Alex and Sophie feature in the bedroom scene of the stop motion advert campaign for Boy Makers Yard.
The owls are 2 of the 8 needle felted puppets for the stop motion advert campaign for the Bristol apartments at Box Makers yard. Designs by Emma Windsor. I created all the puppet armatures and technical designs, and completed the felted exterior for Alex (brown owl). Emma finished the felted exterior for Sophie (white owl). The final animations can be found here.
Below are some images showing the fabrication process. The owl puppets were custom designed and built to purpose for the scene. The puppet’s screen time is 15-20 seconds in which they never leave the bed. The bottom of the puppets therefor were rigged through the bed. Dialogue and facial expressions are very important. Owl Sophie does the talking, and thus she has a ball joint to allow for the beak movements. Alex stays silent, but his poseable big brow speaks in volumes. Both puppets have moveable pupils and eyelids. An aesthetic as well as technical challenge was to find the right balance between owl-like and human-like. The wings are designed to be poseable in humanlike gestures, whilst Sophie’s neck has a moving mechanism to allow the owl like head bobbing movements.
The felted exterior of the puppets are a mixture of felt sheets and needle felting. I finished the felt sheet feathers for both puppets and felted and finished all final details for the big browed owl Alex.
