A painstaking way to make an animated film

Michelle Furlong eyed the puppet, a beastly creature, and sighed.

“He’s a lot of work, and he’s going to be finished today,” she said.

Her creation is part of an animation project that Furlong and 14 classmates in the Laguna College of Art + Design’s Summer Master Class started May 23.

The students, who arrive at their art studio on campus at 9 a.m. most mornings, spend hours moving puppets a millimeter at a time, coaxing characters to life for a stop-motion animated film.

Films in the genre, like Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” require animators to move a puppet a fraction of an inch at a time and then photograph it. The photos are pieced together to become a film.

The 12-week class, mentored by award-winning director and animator Stephen Chiodo of Burbank-based Chiodo Bros. Productions, has students learning the practices and origins of animation techniques.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to work with a professional and have this film eventually sent to festivals,” said Stephanie Alexander, an incoming senior at LCAD who wants to work in animation after graduation. “Now I have experience.”

Stop-motion animation, Alexander said, is a repetitive and time-consuming process that requires patience.

The class spent two weeks developing a concrete idea for its five-minute film. Student Calley MacDonald had listened to a podcast about an 18th century French folk tale concerning a mysterious beast that was terrorizing the province of Gevaudan. An aristocratic boy in the land befriends a stray dog, and their lives become intertwined with the beast’s.

She presented the plot idea to her classmates, and they liked it.

“I was looking for something spooky, and I was drawn to the French Baroque art,” MacDonald said. “It was an aesthetic that appealed to me.”

Once the storyline was settled, the class embarked on sculpting an armature, the metal framework on which a figure is molded, for each puppet. The armature skeletons must have small joints to deliver precise and fluid movements for filming purposes.

The next step was to create a puppet design and foam-cast the sculpture. After the clay was placed around the armature skeleton, the students had to wrap foam latex rubber around it so the puppet’s movements could spring back and forth. Detailing, such as hair, fingernails and eyes, came last.

The more than a dozen puppets, which each took about four to five days to complete, were embellished with paper mouths and movable pupils. The eyes were made from hardened clay and sealed in wax so the movements could be easy to change.

Furlong, who will be entering her senior year at LCAD, said the students worked on the beast prototype for about six weeks.

Its jagged teeth were made out of an epoxy putty called Magic Sculp, its scaly reptilian skin out of painted silicone and its flashing red eyes out of inserted lights.

The most challenging aspect of the sculpture?

“Everything,” Furlong, 23, said with a laugh. “But it’s going to look amazing and so good.”

The beast and other puppets will be staged on a propped set with grass and a backdrop of a photographed French palace.

Canon cameras and a computer surrounded the design in the college’s filming studio recently.

Filming takes four to five hours, depending on the movement and scene, Alexander said. Moving the dog’s tail took four hours to complete.

“It’s take a shot, move the puppet, take a shot, move the puppet,” she explained.

The project is slated for completion Aug. 1, and then the film, titled “The Beast of Gevaudan,” will be submitted to local film festivals.

Two years ago, the animation class collaborated with the Laguna Concert Band on short film “The Sock Thief.” The partnership went on to win a [seven degrees] of inspiration award and the 2015 Art Star Awards for Outstanding Arts Collaboration, both presented by Laguna Beach Alliance for the Arts.

This year, the class will team up again with the music group to play an original score.

“It’s challenging,” Alexander said, “but it’s giving us experience in the field we’d like to pursue.”