'Shark still looks fake.'

My first animation planned involves a hover-board, and being a huge Back to the Future fan I've never been so excited to make a prop before! Its without a doubt the coolest thing I'm ever going to make!

Here's the making process! ^_^

I dug two little holes out of the balsa wood so I could glue magnets for the armatures feet.

Then I glued the little extra bit of wood to give the board a better shape.

Then the rest was all needle-felted! I cut the purple felt slightly smaller than the board, and then started to needle-felt the pattern into it.

So the board will be able to look like its hovering with the magic of After Affects a rigging point was needed so I glued two bits of K&S to the bottom pattern and covered it with grey felt circles.

When both sides were finished I needle felted them to sheets of bright pink felt and cut around the pattern, leaving a boarder of pink felt. 

Then to finish I sewed both of the sheets of felt together around the wood. Here it is finished. :}

Oh, and heres how the rig attaches to the board! Pretty nifty right? 

Rollercoaster

Making the rollercoaster cart was pretty easy, just needed to make sure it could fit two armatures! When it actually comes to animating I plan on sticking two magnets on the seats to keep the armatures in place. 

Here are some photos of the making process of the cart. 

Photo of the bottom and the back of the seat, two planks of wood glued to make it more secure. 

Wooooo enough room for the feet!

The king of the swingers, the jungle VIP ^_^

To go with the explorer, I needed to make a monkey, which I was kind of dreading. I made a cat armature in first year, that ended up with spaghetti legs. I planned to needle felt it which was also scary! New things! Ahh! 

To make sure that the monkey armature didn't end up being too big I planned it all out on top of the armature design, with not much help from my cat...

K&S all glued in it's place! Then made sure that it kinda resembled a monkeys skeleton. It does. Kinda.

Added a sneaky little rig point under where the tail is going to be! I wrapped a thin bit of wire around the washer to create the tail.

Then the needle felting began! (Oh and I made hands and feet!)

Inside the head I glued a bit of foam to the wire to fill it up a bit. I decided to go with a light blue colour for the face/belly. Gives it more of a cartoony sort of look, rather than a realistic monkey. 

To make the ears I just stabbed a little ball of brown wool repeatedly, and then stabbed teeny bits of blue wool inside until I released all of my anger, I mean until the blue wool was felted into the brown...

Awww look at him with his ears! ^_^

I attempted to needle-felt the fingers, but it was so time consuming, and just looked a bit messy I ended up sewing felt around the wire instead. Looks much neater. :}

Finished monkey, hanging from my lamp. ^_^ 

Explorer props!

Sooo, I was planning on starting to animate today, but alas I left the top bit of my tripod at home so not to have a completely wasted day I thought I'd do some blogging!

For the explorer & monkey scene the explorer needed some props, a hat and a travellers bag.

I made the hat out of this sort of net material, which was awful to sew so i ended up sewing material of a similar colour underneath it to stop it from all coming apart. The photos below show all of the steps!

To make the bag I just grabbed any brown scrap material I could find! Along with that I found trousers for a doll, which had little pockets! Ready made pockets = less sewing!

I sewed the brown materials ends together, sewed on the ready made pocket then added a bit of patterned material on the top.

I wanted it to actually function like a bag-pack, so I sewed a running stitch along the top of the bag then pulled the string, and ta-da! It closes!

And to keep it closed I added a button, and then to finish it off added straps!

     

Explorer props = Done!