Tooth Farmer is a 2-minute hybrid animated short film combining stop-motion puppetry with a 3D environment. Tooth Farmer is important to me because I have been developing it for 4 years now and getting closer to my goal of creating a successful stop-motion armature puppet that has the durability to be used for an entire stop-motion short. The story is a different take on the Tooth Fairy mythology that varies from culture to culture. This story offers an alternative to the world of the Tooth Fairy folklore. In Tooth Farmer, a little mouse lives inside a person’s mouth to help maintain tooth hygiene. The film is highly focused on unique character designs with environmental concepts that closely resemble a person’s mouth.
The explorations of stop-motion puppetry were heavily inspired by armatures from the company LAIKA and Aardman Studios. Using the Elegoo Mars Pro 2 and Standard Photopolymer Resin to create 3D printed heads with about 23 different facial expressions for the main character was a huge goal and purpose for the creation of this animated short film. Delving deep into research for building a physical armature for a stop-motion puppet and compositing a 3D render scene was a challenge with harmonizing the design of physical objects with digital scenes. The paper is a documentation of the processes used in creating a hybrid film. It explains what I did, what I should have done, and what I can improve in the future.
Outline of Studies:
Major: Emerging Media
Track: Animation & Visual Effects
Educational Career:
B.F.A., University of Central Florida, 2020
Thesis Committee:
Cheryl Briggs, Professor, Chair
Jo Anne Adams, Lecturer
Dr. Stella Sung, Pegasus Professor
The public is welcome to attend.
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