The puppet character 'Bobo' moves in a very similar
way to a normal puppet might do, this is because he is animated
in much the same way. Although you dont see it, he is animated
using a wooden rig like a normal marionette. There are a
few differences but the main difference is that rather than
moving it with two hands it is animated by keyframing. By
using dynamic solutions this motion then affects the strings
that link it to Bobo's body and in turn Bobo himself.
Many test rigs were made to find
the best and easiest method of animating the Character and
each rig was used to make short walk cycles and also to
throw Bobo around a bit to see how tangled he might get
during the more dynamic scenes.
Previews are rendered as a rough
visualisation of how the final rendered footage will look.
Most scenes took between 8 and 20 minutes per frame to render,
and considering that there are 25 frames in a second, a 5
second shot might take 40 hours of solid rendering time. A
small selection of shots took 1 hour per frame, which works
out over 24 hours rendering time for one second of footage.
Most editing of the film was done with previews rather than
final footage to save time when rendering, previews also allow
you to check the animation in realtime to look at timing and
movement. The whole film exists in preview form which only
take a few moments to render even long shots.
