This was a really fun episode to shoot. Its a single room (a blacksmithy) with a forge, tools, anvil and then a large window and a door.

Most of the work in this was building the set. About 20 hours of shooting and editing the actual animatio which is about a minute in length.

In this tutorial I will show you a little bit about how the set and props were made and how the animation was made.

I am working on this page right now! It will be done tomorrow, hopefully!

You can watch the Animation here:

Here is the centerpiece of the set, the forge set up .
I installed a red light inside the forge just behind the coals.

And just about everything was made out of foam. With a few bits of wood and metal for accents.

This picture shows the foam anvil before painting. And the log it sits on is completely foam.

This little anvil and stand are a really interesting project. I have a complete tutorial on how to make it right here: Make a miniature Anvil

The forge and bellows is the centerpiece of this whole set and I have a tutorial showing how these were made right here: The miniature Forge and Bellows

And here we are putting the set together. Those walls are just sheets of foam painted to look like stone walls.

The long window is an important part of the story.

An important part of the process of building a set like this is getting the scale right before you actually start building. To find the appropriate sizes we used the dragonslayer as a sort of ruler.

Another interesting part of this set is the door that the dragonslayer opens then walks through. it is cut from a piece of foam.

Just as with the anvil we put a base coat of black then dry brush over it in brown. It gives a terrific wood look.

Some thin dowels in the little window finish the door off perfectly.

That's It. The door is completed and installed. Looks great.

Okay, for the final part we will take a look at the window in the set. It is one of the more important parts of the whole scene. Our dragonslayer walks over to it, looks outside and sees something happening.

Its just foamboard with wall paper along the back. Its a little three dimensional set up.

The trees are painted on card stock then cut out and attached to the window box setup.

There you go. The completed landscape. This just now has to be attached to the window opening in the wall.

Once the set is done it is time to start shooting the animation.

DragonSlayer 7 Sanctum

This is a stop motion animation that completes the story of the dragonslayer. DragonSlayer 7 Sanctum

How to make talking figures in stop motion animation

Ever wonder how they make the mouths move in an animation? I have the tutorial right here. Now you can make animations that talk! How to make talking mouths in stop motion animation