Very interesting! I think the post is a good length and the photos work well with your text. Great to see the character design and build from soup to nuts. So much technical know-how here... Do most animators build their own characters? Seems like you have to be an engineer to get this done.
I found a character at a garage sale. It was supposedly a maquette for an animated motion picture that was in production and then got cancelled when the studio changed hands. I recently took this photo with various white objects for the white is white photo contest here on Steemit.
Let me know if you can identify this guy for me?
Oh whoa, that is an awesome maquette. What a find! Nothing about that design is ringing any bells, however, it does look similar to this guys designs:
http://www.rednosestudio.com/
Awesome little studio based out of Greenfield, Indiana USA
Depending on where that garage sale was...who knows!
And no, most animators do not build there own puppets. I learned all of this stuff out of necessity while trying to make my own films early on. When you can't pay people, you gotta make it do! haha
There are a lot of stop motion animators who are multi-talented tho for sure. My buddy Max Winston for example:
https://www.ratbatstudios.com/
He's a goddamned savant when it comes to this stuff.