Bouncing balls, puppets & Glen Keane

I've had the most amazing and ridiculous first week at Aardman. Spent most of the time perfecting various bouncing ball exercises with Loyd Price and going to screenings at Encounters in the evenings and on Friday we finally got our puppets! They are beauteous ball and socket creatures with 3D printed replaceable mouths and plasticine foreheads to get more expression from the eyebrows. The hands are silicone cast with steel wire inside which is apparently more durable and break less frequently and attached by K&S. All of the joints are tensioned with 1 of 3 various sized allen keys with access holes niftily hidden in the clothing. They have two hinged foot plates and use screw tie downs...I'm a bit in love with my puppet. We then spent a jolly afternoon with Merlin Crossingham learning about how to strengthen our key poses and create readable expression through body language. We were also fortunate enough to get a space on the floor of the studio's cinema to watch the talk given by Glen Keane about his time at Disney and his new film 'Duet' for smartphones and he was nice enough to give me his autograph :) I've just come back from going to see The Boxtrolls with my classmates, we were pretty much the only people in the cinema and all laughed heartily at the section after the credits. Back to work tomorrow!