I started with the main character, Bert, because I wanted to figure out the look through his design. I had a lot of fun with the side characters in my last film “the Machine.” They were designed in 3D studio Max and and flattened out into paper models that I reworked in photoshop. Then I printed them out and folded them into 3D puppets. Designing for paper models forces you to be simple. Any extra polygon means more cutting and folding, which on a miniature scale can loo really sloppy. So you have to get your character out of a minimal amount of plane and surface changes.
So I initially thought that The characters would be papercraft. I love the look and I love the DYI aspect of it so I was excited to do a film where everything had that look. After I talked to a few friends about the script, I decided that although I love papercraft, it wasn't right for this film. As a material it has implications and the viewer is very conscious of the material. The viewer questions “why paper?” “what does the paper mean?” which I think is distracting in the case of this film, so I decided to go with a more traditional stop motion puppet approach. I liked where Bert's design was going, so I tried to keep the squared-off planer style of the design in the sculpt.
So I initially thought that The characters would be papercraft. I love the look and I love the DYI aspect of it so I was excited to do a film where everything had that look. After I talked to a few friends about the script, I decided that although I love papercraft, it wasn't right for this film. As a material it has implications and the viewer is very conscious of the material. The viewer questions “why paper?” “what does the paper mean?” which I think is distracting in the case of this film, so I decided to go with a more traditional stop motion puppet approach. I liked where Bert's design was going, so I tried to keep the squared-off planer style of the design in the sculpt. 
Bert is awesome
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