Here’s a timelapse of me making the bruja puppet for the video.
I left my Claytoons clay out in the open air for about 6 months, and when I went to start applying and sculpting her features, the clay was stiff… and I thought, well shoot, I should’ve sealed that container. However, after a while of working the clay and using my tools to sculpt more detailed features, I realized that harder clay was actually a good thing for stop motion.
In the past, I’ve made puppets with fresh clay, and within the first 100 or so frames of a shoot, the clay would easily succumb to the onslaught of pinches, pokes, and tweaks from my Distal Phalanges(finger tips). With this harder clay, it seems to keep its shape better over the duration of the shoot.