Book summary “Stop Motion”: summary

Introduction

You face a daunting challenge when you want to bring inanimate objects to life frame by frame. You must master complex equipment, understand the physics of movement, and build durable puppets by hand.

Stop motion requires physical control of a miniaturized world, careful planning, and precise timing to breathe life into puppets.

Susannah Shaw provides a complete guide to navigating this tactile medium. You learn how to set up your studio, plan your stories, and construct professional armatures. The book takes you step-by-step from raw materials to finished performances on stage.

You can find the answers to several core challenges in these pages:

• How do you choose the right camera and software for frame grabbing?
• What techniques create smooth timing and realistic weight?
• How do you build armatures that withstand hours of manipulation?

1. Equipping Your Animation Studio

Stop motion is a tactile form of character animation that requires you to control an entire miniaturized world and emotionally connect with the puppet. Unlike flat mediums or software that bypass physical presence, model animation requires understanding weight, gravity, and movement to breathe life into jointed dolls or objects through deliberate physical manipulation.

Guionne Leroy describes the process as slowing down your brain to inhabit the puppet's movements, while the Brothers Quay use found objects to bring dead matter to life.

Getting Equipped

A beginner stop motion setup only requires three basic components: a camera, a stable support, and a recording destination. Novices should avoid spending large amounts of money upfront and can test stop motion using inexpensive animation software paired with a DV camera or webcam to learn the fundamentals.

• A camera
• Something to hold it steady
• Something to record your animation onto

Choosing a Camera

Choosing between digital video cameras and digital stills cameras depends on budget, required image resolution, and storage capacity. While Mini DV offers high data compression rates and is widely accepted by film festivals, digital stills cameras like professional SLRs provide significantly higher resolutions using RAW formats at the cost of heavy shutter wear and immense hard drive storage.

The Canon EOS 1Ds Mk2 used with Nikon lenses on Corpse Bride cost around £5000 or $10,000.

Lenses

The lens is the most critical optical component in stop motion because every subsequent stage of capture degrades the recorded image. Prime lenses offer superior optical quality and wider apertures compared to zoom lenses, which require extra glass that compromises image clarity. Diopters and extension tubes help achieve close-up focus on miniature sets.

Animation Software and Frame Grabbers

Frame-capture software revolutionizes stop motion by allowing animators to review frames instantly, overlay live feeds, and track progress step by step. Unlike traditional workflows where animators worked completely blind until lab results returned, modern software introduces live overlay and onion skinning to match exact movements and prevent set shifts.

Aardman Animations and Cosgrove Hall waited years for specialized software before collaborating on the development of the Animate system.

• Use live overlay or frame toggling to flick between the live image and previously shot frame at various speeds
• Apply onion skinning to view a ghost image of the current live position for matching alignment and recovering from set shifts

Tripods and Lighting

Stop motion shooting requires a completely rock-steady camera support, making locked-off friction heads the best choice for beginners. Fluid heads are too cushioned for controlled animation, while geared heads offer smooth manual adjustments. Complex professional camera moves require specialized tracker beds or motorized computer-controlled robot arms.

Artificial lighting is mandatory for stop motion to avoid shifting daylight conditions, requiring careful wattage management to protect domestic electrical circuits. Available light changes too dramatically during a shoot. While domestic lamps or fluorescent tubes offer low-cost alternatives, professional setups utilize halogen lamps, photofloods, or HMI bulbs with polystyrene boards acting as fill lights.

A comprehensive physical toolkit and synchronized pre-recorded dialogue are essential components for executing precise character animation timing. Tools like stopwatches, hand-drills for puppet tiedowns, hot glue guns, and wet wipes maintain workflow efficiency. Dialogue must be recorded before animation to break down phonetic mouth shapes accurately using waveform software.

• Imagine or observe a physical move
• Practise the move yourself and time your speed
• Break the move down into actions and time those actions

2. Mastering Movement and Timing

Directly copying live movement frame by frame often looks lifeless, meaning animators must rely on caricature and body language to convey believable performances. Straight tracing or rotoscoping fails to capture the artistic essence of performance. Exaggerated physical adjustments, replacements, and intentional framing help express emotion when armatures have strict material limitations. In 1914, Max Fleischer invented rotoscoping for Out of the Inkwell.

Realistic animation relies on physics, easing, and careful dope sheet planning rather than direct live-action tracing.

Ladislas Starewitch found that making a frog swim with exact realistic movements did not work on screen, forcing him to animate its actions caricaturally for a better result.

Animating Familiar Objects

Beginners should practice animation and performance using familiar inanimate objects before attempting complex puppet animation. Taking simple everyday objects like matchboxes and imagining them as living creatures helps animators learn about character, timing, and weight without getting bogged down by complicated rigs or armatures.

Animator Barry Purves used matchboxes as dodgem cars with trainees at Cosgrove Hall Films to practice collision timing.

• Take a matchbox and imagine it as a dog or car
• Animate dog characteristics like panting, wagging its tail, and jumping
• Practice timing and imagined movements before filming

Notes on Movement

Natural movements start slowly, accelerate to a constant speed, and ease to a stop unless interrupted. To create realistic motion, animators must calculate increments so that spacing is closer at the start and end of a movement, demonstrating acceleration and deceleration.

Using a coin to move across an angled board in 24 even moves versus easing in and out with smaller increments.

• Measure out 25 evenly spaced marks in a straight line
• Move a coin across the screen in 24 evenly spaced moves for a one-second test
• Try easing in with smaller moves for the first few frames, increasing, and then decreasing at the end

Timing

Animators choose between shooting on single frames or double frames depending on the required speed and fluidity of the action. Single framing moves on every frame for extreme smoothness, while shooting on twos changes the move every two frames and is often favored to maintain a lively sense of action.

Aardman animators tend to favor twos, and Nick Park prefers working fast without getting bogged down by technical smoothness. Video playback runs at 24 or 25 frames per second, with 50 Hz mains frequency for 25 fps in Europe, 60 Hz mains frequency for 30 fps in the USA and Japan, and 10-15 fps for Quicktime.

• Calculate whether you can convey convincing movement by changing the move every two frames
• Use single framing for very fast action like someone running across the screen in six frames

Bouncing Ball

The bouncing ball exercise teaches timing, weight, and the application of physics principles to animation. The shape of a ball in the air forms a parabolic curve where it slows down at the top of the arc and accelerates downward due to gravity, while squash and stretch add life and weight upon impact.

A ping-pong ball is light, has little resistance, and bounces for a long time without squash and stretch, whereas a football is heavier and compresses upon impact.

• Draw a smooth parabolic curve or arc as a guide
• Mark the increases and decreases in speed along the trajectory
• Exaggerate the shape by flattening the ball on impact and elongating it when coming away

Planning and Dope Sheets

Dope sheets and X-sheets allow animators to visually break down movements, dialogue, and camera instructions frame by frame. These charts help map actions to a 24 or 25 frames per second timeline, serving as a communication tool for teams and ensuring precise synchronization of sound and motion.

Animator Anthony Scott uses a built-in stopwatch counting system saying one-thousand-one to determine frame counts, where one equals six frames, one-thou equals 12 frames, one-thousand equals 18 frames, and one-thousand-one equals 24 frames.

• Say one-thousand-one to act out motion and map frame counts
• Break down movement and dialogue to 25 frames per second on the sheet
• Add camera instructions and sound markers into the bar charts

3. Developing Stories and Sets

Pre-production requires simple scripts, solid film grammar, storyboards, and carefully constructed miniature sets.

Animation requires extensive planning before shooting because the voice track is recorded first and most editing occurs during pre-production stages like scripts and treatments. You must focus on keeping stories simple, intimate, and centered on character performance rather than elaborate sets.

Jeff Newitt and Neville Astley directed Trainspotter while focusing on intimate performance within available resources.

• Write a script focusing on entertaining and engaging the audience with clear emotion
• Draft a treatment describing what happens as each scene unfolds
• Run ideas past an experienced short film editor during the planning stage

Film Grammar

Adhering to basic film grammar and establishing shot rules maintains spatial orientation and prevents viewer disorientation. Editors and directors use establishing shots, camera angles, motion motivation, and the 180-degree rule to ensure smooth visual continuity between cuts.

Crossing the line without a tracking camera move confuses the audience regarding the spatial relationship between two conversing characters.

• Begin with an establishing shot to give a wide geographical location
• Ensure at least a 30-degree difference between consecutive shots of the same action to avoid a confusing jump cut
• Keep character movement flowing in the same direction across cuts for continuity

Storyboards and Editing

Storyboards and animatics provide a blueprint for the entire production, allowing you to test pacing and timing before building sets. Scanning storyboards into a computer and editing them with scratch dialogue creates an animatic that prevents expensive mistakes during model making and shooting.

Bob the Builder utilized detailed storyboards and animatics to maintain uniformity across production teams.

• Draw a series of static images representing a visual interpretation of your script
• Scan storyboard drawings into a computer to create an animatic
• Hold the image for the calculated timing and edit scenes before shooting

Sets and Props

Sets for period or realistic locations require thorough visual research to establish an authentic atmosphere. You should study photographs of real locations to identify defining atmospheric items, such as an old radio or slippers, and ensure that the exterior matches the interior style and period.

Using a photograph of a granny's sitting room to decide what elements give it atmosphere.

Puppet size dictates the scale of the set, with a 1:6 scale commonly used for realistic human characters. A 1:6 scale fits 20-25 cm puppets, providing enough depth of field and focal range, whereas smaller scales like 1:24 can be used for wide street scenes to accommodate commercially available miniature props.

Nick Hilligoss uses 1:6 scale for human puppets and 1:24 scale for wide suburban street sets to use cheaper scale cars.

Solid set bases and reliable puppet fixation methods are crucial to prevent unwanted movement during shooting. Sets require a sturdy base like 12-16 mm plywood or perforated mild steel, which costs about 100 pounds ($200) for a 2x1m perforated mild steel base of 16-gauge thickness. Puppets can be secured using threaded tie-downs, pins, double-sided tape, or neodymium magnets, depending on the budget and stability requirements.

At Aardman, animators use a store of about 40 car jacks under a set to correct overnight shifts.

• Build the set at a comfortable working height for animators.
• Make the base firm and solid using stage weights, sandbags, or screwing things into the floor.
• Fix puppet feet using tie-downs, strong flat-headed pins, double-sided sticky tape, or rare earth magnets.

Forced perspective creates an illusion of depth and distance in miniature sets and backdrops. By utilizing a vanishing point and painting background elements or separate landscape strips progressively smaller and hazier with distance, you can make small sets appear vast.

Artem created background sets using forced perspective with a central vanishing point.

Sound and Dialogue

Recording a scratch dialogue track before final production helps time the animatic accurately. You should record a rough dialogue track using yourself or friends directly onto a computer, edit it to match the animatic, and establish proper timing before hiring professional voice actors.

Hiring professional voice actors significantly enhances the quality of an animation compared to using friends or directors. Professional voice-over artists offer professional delivery, timing, and inflections. Voice reels can be requested from actor agencies, and sessions generally cost between 100 to 400 pounds for a one- to three-hour professional recording session.

• Prepare a character profile to go with the voice-over script.
• Provide typed instructions clearly for the recording session.
• Ask actors if they mind being filmed during recording to capture facial mannerisms.

Breaking down dialogue phonetically frame by frame allows you to match mouth movements accurately. Sound must be broken down by phonetic sounds rather than spelling onto bar charts or X-sheets using waveform software like Magpie. However, full lip sync is not always necessary if body language and timing convey the emotion.

Nick Park used full facial animation for early Wallace and Gromit films by re-sculpting the mouth, but later shifted to replacement mouths from the nose down for speed.

• Place the voice track on the timeline and find the start and end frames for each scene.
• Mark up the bar chart or X-sheet with head and tail frame numbers.
• Find the first frame of the first sound and mark it in pencil.
• Find the last frame of the first word, mark it, and scrub the word to fill in the phonetic breakdown.
• Number each sheet sequentially to avoid confusion.

Commercial music and sound tracks require written permission from recording companies for public exhibition. Using favorite commercial tracks without consent prevents a film from being shown publicly, entered into festivals, or uploaded to sites like YouTube, making royalty-free library music or free downloads a safer alternative.

4. Constructing Puppets and Armatures

Puppet design requires balancing scale, weight, flexibility, and longevity while choosing appropriate construction materials. Human figures of average size typically use a scale of 20 to 25 cm, though puppets can range from 15 to 35 cm. Larger scales are beneficial for close-up shots to ensure textures look good on camera.

Puppet construction ranges from simple wire frames and modelling clays to durable ball-and-socket armatures and foam latex castings.

Securing puppet feet to the set floor reliably prevents falling over during the stop-motion animation process. Animators use tie-downs featuring a threaded nut in the foot secured by a bolt from underneath the set using a wing-nut, requiring holes to be drilled and filled. Alternatively, rare-earth magnets placed under each foot work with a thin perforated steel table-top to hold the puppet steady, though they are expensive and must be kept away from electronic equipment.

• Draw the character to scale on graph paper before building.
• Consider how much the character needs to bend to determine armature strength.
• Determine if tie-downs, magnets, or double-sided tape will be used to keep the puppet upright.
• Drill holes in the set before each move when using the tie-down method and fill them afterward.
• Keep rare-earth magnets well away from computer and video equipment to avoid magnetic field interference.

Modelling clays like Plasticine offer improvisational freedom but require careful handling, cleanliness, and weight tracking to maintain shape. Plasticine allows animators to improvise on stage because it does not dry out, but it can easily lose shape and become contaminated with dust. English clays like Lewis's Newplast are firm and do not melt under lights, unlike US equivalents like Van Aken which melt and are useful for moulds.

Nick Park chose Plasticine for his work because it allows for improvisation on stage without requiring strict adherence to rigid pre-planning. Aardman Animation's Morph and Richard Goleszowski's Rex the Runt utilized English clay in press moulds.

• Ensure hands are clean before handling clay by using lanolin-free wet wipes or rolling same-colored clay in hands.
• Keep talcum powder available in hot conditions to keep the clay dry.
• Soften dry clay with a little liquid paraffin rather than spirit-based liquids.
• Record the weight of the model to keep its volume accurate when adding or subtracting clay.

Beginners can construct a basic, inexpensive puppet using twisted aluminium wire, balsa wood cores, and Plasticine. An aluminium wire armature provides flexibility, while balsa wood sections in the head, chest, and stomach keep the puppet lightweight. Polymorph granules melted in hot water form solid cores for hands and feet, incorporating a threaded nut for tie-downs. Aluminium wire costs 3 to 6 pounds for five-metre lengths online, and new materials for a simple puppet cost an estimated 55 to 85 pounds.

• Cut three lengths of 2 mm wire for the spine, arms, and legs, and twist them together using a drill and pliers.
• Drill holes through a balsa wood chest piece and thread the wire armature through, securing it with two-part epoxy glue and wood glue.
• Heat Polymorph plastic granules in hot water using tongs, and mould them around foot loops to house a threaded tie-down nut.
• Cover the aluminium wire with masking tape to help the Plasticine grip, then sculpt the character.

More robust puppets utilize square brass tubing joints, removable head and hand modules, foam covering, and fabric clothing. Building a durable clothed puppet costs an estimated 150 to 200 pounds, using 1.5 mm wire for limbs and spine, and 1 mm wire for wrists. Using square brass K and S sleeving allows heads, hands, and feet to be detached for maintenance and sculpting without wearing out the main body.

Cat Russ used fine jersey for her puppet's jumper and cotton for her jeans, while Nigel Cornford crafted costumes using basic white cotton that he dyed, screen-printed, or embroidered.

• Slot square brass K and S tubing into arms, hands, head, and neck, soldering an M3 nut to the larger piece to hold a grub screw.
• Feed twisted aluminium wire through short lengths of brass sleeving at elbows and knees to maintain definition and prevent breaking.
• Sculpt shoes in hard Plastiline, set them in potter's clay inside Lego block walls, pour plaster to make a two-part mould, and cast with colored silicone.

Professional series and feature animations require durable ball-and-socket armatures constructed from steel and bronze to withstand extensive wear and tear. Ball-and-socket armatures offer superior strength, reusability, and finer control for smooth movements compared to wire armatures. English armatures use steel rod and plate construction with ball-bearings sandwiched between balanced steel plates, while US versions use chromed mild steel ball-bearings.

Blair Clark recalls that animators on Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas required extremely strong joints due to high wear, and visiting English animators Loyd Price and Paul Berry were surprised at how hard the US armatures were.

• Use a hand blowtorch, pliers, and Allen keys with silver solder to assemble a custom armature from a kit.
• Incorporate single joints at elbows and knees for single-plane movement, and double joints at necks, shoulders, waists, and hips for full rotation.
• Avoid over-tightening joints to prevent buckling plates or rods.

Mould making requires matching hard casts with soft moulds and soft casts with hard moulds while carefully managing undercuts and seams. The general rule states that casting a hard piece requires a soft silicone mould, whereas casting a soft piece requires a hard plaster, resin, or fiberglass mould. Sculptors must plan for undercuts, add location keys, use release agents like Vaseline, and position seams away from exposed facial areas.

Stuart Sutcliffe at Mackinnon and Saunders sets a mirror on the opposite side of a character he is sculpting to reverse the image, helping his brain spot asymmetrical discrepancies and lumps.

• Bed the oil-based clay sculpt into a base of water-based potter's clay up to the division marks.
• Build containment walls around the bed using card, foamcore, or Lego blocks.
• Create key or location points using small cones of clay or marble dips without exceeding the halfway mark.
• Coat the first half of the mould with Vaseline release agent before repeating the plastering process for the second half.

Foam latex casting involves precise mechanical foaming, injection into a closed mould, and thermal baking to cure the material. Mixing foam latex requires a minimum recommended run size of 150 g latex, 20 to 30 g foaming agent, and 20 to 30 g curing agent. The mixed foam is injected into a mould containing a prepared armature, clamped, plugged at the vents, and baked in an oven.

• Accurately weigh out 150 g latex, 20-30 g foaming agent, and 20-30 g curing agent into a mixing bowl.
• Mix at high speed for 3 to 5 minutes, reduce to medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes, and drop to lowest speed for 5 to 6 minutes.
• Add 5-10 ml of gelling agent and mix thoroughly for 60 to 90 seconds.
• Place the PTFE-taped armature in the mould, brush latex in by hand, close and clamp the halves, and inject foam down the channel.
• Plug escape vents with wet clay or English Plasticine once latex emerges.
• Cure the gelled foam in an oven for 2 to 3 hours at a temperature of 90 to 95 degrees Celsius, allowing 10 to 20 minutes gelling time at 20 degrees Celsius room temperature.

Casting silicone requires cold curing and produces a springy, durable material, while fabric costumes require stable, non-crawl materials. Silicone cures in the mould over several hours without baking and is cleaned with isopropyl alcohol, though its springiness can reduce movement control unless supported by upholstery foam. Fabric costumes must be made from stable materials to avoid crawling effects during animation and are often hand-stitched and cut on the bias.

Nigel Cornford notes that lightweight fabrics crawl under the animator's touch as seen in King Kong and early Harryhausen movies, so he starts with a basic white cotton that he dyes, screen-prints, or embroiders.

• Inject mixed silicone into the mould until it emerges from the vents, and block vents with wet clay or English Plasticine.
• Leave silicone to cure for 10 to 12 hours before removing from the mould.
• Clean the cured silicone cast with isopropyl alcohol and sand seams with fine sandpaper or a multi-tool buffing tool.
• Cut fabric costumes on the bias to provide greater flexibility when stretching them around the puppet.

Professional commercial puppets like the Duracell bunny combine sturdy steel armatures, foam latex bodies, resin components, and custom stretch fur. Cat Russ and Gary Jackson built the Duracell bunny using a naked body sculpted in Plastiline to calculate fur weight and texture. The head utilizes a two-stage moulding process with an internal fiberglass skull, while the exterior is covered in a specially imported four-way stretch fur fabric.

First appearing on US television in 1974, the drumming bunnies commercial featured figures that were rebuilt by ScaryCat Studio in 2003, featuring foam latex over a steel armature, resin nose and eyes, and extensive wardrobes and props.

• Sculpt the naked bunny body considering the future addition of fur.
• Construct head moulds in two stages to create a hollow foam latex head fitted over an internal fiberglass skull.
• Suspend armatures within moulds and cast foam latex around them.
• Design patterns from four-way stretch fur fabric, sew them together, and carefully stitch and glue them onto the foam latex body.

5. Animating Characters on Stage

Animating believable performances demands careful observation, clear silhouettes, strict adherence to anticipation and reaction, and expressive posing.

Eadweard Muybridge set up 25 cameras along a racetrack to prove that a trotting horse takes all four hooves off the ground. These grids and photographic studies help you analyze muscles, inclinations, mannerisms, and the timing needed to add weight and realism to characters. You rely on Eadweard Muybridge's books Animals in Motion and The Human Figure in Motion, published from the 1880s onwards.

Posing the Model

A puppet's balance and action pose must be carefully checked from the camera's point of view to ensure clarity and register its weight.

ScaryCat Studio examples show poor versus clear action silhouettes and balanced standing poses.

• Stand your puppet on the set and look at it from all around to check balance.
• Check if weight is fully over a supporting leg so the other leg is relaxed.
• Ensure elbows are slightly bent and fingers curl toward the body in relaxed poses.
• Verify that feet are flat on the floor to register the character's weight.
• Imagine your character in silhouette to test if the action is clear from the audience's point of view.

Timing and Weight

Barry Purves discusses the unique timing required for models compared to live action in films like Achilles. Young animators often make the mistake of using live-action timing. Because stop-motion lacks natural camera blur, you must spend extra frames developing weight, deliberate anticipation, and reactions to make the action believable.

Anticipation, Action and Reaction

Every major animation movement relies on a chain of anticipation, action, and reaction to generate force and weight.

A fist hitting a table causes objects to jump and the fist to bounce back in recoil, or a tennis player prepares a serve. Before an action occurs, a preliminary counter-movement called anticipation compresses energy and gives weight to the move. The action itself then triggers a secondary reaction or recoil, such as an object bouncing back or a body following through.

• Raise a fist or object in anticipation before crashing it down into a table.
• Allow the impacted object and the hitting fist to bounce back slightly in reaction or recoil.
• Drive gags home clearly by making the anticipation and reaction exaggerated and deliberate.

Walking and Running

Barry Purves recounted his first job at Cosgrove Hall Films walking Grandma Bricks in the series Grandma Bricks of Swallow Street, which had a runtime of 2 minutes in the 1970s. Walking a 3D puppet is notoriously difficult because weight shifts can topple the figure. Armatures include brass sockets for steel rod rigs that can later be removed or painted out using blue/greenscreen or white card.

• Decide during planning if a walk or run is crucial, or find alternative ways to move characters from A to B.
• Support the puppet with a steel rod armature rig attached to a K&S brass socket in the pelvis or back.
• Grasp the pelvis and manipulate the legs and body from the hip to keep the armature's shape intact.
• Ensure the contact position is used where the front heel touches the ground and the back toe is about to lift.

Animation Masterclass

Teresa Drilling spent more than 20 years as an award-winning character animator, won an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation in 1991, and moved to Britain in 1999 to work on Chicken Run. Her book masterclass session took approximately 13 hours over two days. Softer, oilier American clay allows for subtle surface details and replacement parts like hero hands, but is easily dented. Firmer English clay like Newplast does not pick up fingerprints easily, allowing you to sculpt directly by hand and build sturdy structures without accidental damage.

• Knead a little bit of wax into clay eyelids to make them firmer and easier to adjust.
• Slice into clay air bubbles with a scalpel, push the air out, and seal the surface back up.
• Scrape the very top layer of clay off with a scalpel when incidental dirt appears to keep characters clean.
• Knead a bit of the working clay color between your fingers to clean out cross-contaminated clay or dirt from fingerprints.

10 Key Ideas

1. A beginner stop motion setup only requires three basic components: a camera, a stable support, and a recording destination.
2. Artificial lighting is mandatory for stop motion to avoid shifting daylight conditions, requiring careful wattage management to protect domestic electrical circuits.
3. To create realistic motion, animators must calculate increments so that spacing is closer at the start and end of a movement, demonstrating acceleration and deceleration.
4. Scanning storyboards into a computer and editing them with scratch dialogue creates an animatic that prevents expensive mistakes during model making and shooting.
5. Sound must be broken down by phonetic sounds rather than spelling onto bar charts or X-sheets using waveform software like Magpie.
6. Puppet construction ranges from simple wire frames and modelling clays to durable ball-and-socket armatures and foam latex castings.
7. The mixed foam is injected into a mould containing a prepared armature, clamped, plugged at the vents, and baked in an oven.
8. A puppet's balance and action pose must be carefully checked from the camera's point of view to ensure clarity and register its weight.
9. Before an action occurs, a preliminary counter-movement called anticipation compresses energy and gives weight to the move.
10. Softer, oilier American clay allows for subtle surface details and replacement parts like hero hands, but is easily dented.