Last Days of Summer

In the past few days, I have done a lot of work because school starts on the 7th. Once school starts, production slows down on the videos. I have school from 7:00am - 2:00pm. Sometimes I stay after til 3, and sometimes I come home right away. Then I have homework, studying, etc. So I just don't have all day long to do videos. So I decided to get as much done as possible before school started!

Characters:

Count Von Count was the first character I began to make. I made him out of white clay before I left for vacation on August 19th. I started by painting his head and hands purple. These parts will be the only areas without clothing. I cut out black fabric for his shirt and cape and hot glued it on. Then I painted his legs and shoes black to look like he is wearing black pants and shoes. I wrapped his arms in strips of black fabric and put wires in his arms for movement. Then I googled him and carefully drew his face on his already purple head with a pencil. Then I used white paint and a toothpick to draw on his eyes. I used a fine tip sharpie to outline his eyes and black paint for his mouth and hair. Then I cut out very tiny triangles out of plain white paper and glued them on his mouth for his fangs. I made his high collar out of stiff craft felt and attached all his body parts. I made his monogal out of silver wire and Count Von Count was done! Thats one, one count, ah ah ah.

Next was Elmo. Elmo was fairly simple and I did him quickly. Because Elmo sits on a stool and plays Elmo's Song on the piano in his segment, I had to make a sitting and standing body. The sitting body has his legs hanging down at a 90 degree angle and the standing body was like any other of the muppet's bodies. I painted both his bodies, head and arms bright red, his nose orange and left the eyes white, like the model magic. While he was drying, measured out a dixie cup to the height of the piano. I cut the cup down to size and painted the designs on it white. Elmo was dry, so I put his arms on and his nose and his eyes. I drew the pupils of his eyes with a black sharpie. Elmo was done!

I had run out of clay characters that dried over vacation. Time to make some more! That night I googled each character and sat there shaping each one out of white model magic. I made Baby Bear, Telly, Honkers, Prarie Dawn, Zoe, and Herry. Then I watched a movie and went to bed.

**** This is not ALL i do all day long. I do watch TV, go outside, hang out with friends, read, text, go places with my family and all that kind of stuff. I just don't blog about that, so it may seem that I go from one thing to the next without any break, thats not true. For example, I make Count Von Count and then went to the store with my mom for a few hours and then came back and started Elmo. I do have a life outside stop-motion. :)

The next day I was at my grandmas all day long and didn't do anything for Sesame Street. But I did work on my surpirse video for March 2011!

The 5th of September I caught up on Sesame work. While I was at my grandma's, the model magic characters dried. First thing I did was start on Baby Bear and Telly. I have over 40 bottles of paint in 40 different shades and I chose a brown shade and a jelly colored shade for these characters.

All my paints!

I painted each character there color and when that dried, I painted on the white eyes, did the pupils with sharpie and attached the legs and arms! Baby Bear and Telly were done!

Baby Bear in painting stages

The last character I did was Zoe. (pronounced Zoey). I mixed a golden paint with orange paint and painted her body. I used a pink marker to color her tiny nose and I painted her eye shadow with baby blue paint. I colored her eyes with sharpie and attached everything together, Zoe was done!

With all this focus on characters, I had to do some set work too!

Monster in the Mirror, which is Grover's song, is the same set as the set from "I Could Be Santa", one of my earliest videos.

Hidden Secrets: Where the mirror was in "I Could be Santa", is now replaced with a framed picture of Mrs. Claus, which pays tribute to her and the previous video.

I didn't make many changes to the set. I used the turquise wardrobe and kept the bed. All I changed on the bed was the headboard which now has a "G" for Grover instead of a "SC" for Santa Claus. Another set done!

I also did the Theme Song set, which is just a blue sky with buildings looking like the Sesame Street studio set. There is a street sign that says Sesame Street attached to a green lampost. The set was pretty easy and I finished it quickly.

The last set I did was "Batty Batt". The set design for this set is shown in the previous posts. I cut out strips of dark purple paper and glued them on light purple paper to look like striped wallpaper. I put a long piece of brown paper over the wallpaper to look like wooden walls along the bottom of the set. Then I cut out a large rectange on the wall and put thin strips of brown paper across it. Then I put a layer of cling wrap behind the brown strips and I printed off a scary scene to put behind the cling wrap. This was the winow. The brown strips was the window frame, the cling wrap was the glass, anf the scary night scene was the outside! The I cut out black fabric for the curtains. Then I cut out a wardrobe out of brown paper and decorated it like Halloween and glued it on the set. Finally, I printed out a portrait and frame and framed it and put in on the wall.

Hidden Secret: The portrait on the wall is of the Addams Family. I did this because this Batty Batt set will also be used in the Addams Family video in October. Just a little hint of the next video. Although, in the Addams video, the set will be in black and white.

All of the sets are done! Thats it for today!