clay amatures

I have made several amatures and they all didn't work. In the end I stuck to not having any amature. But i'm going to say the mistakes so that you don't need to make the same mistake.

number 1.
It was a copper wire frame for a human just like number 2 except alot of thin wire round the waist.
It was not bendy enough so I heated it up very hot and let it cool down slowly. Then it
fell to pieces so I soldered it up. The solder somehow stiffened the whole thing up so I made
another one.
By the way could someone tell me what happened with the solder?

number 2.
The photo shows it. When I covered it with plasticene I tried to move it but the copper just sliced through. I didn't put any amature in the animation version so Bernard's (the man in the animation) arms slowly fell with the weight of his hands.
number 3.
This one was for a catapillar. It was 4 pieces of beech that I sawed and then drilled to make it look like this.

Then I stuck tiny nails through the holes and peened them off (gently hammered the points so they were bigger than the hole and couldn't come off).It was able to bend like this.










With the plasticene on it, when I tried to move it the plasticene cracked open at the joints.

number 4.
I decided then to get rid of the joints and just have 3 wooden blocks (minus the tail block) and have the joints made of plasticene. This I did but the same thing happened. At the ends of the pieces of wood the plasticene cracked open.

number 5.
I pondered a while and came up with an idea: to point the ends of the blocks so that there would be no place for the plasticene to crack.
guess what.



the plasticene cracked open