Stop Motion by Susannah Shaw. Reprinted with permission.

For professional animation, the artists at a model making company like the U.K.’s Mackinnon & Saunders work from the animators’ sketches and then make a 3D maquette, a blueprint from which they make molds to make the models. Mackinnon & Saunders started working with Cosgrove Hall Films in Manchester in the 1970s. At Cosgrove Hall, they learned their trade as the company developed and grew. Many techniques we all use today were developed at Cosgrove Hall and many world-class animators such as Paul Berry, Loyd Price, Sue Pugh and Barry Purves learned the ropes there.

Mackinnon & Saunders specializes in models for series work and features, making puppets that are robust and easy to repair with standardized parts to keep them exactly the same all the way through the shoot.

Ian Mackinnon describes the process: A lot of the animators we’ve worked with over the years have done their own model making as well. People like Jeff Newitt and Ken Lidster from Loose Moose. They would probably make their own puppets if they had time to do it. They like to give us some sort of reference to work from, whether it’s a sculpt or a sketch. It’s the job of the sculptors then to interpret it and take it from a sketch into 3D form.

Whilst the sculptors are working on blocking the character out they’ve got to be conscious of what the job entails from a stylistic point of view. If it’s Jeff Newitt’s — there’s a certain way that he would sculpt a character, similarly with Ken, so we try and mimic that. They would put their stamp on a sculpt even though they’re not doing it themselves. The sculptors have to mimic the style so that hopefully, when the costumes and the sets all come together, they all look like one complete world.

There might be six or seven different people working on a character at any one stage - it’s got to go through the mould makers and the armature makers — so to have one (blueprint) model, whether it’s painted or whether its blocked out, is useful for everyone to go back to and make sure all the jigsaw puzzle fits together at the end. Also to make sure we’ve not lost something along the way, the proportions haven’t altered because someone’s taken a wrong measurement.

Sculptor working on a maquette. Courtesy Mackinnon & Saunders. Photo © Susannah Shaw.

The Maquette
With several characters in a story, the model makers will block out all of the characters as maquettes, spending about a day on each one to get the basic proportions. Complications of scale and proportion arise when there is a mix of human, animal and bird characters. These problems can all be ironed out in consultation with the animation director at the maquette stage.

At this stage the sculpt is made over a basic brass sleeve and wire armature, so it can be disassembled, which also helps when you’re sculpting it. Little details on the hands and work on the head can be done separately, away from the body; this also makes it easier to finish off. The final materials should be decided on during the sculpting stage. It’ll depend very much if the character’s got to do lip sync — you might want substitute or replacement mouths. If so, you would choose a hardhead. If it’s going to be a mechanical mouth, (Mackinnon & Saunders specialize in mechanical movement inside the head) then it would need to be silicone or foam. Using a mechanical head is a costly process.

All the separated elements then go to the mold-making department. The whole process of building up the puppets is dealt within different departments: sculpting, mould making, casting, painting and armature-making. Once the sculpt is approved, the armature is machined and assembled.