The story of my first professional grade "helping hands" puppet and latest animation.
Decided to start my own ball and socket armature rig around the end of last school year. Bought about 8 "helping hands" kits usually used for soldering, but have great ball-jointed parts that work perfectly for a stop motion armature. I was able to find a place online where they were only 3 bucks a kit. Had to replace the wing nuts with bolts and regular nuts, so the armature would be less bulky. Used a very thick wire for the arms and legs to connect between the joints. 
Completed the bottom half of the rig before realizing that I needed more of one specific piece to make the top half. 
Finally finished constructing the "helping hands" rig around the end of summer vacation. 
With a suggestion from a friend, I used seat cushion foam to make up his bulk and shape.
He's still super flexible even with all the foam padding on him.
School starts up again and my new Digital Storytelling teacher has us all do a stop motion for our first assignment. Excitement! I quickly finish the robot puppet and construct a miniature shooting stage underneath my bed. The enclosure allows me to hang lights from above with no sweat and not worry about bumping my set as I stumble around in the dark at night. Went to Home Depot and found the perfect parts to construct the factory setting I wanted for the set. 
Still frame from the stop motion shoot. Realized that my heavy duty light box made the perfect fill light for the scene. Hung the light box upside down from the underside of my bed. Used a desk lamp on the left side for a simple key light. The assignment for my class was to focus on ritual and repetition, so I had the robot assembling other robots in an assembly line. There is no story to speak of yet, but I intend to give him human characteristics later on (checking his watch, clocking in for work, etc) I used Dragon Stop Motion to shoot the scene with a Canon Rebel XS connected to my computer. It allowed me to see what I was shooting on my monitor instead of having to check the camera's viewfinder every shot. Here's the final animation I submitted for class today.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lemFr97WvOk
My teacher gave us another two weeks to add sound to the video and add additional scenes if we want. I will post an update soon.
