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Case 18 of 18 · WYGWYL

WYGWYL cels and the paper poet

Can a paper puppet built from photographs of one person scale to a whole series?

The paper poet: eleven paper pieces, a bank of replacement heads, plates made from his photographs, and Poem 07 as the first full film. Cel-style tests run beside it.

31 sheets · Oct 19 17:53 to Oct 20 13:00

How it was made

  1. Cut the poet into eleven paper pieces with a white paper edge.
  2. Build a head bank: six heads mirrored to twelve turns, swapped by the head's yaw.
  3. Make plates from his photographs, with the holes filled and interface marks removed.
  4. Drive the rig from a cue list, so a new poem is a new cue file, not new keys.

What this case teaches

  1. Scale comes from banks and cues: more heads, more plates, more cue files, the same rig.
  2. Paper puppets fail in specific places, and each was fixed by a rule: an arm over the face, a floating head, a giant puppet on a close-up.
  3. The proof films come first, so the series format is tested before the series is made.

How it differs. Every earlier case keyed a drawn or rigged body. Here the body is cut from photographs of a real person.

What broke and what changed

  • The arm crossed the face; the hand landed on top of the head.Two-bone IK toward the wrist; a hand near the head anchors to the ear or chin and draws behind it.
  • The head floated above the neck.Neck pin placed straight below the chin; head size from the area above the chin.
  • A giant puppet on close-up plates.Scale capped and the figure anchored to the eye line.
  • Holes left where the person was removed from a plate.Push-pull fill; carousel interface marks detected and inpainted.

First sheet and last sheet

Where the stage started and where it finished.

test P05-008
test P05-008Oct 19 17:53
Page check, wygwyl
Page check, wygwylOct 20 13:00

The sheets, step by step

Grouped by working session. Click any sheet to view it full size; use the arrow keys to move through them.

Step 1Test P05-008Oct 19 17:53 · 1 sheet
test P05-008
test P05-008Oct 19 17:53
Step 2Test P01-007 hose and test P01-011 shadeOct 19 18:33–18:39 · 6 sheets
test P01-007 hose
test P01-007 hoseOct 19 18:33
test P01-011 shade
test P01-011 shadeOct 19 18:33
test P05-007 shade
test P05-007 shadeOct 19 18:34
test P05-001 hose
test P05-001 hoseOct 19 18:34
Show 2 more from this step
Detail check
Detail checkOct 19 18:34
Contact sheet
Contact sheetOct 19 18:39
Step 3Pose and silhouette and poster P07-006Oct 19 23:16–23:27 · 12 sheets
Pose and silhouette, standing photograph
Pose and silhouette, standing photographOct 19 23:16
Pose and silhouette, seated photograph
Pose and silhouette, seated photographOct 19 23:16
poster P07-006
poster P07-006Oct 19 23:18
poster P07-002
poster P07-002Oct 19 23:18
Show 8 more from this step
poster P05-008
poster P05-008Oct 19 23:18
Cel decks and archive posters
Cel decks and archive postersOct 19 23:19
Plates made from his photographs
Plates made from his photographsOct 19 23:21
The eleven paper pieces
The eleven paper piecesOct 19 23:22
test P07-006
test P07-006Oct 19 23:26
test P05-008
test P05-008Oct 19 23:26
Scene test, all
Scene test, allOct 19 23:26
test P07-002
test P07-002Oct 19 23:27
Step 4The plate set and test2 P07-002Oct 20 00:34–00:42 · 8 sheets
The plate set
The plate setOct 20 00:34
The plate set
The plate setOct 20 00:36
test2 P07-002
test2 P07-002Oct 20 00:41
test2 P07-005
test2 P07-005Oct 20 00:41
Show 4 more from this step
Automatic patch test, all
Automatic patch test, allOct 20 00:41
The head bank
The head bankOct 20 00:42
test2 P07-011
test2 P07-011Oct 20 00:42
Detail check
Detail checkOct 20 00:42
Step 5Page checkOct 20 13:00 · 4 sheets
Page check, family
Page check, familyOct 20 13:00
Page check, cineosis
Page check, cineosisOct 20 13:00
Page check, odyssey
Page check, odysseyOct 20 13:00
Page check, wygwyl
Page check, wygwylOct 20 13:00

What came out of it

WYG-01 1:38Poem 07Poem 07, all twelve patches, made by the automatic pipeline: gestures cued by the words, heads chosen by the rig, plates made from his photographs. WYG-02 0:25The paper poet · first proofThe poet as a jointed paper cut-out from his own photograph, over his Mexico City plates, with each patch's archive cel framed on a cardboard plinth. WYG-03 0:31 · testCel-cut style proofTwo looks over the lab's cel cuts: a faceless figure under one hard light, and 1930s rubber hose on watercolour. WYG-04 0:08 · testInk cel · P05-008The first ink cel for WYGWYL: "Their blood flows through my hands."

Read the record

Carried forward

The next case has not been made yet.