I was asked to produce a 1 minute animation based on a sound bit from BBC Radio 4s Short Cuts show. The story I chose to animate was an Icelandic Legend about a troll who stole a mountain, and in doing so lost track of time and was caught by the rays of the sun and turned to stone, leaving the mountain where it is now located.
I decided that I would like to try to achieve the animation using Stop Motion, and would therefore have to create the troll character. I decided to take an armature that I already had and modify it slightly to better fit the framework of what I decided a troll would look like. I removed the longer bars that made up the shins and swapped them with the shorter bars that would usually be the forearms, which gave the skeleton a more ape like appearance.
I decided that the character would need to be hunched over and adjusted the frame accordingly.
When I was happy with the armature frame I decided to start fleshing it out using some upholstery foam and contact glue. The use of foam as a filler should lessen the overall weight of the figure making it much easier to work with.
Characters made fully of clay are heavy and clumsy, requiring regular touchups after the clay has been handled.