The caterpillar - A blast from the past

one of the reasons i found it hard to make this caterpillar was because there was a lack of information about making chharacters like this.
when i googled how to make stop motion caterpillars in the past all i got was my own previous attempts fom my blog.
I tried again just on the off chance and I found this.

It was a caterpillar puppet fom a 1949 stop motion animation of alice in wonderland.
but the first image that came up was my own concept...BINGO...that made me realise what i needed to do.

Here is an image of The puppet in the film along with alice, it was a mixture of stop motion animation and live action footage.
The way the caterpillar had been painted in several shades of the same colour for effect and the fact that he had no legs was really inspiring to me. and his shape was far more appropriate as it visually communicated the idea of a caterpillar.
This made me think, I need something round that can be covered in modelling material that is easy to work with and cut.

I was tidying my kids bedroom when a brilliant idea came into my head... plastic balls.similar to the ones you would find in a ball pit or pool.

I persuaded my son to let me have some of these balls.

I cut them i was patient, i used the modelling techniques and processes from my previous examples but most importantly i learned from my mistakes.

here he is in all his glory

You can see how I was indpired by the professional stop motion puppet and how i used similar techniques in his creation. This really helped me to make him better.
And I was happy with how he looked.

and how he compares to my original intentions?

he is fat/round
has a long shape
human like features
correct expression
suitable for audience
realistic

the most important thing is that he communicates visually that he is in fact a caterpillar, not a brick, frog or cot toy.
He is appropriate for my animation and the needs of my audience.

hookah pipe- designing the concept

one of the important props for the scene was the caterpillars hookah pipe.The text in the book did not say much about it so this left me free to design it how i liked. I decided to make a moodboard on hookah pipes to help me with its design.of course I wanted to consider that the pipe looked real enough to fit in with the other parts of my scene so that its visual language was appropriate for the audeince.

hookah pipe moodboard

hookah pipe concept, the hookah pipe was important but i did not want tit to overwhelm the rest of the scene so i simplified the design so it is still clear that it is a hookah pipe but its not too fancy like the images for the moodboard.

turnaround sheets

scale drawing

I needed some to create the shape of my hookah. with ease if possible so I used a perfume bottle EXACTLY like this one as the base for my hoohak pipe, i covered it in model magic and then painted it.

this is my pipe i used a pipe cleaner for the actual pipe and painted model magic for the rest.

visual language and appropriateness

I designed the hookah pipe so that it looked real enough to appeal. i think that the visual language including its shape and colour has communicated this.
as i stated before i did not want this prop to overwhelm other parts of the scene and it dosent, its nice and simple in form.