hate sewing

I use pretty much the same pattern as for the foam base but I add 1 cm around so the fur will fit the base. I change the pattern mailly around the jaw and neck, because the fur puppet will be one piece once done, not a separate head and body. Something thats important when working with fur is to cut the fur from the backside and only cut through the back cloth, not the hair.

I hate sewing

Still hate sewing

About a week and a pinful neck later and Pikku is becoming fuzzy. I also install the eyelights and brow mechanism now and then I make an arm sock that I glue to the base of the skull and jaw. Once the arm sock and the body attached there will be a lot of trouble to reach inside the head, so I doublecheck that everything in the head is complete.

I hate sewing

A few days of sewing later Pikku has gotten a pair of ears. His normal arms are also furry and attached to the shoulders. pikku is almost complete now.

I hate sewing

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Building Pikku’s house with foamboard and cardboard

Building Pikku’s house

Pikku’s house is an old and creaky Torne valley house with kitchen and livingroom on the first floor. Second floor has a Bedroom and a Nintendo room. Everything has become a bit crooked over the years, but Pikku keeps the house in good shape.

Pattern for Pikku’s house

I will build the house of foamboard and cardboard for details like windowframes and corner moldings. But I start by creating a pattern for the house using Light Wave 3d, just as I did when I made Pikku himself.

Pikku's house in light wave 3d

Just like when I created Pikku I make an UV-map of all the parts in Light Wave 3d. I save the UV-map as eps and print it out. I then copy the pattern to the foambard and cut each part out. Then it is time for glueing.

Pikku's house huset_foamboard

Glueing and detailing Pikku’s house

One by one I glue the pieces together and start creating detils like the windowframes (that I cut from the cover of Yuki’s sketch book). After many hours of glueing, cutting and piecing togeather, I have this:

Pikku's house all white

Now it’s time to start painting the house. I use acrylic color and a rough bristle to get a lot of texture. I also paint each layer in a slightly different shade to get a nice shift in colors.

Pikku's house with paint

Next I start with the front door and the porch. The door will never be opened in the film, so a glued door is good enough. The porch pillars and fence are made of cardboard and the broom is made from a wooden roasting stick (for shishkebab) and some balsa wood. The ligts are made with a battery powered light chain from Rusta that I duckttape to the right places.

I also paper the walls with cutouts from a magazine to give some more life behind the windows. I also cut some curtains from some old cloth.

Finally I glue in place some gutters that I made from paper straws i found at Clas Ohlsson.

Building pikku's house

Next step is the hill and area around the house.

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Building Pikku part two, foam

Cutting an building Pikku in foam

When the paper prototype is done and scaled to fit my hand I start building Pikku in foam. I start by tracing the pattern on the foam and then carving out the pieces by using a sharp knife. For Pikku i use a 1 cm thick foam.

Building pikku iso UV-map

Gluing it all togeather

Then I open up the smelly contact cement to glue everything together. Once done I have a complete puppet base.

bilding pikku iso foam

Next I cut a mouthplate from a piece of puzzle mat i got from Rusta. I glue the mouthplate in place, carefylly forming the beak.

To give more support to the eye area I also glue a piece of hobby foam behind Pikkus forehead before carving his eyesockets..

Building Pikku Iso hobby foam

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Building Pikku part one, patterns

Building hand puppets

All the main characters in the film are going to be played by hand puppets. Pikku is in most scenes and his puppet will therefore be the most advanced of all of them. His eyebrowse are going to be moveable, his eyes will be glowing and his ears will also be moveable. But the first step is to build the puppet base in foam.

I choose to make Pikku’s body in two parts, torso and head. Arms, legs and tail will be interchangeable. Pikku will need a number of different arms and it should be easy to switch them out and replace with anoter arm depending on the need of the scene.

Making patterns

I started wit the old model I used when Pikku was going to be animated. With that model in mind I created pattern for te foam base and colored the different parts of the pattern in Light Wave 3D.

Mall för Pikku Dockan - building the Pikku puppet

I make wedges in the colored parts depending on the curvuature of the body. When I flatten the parts by making an UV-map, I get perfect flat parts that will recreate Pikku’s form when glued togeter.

The finished UV-map is then imported to Photoshop and scaled to fit the my hand.

Mått för handen - building the Pikku puppet

Before I start to cut foam and build the puppet, I cut the pattern and tape it together. By making this paper prototype I can make shure that the puppet will fit my hand and I can easily upscale the pattern in Photoshop if it’s to small.

UV-map för att bygga docka

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Maahinen, a protector of land

Maahinen in mythology

A maahinen or maahiainen, a protector or keeper of land, is a type of wight in the Torne valley folklore. For example the tracks in the woods often belonged to theese keepers and maps of their tracks were kept to make shure you didn’t go and build something on one of them, or you could get in trouble.

Children were warned not to go alone into the woods because they were easily fooled by the forest keepers and got lost or dissapeared. You could also invoke the wrath of the forest keepers by pooping in the woods, unaware of the spot beeing the home or nest of the forest keepers.

Keepers often kept cows, who like them, were invisible most of the time. Their cows gave a lot of milk and one way to get one was to marry a keeper woman. To get her everlasting love you had to throw a knife over her. You could also just throw a knife or a pair of scissors over the cow itself if you wanted it (I don’t know if you also got everlasting love from the cow).

Maahinen in the film

In the film Who can love Pikku Iso? maahinen have been a bit modernized . Piku lives in a house and has no cows. He still have a duty to protect a certain piece of land though, a duty he inherited from his father, the well known and respected keeper of land, Iso Iso.

If you want to read more about the Torne valley folklore and can read either Swedish or Meänkieli there is a book called Manalaisitten Kirja/Andarnas Bok by Birger Winsa (I wil give the book back to you Anton, I promise).

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Who can love Pikku Iso?

Far up north, where winters are cold and summer night glow red
there was a small village, once thriving, now dead
Life here used to be quite fine
util the day that they closed down the mine

The village Isopikkujärvi, deep in the Tornevalley, only has one resident, Pikku Iso. Pikku is a maahiainen, a keeper of grounds, a duty he has inherited from his father. Because of this duty he has remained in the village as other people have left or died.

The lsolitude weighs heavily on Pikku and after a while he decides it’s time to share his life with someone. He starts by signing up to an internet dating site and before not to long, he has a match.

In the film we get to follow Pikku´s hardships in his quest to find love.

Production

The film will be a mix of computer animation, hand-in-mouth puppets, video and stop-motion where all main character are puppets while minor background character are stop motion animated.

A pilot for the film will be completed before the end of the year.

Thanks to development funding from Filmpool Nord AB, support from Norrbottens läns landsting and a grant from Stiftelsen Längmanska kulturfonden.

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Kiruna Festival ’16

Kiruna Festival

'16

Stop motion animated commercials for the Kiruna Festival 2016

The idéa for the 2016 edition fo Kiruna festival was to make a stop motion animation of a bumblebee flying through an apartment, revealing the artists in the everyday objects in the background.

I started by making a number of short films, one for each artist reveal. I then combined them all to a longer film that was shown on the outdoor screens aswell as online.

I also created the base image for the poster of the festival as well as some graphics for use online.

Martin Eriksson, TCB i Kiruna AB made the music for the film

For:

year:

Music by:

Homepage:

Kirunafestivalen

2016

Martin Eriksson, TCB i Kiruna AB

www.kirunafestivalen.com

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Phantom – BLK Tape

Phantom

BLK Tape

Animated short/music video for Phantom by BLK Tape

This is the 4 minute long animated music video for Phantom by BLK Tape.

No one could have missed Shangri-La by BLK Tape, released earlier in the winter and when the time came for a video for their follow up single, BLK Tape decided they wanted something animated.

The story was worked out by me and Ludvig Nilsson of BLK Tape over a cup of coffe.

The film depicts a young man leaving his youth and party life behind, going into adulthood.

Animated and directed by me, Magnus Fredriksson.

I cooperation with:

Year:

BLK Tape

2016

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Notes from a small Japanese town

Notes from a

small Japanese town

Animated short from 2015

In the animated short film Notes from a small Japanese town you get to come along and experience a hot summer day in the small Japanese town Misato, in Saitama, north of Tokyo.

Notes from a small Japanese town has been in production since 2012 when I, during long walks around Misato and Katsushika, collected most of the small observations of the film.

When I got back to Sweden the film grew and grew into a full short film and pretty soon I decided to animate in stereoscopic 3d wich made it the first film in the format from Bortbyting.

The premiere of the film was in India and it has since been screened in Kiruna, Luleå, Norrköping, Seattle, Brest, Albany and more. But not in Misato…

Runtime:

Year:

In co-production with:

4,5 min

2015

TCB i Kiruna AB, Martin Eriksson och Filmpool Nord AB, Sirel Peensaar & Katja Härkönen

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