London Stop Motion Supplies

This is mainly for RCA animation, but anyone can join in.

Please help this become a more comprehensive list by adding good suppliers in the comments section.

Stop Motion Equipment

Some useful kit for Wire Armatures.

Available in the department- hammer, pliers, junior hacksaw, glue gun,

Wire

1mm Aluminium wire

1.5mm Aluminium wire

2 mm Aluminium wire

Opinion is divided as to whether a twisted wire is stronger or weaker than a single strand.

In a quick bench test of solid wire vs. twisted wire, bending at the roughly the same speed and distance, I got these results:

It took 4 strands of 1mm wire to get a 3mm diameter wire, which was surprising.

It took 27 bends to break the solid 3mm wire

39 bends to break the 4 strands of 1mm, although the first of the four strands snapped at 22 bends.

23 bends broke 3 strands of 1mm, and the wire got suddenly much weaker at 10 bends

A second attempt with the same length of wire, got to 21 bends before the first snap and 57 bends before it fully broke, which shows the limits of this experiment.

Andy Joule, Stop motion Lecturer at Farnham, says twisting puts tiny stress cracks in before you start, which may explain the additional softness. Horses for courses.

Both sets of twisted strands had a smoother, buttery bend, much less stiff than the same thickness of solid wire, which is good for animating, unless your model is tending to droop. Twisting together wire and varying the number of strands will also give you different thicknesses from the same stock of wire, which is a practical advantage. Ideally twist wire using a slow drill and a vice, which makes a more even twist than by hand (See Stop Motion, Craft Skills for Animation, Shaw)

Aluminium wire is available online and in some art-shops.

Where available go for ‘soft temper’ aluminium, for the minimum of springiness and maximum staying-where-you-left-it.

Aluminium sheet.

Like thick cooking foil, but smooth to bend, not at all crinkly.

Available in the Department- Ask David Dixon

Or online at MultiFoil.co.uk

Adhesives

 

PVA, an all round useful craft glue.

Hot Melt Glue- An electric glue-gun that melts a solid glue stick that rehardens when cooled. With practice you can be quite tidy with this, but at first it goes everywhere and burns your fingers. Will stick metal only once metal was warmed up. Works very nicely with corrugated cardboard.

Two Part Epoxy Glue- Araldite, and others.

Available in yellow or clear, 5 second to slow cure.

Evostick/Bostick brown rubber glue, remains completely flexible when dry unlike even PVA glue, good for gluing foam, cloth and felt.

Available in hardware shops, stationers & art shops

Rigid materials

Balsa Wood

EPS (Blue) Foam, (Extruded polystyrene) A stiff carvable foam, blue or pink,

used for insulation. The dust is hazardous if breathed in, so wear dust mask and hoover afterwards.

Cavity filler foam. Very sticky expanding foam from a can, that grows to fill a space and can be carved afterwards. Not cheap enough to make large scenery.

Elastic Materials

EVA foam,

dense and rubbery, often comes in brightly coloured sheets

Styrofoam, (Expanded polystyrene)

open cell foam, bendy but not stretchy/rubbery, usually white, sometimes green. Not ‘oasis’ floral foam which is horrible. Mikey Please used this in ‘The Eagleman Stag’

Upholstery foam, often found in skips, inside office chairs. A versatile foam that can be snipped to shape with scissors.

Mouldable materials that go hard

Milliput, a two-part epoxy putty. Mix the two parts together, it stays soft and mouldable for while, becoming fully hard in one hour.

Super Sculpey, a modeling clay that can be baked hard or left soft. Comes in a Caucasian skin tone and before it is baked has the translucent look of waxy skin. Once baked becomes opaque.

Plaster of Paris (see casting)

Moldable materials stay soft

Plasticine- NewPlast is the normal animation plasticine of choice. It doesn’t melt under hot lights, although it does get sweaty and soft with a lot of heat.

Newplast can be pressed into ‘press molds’, American plasticine, like Van Aken, can be melted to liquid for use in pouring moulds.

Unbaked Super Sculpey, (see above)

Others:

Morticians wax is interesting stuff, it is transluscent and can be coloured with small amounts of plasticine, but must be kept fairly cool. Earth wax would need to be kept warm to be pliable but may have possibilities.

Ceramic clay needs to be kept constantly moist and will veer from liquid to cracked mud in a single shot

Cloth Tape, gaffer tape

Newplast

Beads

Paint

Lock-down Feet

M3 or M4 nuts in the feet, bolts coming up from under the table.

Bolts are often modified

Casting Materials

Plaster of Paris: like what is used to fix a broken limb.

A powder mixed with water, becoming like thin cream, then thick cream, then solid.

You can coat a soft plasticine model in wet plaster then remove the plasticine and fill the gap with silicone or expanding foam. Read up about two-part casting as it is a fiddly process and you need to avoid bubbles. Sussanna Shaw is a good place to start.

Use a Rubber bowl to mix and a set of digital scales to weigh out the measures of water to plaster, as you are only using small amounts the exact ratio becomes more important.

Plaster come in a range of types with different properties. Dental Plaster “ULTRACAL-30″ or Basic Alpha Plaster will give a fine, very hard cast, Fine Casting Plaster makes a less dense weaker mould.

Dragon Skin Silicone, a two part silicone with good shore strength

K&S tubing (brass tubing in graded sizes that telescope into each other)

Sandpaper

Drill and Drill bits

Small vice

Wire snips

Pliers

Hacksaw

Screwdriver

Needle files

Scissors

Most of the above can be found most cheaply online, with a little cross-referencing to make sure it is what you hope it to be.

 

The following pages are some places you can get your real hands on what you are buying and give it a squeeze or a bend.

 

SUPPLIERS, NEAR RCA

Hardware Homewares

(home hardware shop, for tools, sandpaper etc.)

101 Gloucester Road, London SW7 4SS

☎.020 7244 8992

Robert Dyas

(home hardware shop, with horrible infomercials playing in the aisles. for tools, sandpaper etc.)

201 Kensington High St, London –

☎.020 7937 0564

Homebase

(very large warehouse style hardware shop , trade and home, sometimes cheap)

195 Warwick Road, London W14 8PU

☎. 0845 640 7062 ‎

Cass Arts

(Art Shop, well stocked, as ruiniously expensive as any art shop)

220 Kensington High Street, London W8 7RG

☎. 020 7937 6506

Further Afield

4D modelshop

(K&S tubing, architecture modeling, latex and silicone casting, pre-made parts, adhesives, fine tools)

Railway Arch, Leman Street, City of London E1 8EU

Tricky to find, hence the large photo

☎. 020 7264 1288

www.modelshop.co.uk/

Blueprint Model Shop

(like 4D but cheaper and less specialist)

258 Paradise Row, City of London, Greater London E2 9LE

☎.020 7613 5132

www.blueprintmodel.co.uk/

The Bead Shop London, Covent Garden

21A Tower Street

☎. 020 7240 0931

Alec Tiranti

(Sculpture supplies, plaster, silicone, clay, tools)

27 Warren Street

London W1T 5NB

☎. 020 7380 0808

www.tiranti.co.uk

Atlantis Art Materials

(sometimes cheap, large warehouse style shop)

68-80 Hanbury Street, City of London E1 5JL

tel. 020 7377 8855 ‎

www.atlantisart.co.uk