Bug the Clown: Making Of

Keep up to date of me showing the process of taking a D&D character into animation.

Now that I have finished university, I have some more time for my passion projects that have been building up in my head for the past 3 years. I still want to push myself when it comes to stop motion animation and try new styles that don't follow the traditional puppets that we see companies like Aardman or Laika use.

Puppets have been seen as far back as the Egyptian times and shadow puppets originated from China around 2000 years ago. The oldest surving animated feature film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, also used paper puppets to tell a story. Paper puppetry has been a staple within story telling for thousands of years and, although not as common, still used today. I first started experimenting with paper puppetry in my 1st year of university. I was struggling to animate an armature walking across the table so decided to try a different approach to the task so that I could learn the key poses. I sketched and cut out a body on a side view, bought puppet pins which are designed to connect joints and animated the mock puppet on a walk cycle. (right)

Originally, this animation was just a way for me to understand the key poses for walk cycles but in the end I actually really enjoyed the process of creating the puppet and animating without the worry of gravity working against the puppet. After this animation, I didn't give myself another chance to try this technique, until now.

Part 1 - Who is Bug?

In May 2022, I was pitched the idea of being part of a D&D campaign where I'd be playing a villain and control my own army. I was free to create my own character, the only requirement was that the character died in a previous life and was brought back for "evil-doing". As a teenager, I had a fascination with clowns, especially evil ones like Twisty from American Horror Story and Jack the Clown from Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights but for this D&D game I wanted to write a clown more along the likes of Joker from Batman leaning more into the insanity than gore or horror. I also wanted to write more queer characters as I was becoming more confident within my sexual identity as a gay man.

Although, sadly, the campaign never came to be, I was left with a character that I loved designing and writing and wanted to continue with his story. 2 years later, I'm excited to tell his story.

Part 2 - The Designing Phase

Bug has gone through quite a few design phases over the years. In the early designs, I reference a lot of traditional clown costumes throughout the eras like court jesters or Victorian clowns. I was also inspired by a musician I listen to (who is not a clown) Mr. Bruce. Ian Bruce is a painter and the former lead singer of The Correspondents who now works his solo project "Mr Bruce". Ian Bruce stood out to me because of his amazing music videos and high energy dance moves, his costumes also complements his dance moves. He's normally seen wearing large baggy pants with a jacket/blazer with strong shoulder. I always imagined if Bug was a dancer this would be the types of dances he'd do as it matched his erratic personality so I knew then when I designed his clothes I wanted wide pants and and interesting top piece.

The first couple drawings I ever did of Bug had quite a dark colour pallette of dark purples and greys with his bright red hair and grey-ish green skin. I had also orginally planned him on having a little hat but that idea got scrapped further down the line. I used my inspirations of Mr. Bruce and added them to the clothing along with Ian's earlier costumes in the band The Correspondents where he wore pantaloons and a ruffled collar. I stuck with this design for quite some time but as his character was evolving the costume no longer fit the image I was portraying.

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A few years later I looked at the design again and wanted to change it, I felt that he needed to be a lot brighter to juxtapose his job within this universe I'm writing. I decided to not rely heavily on traditional clown costumes on the redesign and I wanted to have his personality reflect in the new costume. So I looked more towards queer fashion within the MLM community, I saw a lot of outfits that consited of large pants and shirts that were cropped to show off a lot more of the chest. I combined some of the original design with these new styles to create this:

Part 3 - Puppet Experimentation

This project is still in progress, keep an eye out on this blog post for any more upgrades!

Part 4 - Coming Soon

This project is still in progress, keep an eye out on this blog post for any more upgrades!