Hints & Tips

How'd They Do That?: Stop-Motion Secrets Revealed

compiled by Heather Kenyon

We asked six stop-motion maestros to reveal a few more tricks of the trade: Henry Selick, Barry Purves, David Fain, Andrew Ruhemann, Voltaire and Mikk Rand. Here's what they had to say:

Henry Selick (U.S.)
Director, The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and The Giant Peach

"In The Nightmare Before Christmas there is a grotesque fountain in the town square that looks to be choking itself. The trick was the water. What we did was make a series of replacement sculptures out of translucent plastic and used a replacement cycle. We didn't use any water at all. We based the movement on traditional animation and then cast it in a queer resin."

This gruesome scene from Barry Purves' Screen Play
used a special red toothpaste to simulate blood.

Barry Purves (U.K.)
Director, Next, Screen Play, Rigoletto, Achilles

"For blood, I use a cosmetic toothpaste. It's red and slightly dyes the gums a deeper shade, in effect making the teeth whiter. Mixed with a little glycerin to make it look wet, it's easily animatable and does not run or dry out. Unfortunately, it smells of spearmint. I can't look at one of my death scenes now, without smelling of spearmint!. . . . KY lubrication jelly is also wonderful for tears."

David Fain (U.S.)
Animator, Action League Now!

"The show is an interesting hybrid of about 20% animation while the remaining 80% what we call "Chuckimation," which consists of puppeteering and hurling the characters past the camera. This previous season we've worked with a variety of substances ranging from Aloe Vera gel to simulate fried Alien, to mixing all three colors of Nickelodeon "Smud" with water and tempera paint to produce the substance Meltman oozes in the show's opening sequence."

Andrew Ruhemann, Passion Pictures (U.K.)
Producer, Doppelganger.

"KY Jelly was used as a substitute for snot in the making of Doppelganger, a Reebok commercial. It was used to show that the evil Ryan Giggs double is a dirty, slovenly kind of chap!"

Director/animator, commercials (Sci-Fi Channel, MTV and USA Network)
"For a Halloween promo that I animated for the Sci-Fi Channel, I had to create stop-motion skeletons with pumpkin heads. The skeletons were made of armature wire and plumber's epoxy. Plumber's epoxy is a resin that you mix and in four minutes it turns to stone. Needless to say you have to be a fast sculpt! I wanted the heads to be jack-o-lanterns, but for them to look dried out and old. Rather than the usual route which is sculpting them in clay, making a mold and then casting them in rubber, I made shrunken apple heads. I carved the faces directly into the apples and then let them dry out. It created a really wrinkly, old look.

"For the set I was looking for some kind of texture that would make the ground, which was primarily craft paper and water putty, look very earthy and organic. I ended up creating a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, cayenne pepper and instant coffee grounds. I then spray-mounted it to the paper and it really looked like earth. The nice thing is that each one of these powders has a distinctly different color to it, so by mixing them in different proportions and by individually sprinkling them, you end up getting a really organic modeled texture. All of the dried out foliage came from a dried flower and plant store. These thorny, seed casings and podlike things ended up giving the landscape a very macabre look. We used these instead of sculpting trees.

"At the very end of the spot there's a Victorian haunted mansion. We were getting down to the wire and hadn't yet built the house, so I sent one of my assistants to Starbucks and asked him to liberate about 200 wooden stirrers. We cut them like miniature wooden siding and built a little forced perspective house out of the stirrers. Then we spray painted the entire thing black. It is probably the quickest and cheapest mansion ever built!"

Mikk Rand, Nukufilm (Estonia)

"When we animated the film Back to Europe, directed by Riho Unt, we thought we had discovered making water by using hair gel!

"Anyway, here are a few more examples:
Cotton wool was used to imitate smoke and smog in Kaerajaan (Dir: Mikk Rand) and Back to Europe (Dir: Riho Unt). Cotton wool was also used to create snow in The Elf's Tree (Dir: Rao Heidmets) and The Elf's Coming (Dir: Heino Pars).

Rice in water was used for falling snow in Underground (Dir: Mati Kutt) and Edgeland Tales by Mikk Rand & Priit Tender. We also use corn, rice, rye, wheat, barley and oats together in the water because they fall at different speeds and look more natural.

Another way we have created snow was to use salt from Byelorussia [Republic of Belarus] for the film Christmas Story (Dir: Aarne Ahi).

Licorice was used to imitate the maggots in Back to Europe (Dir: Riho Unt).

Coffee made with half the liquid, so that it is extra strong, looks like oil. We used this technique in Back to Europe (Dir: Riho Unt)."

Heather Kenyon is Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Magazine.

Scenery

Amazing scenery design by PES animation in this commerical:

How To Make A Puppet

Found a great article on puppet making:


Here you can see the entire armature. I'm afraid I didn't get any more close-up pics before I fleshed him out though. But you can sort of see how I did it... basically I just laid the wires side by side, then I slathered them up real good with some Barge cement (a very strong flexible contact cement used for bonding the soles onto shoes) and then wrapped around and around it with some extra-thick silk thread- as per Tennessee Norton's suggestion. Silk is by far the strongest thread available. It comes in 50 weight and 100 weight. The 50wt is actually the thicker stuff! Why do they have to go backwards like that, the same as with wire guages! AARRGGGGHHH!!!!

Now... here's an important point that I want to emphasise... and this is true whether you're twisting your wires or not. You want the various limbs/spine/neck etc to be integrated into each other in as organic a fashion as possible. What I mean is that each one should be firmly rooted into every other limb near it. Hmmm... it's hard to put into words... I need to draw up a quick diagram and post it. But I'll try to explain-

Each arm is three wires. So, rather than all 3 just going straight across to become the opposite arm, which would result in loose sloppy construction, I ran one straight across, one down to become part of the spine, and one up into the neck. Once you've done this for both arms, You now have the spine/neck nearly finished... there are 2 wires there already. So I just ran one more all the way through, from the head down to the tailbone. Two of the spine wires extended on to become leg wires. I ran one more from foot to foot, pretty much completing the armature. Actually, I wanted the legs a little stronger, so that's why you see 4 wires there instead of just three (but it was easier to explain it with just the three).

In order to hold these wires together before I could start gluing them up and wrapping with silk thread, I used some wire ties from bread wrappers that I always save and find all kinds of uses for. I started by laying a wire down on a full sized sketch of the puppet that shows me the proportions. This is the first time I tried building the armature on a drawing, and it helps immensely! Until I tried this, i couldn't get my proportions the way i wanted them.

I started with one arm, laid all 3 wires out, bending one up and one down and leaving them extra-long to work into the rest of the armature, and as i said, one went straight across. It was kind of tricky for a while, but by tying things together with the wire ties, i was able to tame the unweildy beast and get it done one limb at a time. I got each limb glued and wrapped before proceeding on to the next, so it began to hold together after a while.

Now it's also very important that you have your epoxy putty blocks large enough that they solidly hold the wires. I made my shoulder block go just about all the way from shoulder to shoulder, and far enough up and down to lock those wires in place so they can't jiggle at all... otherwise you'll run into problems. Of course, before getting to the epoxy putty part, I very securely glued things together at these juncture points and wrapped tightly with plenty of thread. In factr, now that I think back, I used 2 full layers of thread on all the limbsd, and a little extra to secure the chest and pelvis areas together.

Here he is all foamed up:


Found a great article on puppet making:


I think the fact that the wires are wrapped with 2 layers of thread as well as the rubbery glue helps to protect them from bending too sharply right at the edge of the epoxy putty blocks. I considered also putting a gob of hot glue at each point where the wires emerge from the blocks to make it a little less flexible there, but ended up not doing that.

Ok, about the foam. I just have an old sofa cushion that I'm cutting up.... there's probably enough foam in there to make a hundred puppets! You could probably pick up a cushion at a local shop or something. For glueing it I'm using the Barge. It's available at Ace hardware stores (not sure where you are, or if they have Ace stores there). You can also get it online through www.burmanfoam.com or just do a web search. You might also be able to get away with using some fabri-tac glue, though it's not as strong as the Barge. I know Nick H uses regular spray adhesive to bond foam with... the 3M kind you get in the spray cans. I was thinking about maybe trying to sew it in place, but not sure how well that would work... just a possible alternative.

For shaping the foam, I start by poking a shish-kebob skewer through a block of it and then start shaping with scissors. I use big sharp scissors for basic shaping and then switch to some tiny ones I bought from Micro-mark for detail shaping. The skewer shows me where the center hole is as i work. That way I end up with a foam 'sleeve' that i can just pull on over an arm or leg. I don't glue the limb pieces on, or the neck either. They're just pulled on over the wrapped wire (the ribbing of the thread sort of holds them in place) and then I glue the torso piece on. It has plenty of glue on it, and the edges of it overlap each of the limbs anyway, so that's enough to hold them. The torso block is just one long pice that i fold in half over the shoulders. You have to slit it down the front first and make a little cut-out to fit around the neck, so it's sort of like a vest.

Here's an online dealer of polyfoam: https://garysupholstery.com/index.html

I know you didn't really ask about this, but I'm on a roll here-

I've found that stretch fabric works very well for making clothes. It's MUCH more forgiving than non-stretch fabric. The way I made the suit for my Buster puppet was by stitching it together inside-out right on the puppet and then peeling it off so it turns itself right side out. Sleeves first... simple tubes that I made a little tight so they actually compress the foam a bit. After stitching it up, trim off as much excess fabric as you can, but be careful not to cut TOO close or you'll cut through the stitching and need to repair it... I did that on one shoulder and it was a bee-yotch to fix! I'm learning to pay extra close attention to the ends of stitches and areas where two stitches come together, like where the sleeves join the body or at the crotch. Reinforce as much as you can!! And make those stitches nice and small. I bought myself a nice little kit with a lot of little spools of thread in a rainbow of colors so I have just about any color I need. And I'm making the clothes very simple... none of this fancy-schmancy tailoring or anything.... the pants are just one piece of cloth, and the jacket believe it or not is only 3! Next time I'll use a few more pieces for a jacket though... I ran into some problems just trying to use a single piece for the body.

Just to throw out a few alternate ideas, I remember Misha said he sometimes buys stuffed animals or dolls to scavenge parts of the clothing. He might have said for the skins actually, but it made me realize you could get them for the clothing. Might be hard to find a perfect fit though,,, probably best to do this for accessories rather than actual articles of clothing.

And the method I used to use... making clothes from gloves. I have more info in my simple puppetmaking tutorial: http://www.darkstrider.net/puppet_tut.html . If you search the net, there are a lot of places where you can buy plain white cotton "inspection gloves", that take acrylic paint really well. And of course there are other styles that will work too. For the size I tend to work in, the fingers are a good fit girthwise, but tend to be a bit short for sleeves and pant-legs. Maybe design puppets to fit them?

Ok, faces. Now we're getting into unexplored territory for me, as I haven't done this yet, but I've been thinking about it and taking a little from here and a little from there of what I've read about various productions.

One thing I'm thinking is to make a head basically just like the way your pig head looks- only from a hardening clay rather than plasticene- with no mouth, and then make some replacement mouths to stick on. If there's no dialogue you don't need as many... maybe just a few expression changes. Or maybe one mouth made similarly to a replacement mouth, but from latex with a wire running through the lips so you can bend it... and maybe make a few different teeth-plates to put behind it for when it opens to different degrees. Eyes could be replacements or beads set into the head that you turn with a needle and make lids from plasticene. Eyebrows could be pipe cleaners sticking out of the forehead or maybe replacement pieces stuck on with a little wax. If you want more movement than that, then you'd probably have to go with foam latex.

Stop Frame Animation

So I am thinking of doing a stop frame animation for my final project. I have always been a huge fan of it, but never actually tried it. Here are a few of my all time favorite animations:

I Made A Yeti

This Yeti is falling apart due to non-believers.

Cryptozoology

So I'm heading in the corrected direction of 'Cryptozoology' - the science of unproved creatures. Here is some great info to get started.

The words "yeti" and "abominable snowman" are applied to several types of hairy humanoids similar to North America's Bigfoot, but these creatures are distinct from Bigfoot because they are reported from a different continent altogether. The Himalaya Mountains of Tibet and Nepal are the homeland of these legendary creatures. The two terms "yeti" and "abominable snowman" are sometimes applied to creatures from other remote areas of Asia as well. Cryptozoologists and other serious researchers prefer the term "yeti" over "abominable snowman" because "yeti" sounds more scientific and because it is not based on a mistranslation of a native word, as "abominable snowman" is.

The most picky cryptozoologists refer to each individual type of yeti by its own native name, dzu-teh for the biggest, hulking giants who sometimes walk on all fours and seem half bear, half ape, meh-teh for the "classic" yeti that stands about six feet tall and has a pointed top of the head, and teh-lma for the three-foot-tall frog-eating yeti that makes its home in steamy jungle valleys between mountains (sometimes thought to be a juvenile yeti by researchers).

The teh-lma is the most human-like of the yetis and is thought to be a race of primitive humans by some researchers, compared to the proto-pygmies. It is also the most ignored of the yetis. Very little research has been focused on it recently, although several decades ago, when it was lumped in with the meh-teh more often than not, this little yeti was more in the spotlight. The dzu-teh is thought by many researchers to be a bear. It has claws and carnivorous habits, in addition to its bear-like appearance. However, many cryptozoologists think that, if it is a bear, it must be a new species of bear, because the descriptions don't sound like any known species.

The meh-teh is the subject of the most research, and is the only variety of yeti that most people hear about these days. Whenever you've read about the yeti before, it is likely you were reading about the meh-teh, the classic yeti that sounds most similar to Bigfoot. It looks something like a cross between a gorilla and a man. It could not easily be mistaken for a bear. Even though it has long, shaggy hair, it is actually supposed to be a valley-dweller, like all other varieties of yeti. The snow-capped peaks don't contain enough food for such a creature to live there, but it is said the meh-teh often has to go through high mountain passes to travel from one valley to another, where it becomes highly visible to human observers and sightings are most likely to take place. In its forested, remote valleys, it is supposed to be nearly impossible to locate, living in a remote territory much like the panda, which eluded researchers for sixty years after its discovery.

Even though the yeti (at least the meh-teh) is one of the best documented of the hairy humanoids, it is also one of the most disputed. Native folklore has heavily obscured whatever real animal may lie behind the mythology. According to legend, the yeti is a spiritual being, not an animal. It is sometimes worshipped, attributed with many supernatural powers, and is said to interbreed with humans.

In addition, some legends say that there is no actual breeding population of yetis. Instead, each yeti is actually the transmogrified quasi-solid ghost of a dead human. Other mythology states that the yetis are actually demons that have been assigned to guard mountains, so that humans do not ascend to the peaks and disturb the gods who live there. If this is true, then the yetis have failed miserably in their task to keep people from climbing Mt. Everest.

With western observers involved, the picture can get clouded too. The yeti has been shown to be confused with actual humans, bears and even suggestive-looking rocks on some occasions.

Pygmy Elephant

The pgymy elephant is just what it sounds like: a very small elephant. Known to natives of the Congo as the red elephant, adults stand no more than six and a half feet tall at the shoulder, and many are smaller. There have been adult males less than five feet high. Newborns are the size of dogs. They have a reddish skin that is hairier than normal elephants.

Since they have been held in captivity, there is no doubt that these animals exist. The only question is whether they qualify as a new species, a new subspecies, or only as mutants within a known species (the African Forest Elephant). Most zoologists argue for the latter, but cryptozoologists hold out for formal recognition as a new species or subspecies.

There are a number of pieces of evidence to uphold the idea of a new subspecies or species. In the few observations of these animals in the wild, they are seen in family groups of just pygmy elephants, not mixed with larger elephants like they should be if they were something like midgets are among humans. In addition, they seem to have adaptations to a more aquatic lifestyle and they are found in a unique habitat, dense swamps, that are shunned by other types of elephant. These characteristics, if they prove true in later studies, should allow pygmy elephants to qualify as a new subspecies at the very least. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be interest and funding for further studies.

In addition to the pgymy African elephant, there are also reports of pygmy Asian elephants from the dense jungles of India and from certain islands in or near Indonesia. These claims of other possible types of pygmy elephant have been even less investigated by mainstream scientists than the claims of African pygmy elephants.

The possibility of a new species of elephant is not as outlandish as it sounds at first. After many years of familiarity with the African elephant, scientists decided that the African Forest Elephant was not a subspecies, as had been supposed for years, but was a separate species, with nearly as wide a gap between it and other African elephants (the African Bush Elephant) as the gap between African elephants and Asian elephants.

Also, this has happened before in zoology. Bonobos (pygmy chimps) used to be considered as just a subspecies of chimps, but now they are considered a unique species of their own. These lessons teach us that a new species can be declared many years after mainstream science has accepted that the animals in question truly exist, if what was considered to be just one species is found to be two or more.

Gorilla

According to African folklore, the pongo was a wild man of the jungles. Looking like a cross between a human and a monkey, he was a violent creature with magical powers. He relished the taste of human flesh, often raiding villages in order to carry away captives for purposes of cannibalism or rape. Sometimes the pongo was a shapeshifter. Female pongos would turn into beautiful women to get close to male victims, then change back to their true forms when it was too late for the men to escape. Pongos and humans could mate and produce hybrid children who looked human, but who had violent, cannibalistic urges from their pongo side.

Pongo reports were understandably met with much skepticism in the scientific community. The pongo had so many supernatural characteristics and behaviors not typical of a biological animal that it just didn't seem like it would ever turn out to be real. These aspects of the pongo from folklore squarely place it within the "big hairy monster" or "hairy biped" category of anomalous cousins of Bigfoot.

The entire world was surprised when, in 1847, the pongo (now known as the gorilla) was officially declared to exist. Of course, it didn't have any of the weird characteristics assigned to it by folklore. The real gorilla is a vegetarian, not a predator. It doesn't capture humans, it doesn't eat humans, and it can't reproduce with humans. Its official discovery hasn't stopped the flow of legends that claim otherwise, but now science can clearly separate the gorilla of myth and the real animal. Still, the animal's outlandish mythical features were acknowledged in its very name: "gorilla" is derived from the Arabic word for "ghoul."

The story of the pongo's official discovery teaches us that any cryptid, however fantastic it seems, might be real. Supernatural or fantastical characteristics are no reason to disqualify a cryptid from further investigation. In fact, European folklore from little more than a hundred years ago assigns many supernatural abilities and odd behaviors to real animals such as wolves, eagles and mice. We now know that these superstitious ideas are false, even though the animals themselves are indisputably real.

Okapi

The okapi is an animal that looks like a cross between a giraffe and a zebra. It was reported from Africa by native folklore, but even the export of okapi skins did not persuade the doubters. People thought that the okapi just sounded too much like an animal that had been made up. It was obviously a mythical mixture of a zebra and a giraffe, a kin to the griffin, centaur, and other legendary creatures made by pasting together the parts of various real animals. The odd skins, with striping on the legs and solid blocks of brown or white elsewhere, were probably faked in some way.

The okapi may have remained an animal that was known to outsiders only through folklore, except for the efforts of Sir Harry Johnston. He believed native informants and sent skins and skulls to scientists until he was able to weaken skepticism and gain research money for the cause. Capture of live animals finally destroyed the last of the skepticism and the okapi was declared a real animal. When cryptozoology emerged as a science, the okapi was often held up as a symbol of cryptozoology, especially as used in the logo of the International Society of Cryptozoology. Until the discovery of the Vu Quang Ox, the okapi was the last significant new large mammal to be accepted by science.

Despite its discovery, we know little about okapis today, except what we have learned from the few animals kept in zoos. The animal is rare and nearly impossible to observe in the wild. The Uganda okapis are now thought to be extinct. The last remaining okapis live in the Congo, restricted to a narrow band of dense rainforest cloaking mountains above 1500 feet, but below 3000 feet.

Nessie

The Loch Ness monster, also known by the nickname Nessie, is probably the creature that most often leaps to mind when ordinary people think about cryptozoology: the study of animals that may or may not exist. Nessie is virtually a symbol of cryptozoology. This creature has probably been the object of more sustained media attention than any other individual type of cryptid, with the possible exception of Bigfoot.

What is the Loch Ness monster? If it exists, it is probably not one animal, but a bunch of animals of the same species. This idea is supported by sightings of multiple "monsters" at the same time, and by simple ecology. If Nessie is an animal, it had to have a mother, and at one point there had to have been a viable breeding population of the species. Only a few people think Nessie is a single animal, such as a sea serpent that somehow became trapped in Loch Ness. The typical Nessie does roughly resemble the average sea serpent, but it lives in the biggest freshwater lake in Scotland instead of the ocean.

Witnesses tend to describe an animal with sleek, rubbery blackish-gray skin, about twenty feet long. Nessie usually has the serpentine body that is typical for sea serpents and lake monsters, furnished with humps along its length, and one or more sets of paddles (or sometimes, stumpy legs). Nessie's head is often described as roughly horse-shaped, it may have a straggly mane running down its neck, and some witnesses report small horns, especially those who see the Loch Ness monster from close up. Sometimes, witnesses report a smaller, rounded, turtle-like head. This head is the one that seems to appear in most of the famous Nessie photos.

The idea of horns may sound ridiculous, but they would make sense if the Loch Ness monster is actually a zeuglodon, a weird primitive whale, because the zeuglodons were only a few steps removed from the mesonychids, ungulate predators, and ungulates often have horns.

The first serious wave of Nessie sightings came in the 1930s and they have continued ever since. Before the wave of sightings that started today's fad, there were older legends of water dragons and kelpies in Loch Ness (a kelpie is a magical aquatic horse that is often thought to be a shapeshifter). However, these older legends were much more variable in how they described the appearance of Nessie, so most researchers do not rely on them much, simply noting that they exist as being a reason to suppose that the Loch Ness Monster is much more than a recent fad.

Moon Bear

The moon bear is a recognized species of bear that is native to Asia, also known as the Asiatic black bear. Scientists think that the moon bear is only distantly related to the American black bear (which is itself a close relative of the grizzly bear).

The Golden Moon Bear is something else. It might be a mere color phase of the regular moon bear, it might be a subspecies, or it might be a new species of bear altogether. The evidence gathered so far is not yet conclusive.

In the past, scientists were often fooled by color phases into declaring a new species or subspecies. Later, they would often discover animals of both color phases in the same litter, or they would find that color phases in that animal weren't tied to geographical regions.

In order to qualify as a different subspecies, the animals of a certain type need to both look different from the main species and have a distinct population living in an area or habitat that does not wholly overlap the range of the rest of the species. The Siberian Tiger is a good example of a subspecies. It looks different from other tigers, it is much bigger than them and better adapted to the cold. Along the southern part of its range it once blended gradually into the general population of Chinese tigers, yet even in those times it certainly had lands and a habitat type all to itself.

Oh! What to believe?!

Model Fantasy

Classical Fantasy

Dead Romance

Misplaced objects is another theme that I wish to explore. By taking something out of its comfort zone and smothering it with something totally irrelevant, or fantastical it creates a brand new light on the image. This is a fairly effective way of trying to portray something in a fun, yet hugely engaging way.

Taxidermy

Taxidermy has always fascinated me. There is something about those dead eyes that seem all too real. It really is life captured in motion. But why; how is seeing a stuffed bird representational of seeing a real pelican soar over the marshlands? Is it really any more sufficient then a painting, or photograph?

However, when used in Graphic Design, taxidermy has a whole new approach. It is no longer about representing the creature it holds within, but about expressing how it surreal the concept it: How fantastical and faux.

This Is Not A Pipe

To begin my Final Major Project, I am going to delve into the realm of 'Fantasy'. I'm curious of the imagery that misplaced objects, juxtapositions and non-realist art can create. Fourcault's commonly used 'This is Not a Pipe' is a good starting point, as even as simple as it is, it puts a whole new spin on art, design and conceptual thinking. Below is an excerpt from Michel Foucault's 'This is Not a Pipe":

Separation between linguistic signs and plastic elements; equivalence of resemblance and affirmation. These two principles constituted the tension in classical painting, because the second reintroduced discourse (affirmation exists only where there is speech) into an art from which the linguistic element was rigorously excluded. Hence the fact that classical painting spoke – and spoke constantly – while constituting itself entirely outside language; hence the fact that it rested silently in a discursive space; hence the fact that it provided, beneath itself, a kind of common ground where it could restore the bonds of signs and the image. Magritte knits verbal signs and plastic elements together, but without referring them to a prior isotopism. He skirts the base of affirmative discourse on which resemblance calmly reposes, and he brings pure similitudes and nonaffirmative verbal statements into play within the instability of a disoriented volume and an unmapped space. A process whose formulation is in some sense given by Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

1. To employ a calligram where are found, simultaneously present and visible, image, text, resemblance, affirmation and their common ground.

2. Then suddenly to open up, so that the calligram immediately decomposes and disappears, leaving as a trace only its own absence.

3. To allow discourse to collapse of its own weight and to acquire the visible shape of letters. Letters which, insofar as they are drawn, enter into an uncertain, indefinite relation, confused with the drawing itself – but minus any area to serve as a common ground.

4. To allow similitudes, on the other to multiply of themselves, to be born from their own vapour and to rise endlessly into an ether where they refer to nothing more than themselves.

5. To verify clearly, at the end of the operation, that the precipitate has changed colour, that it has gone from black to white, that the “This is a pipe” silently hidden in the mimetic representation has become the “This is not a pipe” of circulating similitudes.