Why are there ball joints?

Wire fatigues and snaps where it is bent repeatedly. A machined ball joint takes the load at the shoulder and the hip, which are the joints that move most.

Why wrap parts of the wire?

Thread or tape reinforces a bend and adds bulk where the covering material will sit. It also stops two strands of wire scissoring against each other.

Is this a style or a stage?

It is a stage that reads beautifully as a style. Nobody makes a finished picture this way, but a photograph of an armature says more about the craft than a finished puppet does.

Wire Armature

bare armature
wire figure
exposed skeleton

The skeleton on its own: bent wire, visible joints, and nothing built over it.

Draw this style

Opens an image model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.

What it is for

An armature is a drawing in metal: it holds the pose and nothing else. Seeing it bare is the same pleasure as a cutaway diagram, and it says more about how the craft works than the finished puppet does.

How it works

Aluminium wire is bent and twisted into a skeleton, with machined ball joints at the shoulders and hips where a single bend would fatigue and snap. Thread or tape reinforces the weak points. The feet bolt down to a base plate so the figure can stand in any position.

When to use it

Use it for a behind the scenes page, a process story or a studio's own marketing. Avoid it as a character, because there is nobody there yet.

Told apart from its neighbours

Puppet Animation is this with everything built on top. Model Sheet is a drawing of construction rather than the construction itself. Claymation covers the armature completely.

Where it is used

It suits a case study, an about page, a process film and anything whose subject is how the work is made.

Behind the scenes photography and making of features
Design portfolios and studio marketing

The prompt

Replace the blanks with your own character, keep the rest. Then run it on an image model.

<character>, bare wire armature style, the figure made only from bent aluminium wire with every bend and every twist visible, small machined ball joints at the shoulders and the hips, the wire wrapped in places with thin thread or tape where it was reinforced, the whole figure standing on a small metal base plate with a visible tie down bolt, plain studio light, a plain seamless background, real shallow depth of field

Run it

What goes wrong

A finished robot character comes back. Say bare, unfinished, and nothing built over it, and ask for the tie down bolt on the base plate.

Leave out

a covered figure, clay, cloth, a face, a painted surface, a finished character

Watch for

Ask for it unfinished. This is the thing under a puppet, not a puppet, and the appeal is entirely in seeing the structure that is normally hidden.

Questions

A bolt through the set floor into the puppet's foot, which stops it moving between frames. In a photograph of a bare armature it is one of the details that proves the figure is a working tool.