Hi John, that's a very common problem. There are a few solutions. One is to constantly wash your hands in-between color changes. What I used to do is take some mineral oil and get it on my finger tips until it melted the clay residue a bit. Then I would wipe my fingers on a paper towel. You can also use rubbing alcohol - the higher the concentration of alcohol the better and do the same thing. Baby wipes are another option which are convenient but more expensive to keep using.
Then there's Puppet Putty. It's designed for animators so it doesn't transfer colors to your hands as you animate. We're almost out, but you might consider it for your future projects. The inventor Don Carlson is working on a new formula that sounds even better than the current version, which he says doesn't crack ever when you bend it. But I'm not sure when that may be released.
www.stopmotionstore.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=50_51
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I did a couple of updates to our site today. I made sure the forums and the network were at the latest versions possible. There's been some issue... Show more
Ah, okay. You know there's one way I can think of to do this, but it would require casting your puppet in translucent silicone. You could shine colored lasers behind the silicone and animate the lights moving - so there would be no internal lighting of LED's. But - that could get fairly complicated and expensive to do. You'd most likely need to paint the surface as well with the original color of your character - and the lights would need to be bright and glow enough to where the surface pigment isn't noticeable.
One other way would be to cast your character in clay (or whatever initial material you wanted) and also as a second character in translucent resin which you wouldn't need to animate. Just photograph both in the same pose so you can slowly erase (using photoshop/krita) the front layer, revealing the back lit puppet layer. If that makes sense.
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Have you considered lighting it form the inside with an LED connected to a wire and power source? It might be possible to do that with clay, but you'd have to experiment a bit. I used to use an old train transformer that you can vary the output in small increments. That way you can animate it slowly getting brighter.
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Have you considered painting the clay? You could get a close-up of your hand and arm - and paint just the tip of the fingers, then the whole fingers, then the palm and son on until it's one color. Then as moshi mentioned - perhaps have a second puppet that is the whole color already as a replacement. I think with paint you can control a lot, you just have to make sure the color changes into the same tan color as your clay.
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The network part of our site was just updated and has a new feature. If you message someone you can have a live chat with them in the same way... Show more
Our last winner and new member gregr3398 (who won the Extraterrestrial challenge) came up with the newest challenge topic. Zombies! The rules are the same as always, if anyone needs to - please refer to our 5 Week Challenge Rules at the top of the page. Just remember that all entries must be made starting now and can't be previously made films. Good luck everyone!
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It was another fun 5 week challenge for all our viewers during our live show tonight. You can watch how everyone voted (and watch all the films) here:
[video]
Sorry for a few small technical glitches. The winner as chosen by our audience was.....gregr3398! Congrats Greg for a job well done, it was a very funny short animation to watch.
As the winner you get to choose the next topic theme and get a downloadable prize from our online store. I'll PM you here after this. Once Greg replies I will post the new challenge topic in our forums for everyone.
Thanks as always for all of you who put your time into your films, they were great!
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