rigging
Flying rig
Tie-down
Definition
A flying rig is a rigging system -- typically fine wire or a rod running to an overhead track or off-camera stand -- that suspends a stop-motion puppet in mid-air so it can be animated flying, jumping, or hovering frame by frame, independent of the tie-down points used for grounded poses.
Overview
Where a tie-down anchors a puppet's feet to a set floor through threaded holes and bolts, a flying rig does the opposite job: it holds the puppet up. The rig itself is usually a rod or a set of fine wires running from attachment points built into the puppet -- often reinforced hardpoints in the armature -- up to an overhead support (a track, an arm, or a fixed rig stand) or out to a base plate off-camera. Animators tension and release these lines incrementally, frame by frame, adjusting height, tilt and swing while the puppet's internal ball-and-socket armature handles the pose itself.
Two eras of practice diverge on what happens to the rig afterward. Older productions relied on nylon or fine steel wire thin enough to disappear against the camera's depth of field and lighting, reducing the need to erase the support itself. Stop Motion Works describes aerial rigs controlling the saucers in Ray Harryhausen's Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). That is evidence about how models were supported during animation, not evidence that the finished effects used no compositing. Support removal and combining model photography with other imagery are separate questions. Contemporary rigs favour sturdier, visible hardware -- rods, articulated arms, C-stands -- because it is easier to pose and more repeatable across a long take, at the cost of requiring the rig to be painted out digitally in post: rotoscoped frame by frame or removed against a tracked clean plate.
That tradeoff -- invisible-but-fragile wire versus sturdy-but-visible rod -- is a rigging decision made per shot, not per production: a single film may use thin monofilament for a brief hover and a visible rig, cleaned up in post, for an extended flight sequence that needs to hold a precise pose across hundreds of frames. The rise of digital rig removal is one reason flying rigs have gotten sturdier and simpler rather than more elaborate: production no longer has to solve invisibility on set when it can be solved afterward.
A useful construction lesson comes from the same practitioner’s first-hand account of The New Gumby Adventures: temporary flying rigs used foam-core pieces, wooden dowels and nylon line. His later test rig used guitar tuners and spools on a plate, but needed overhead X-Y travel and was slightly wobbly. These are examples, not a standard rig specification. The practical lesson is to test the whole support system, including the overhead structure and access to the spools, before committing a shot. Accessible line controls matter as much as a compact mechanism; the author later turned the spools outward to reduce tangling.
Workflow
- Build reinforced hardpoints into the puppet's armature at the balance points needed for suspension (typically the torso or hips, sometimes a limb for a specific pose).
- Rig fine wire or a rigid rod from those hardpoints to an overhead track, arm, or off-camera stand.
- Pose the puppet's armature as normal for the frame, then adjust the rig's height, angle and tension to set the suspended position.
- Shoot the frame, then advance and repeat, changing both the armature pose and the rig's suspension incrementally to build the arc of flight or hover.
- In post, either leave the shot as-is if the rig line is fine enough to be invisible, or digitally remove the rig frame by frame via rotoscoping or clean-plate compositing.