I recently discovered this (Uk based?) site, which sells components for making puppet armatures for animation. It's supposed to offer affordable puppet-making parts, which are used as basic joints inside characters and allow them to be manipulated for stop-motion film-making.
For those who don't know, stop-motion animation is basically taking photographs of a scene, slightly moving the model, then repeating to give a flickerbook effect of a moving picture. I've tried this myself, and it worked quite well with plasticene (as in Wallace and Gromit, Morph etc.) My main problem was that the armature was really poor and hard to manipulate.
I might invest in one of these kits, and post a quick review up here. I'll the try to make my own version from recycled bits and bobs too, and see how they compare. After all, it more fun, greener and cheaper to make your own right?!
www.animationtoolkit.com
