These past couple of weeks I have made a sample coffin out of cardboard, drawn preliminary sketches of what each character would have looked like in life, molded and baked the limbs of each character, and ordered supplies to make the coffins.  The Friday before Thanksgiving I went to a laser cutter orientation so now I can use the machine to cut my coffins after I make the blueprints in Illustrator.  The supplies have been delivered to me and consist of small hooks to hang the skeletons, tiny hinges for the coffin to be able to open, and sheets of birch plywood.

I plan on making the Illustrator blueprints and cutting the coffin pieces out this week as well as finishing the obituaries for all the skeletons.

I went to one of the comic symposium talks on the 15th.  Angela Stempel did a talk about her work in experimental animation.  Most of the animations were rather confusing to me, to be honest, but I did enjoy the 2D animations she did for the music videos she was commissioned for.  One thing she showed that I was really excited about was a project she started for a fellowship she won, but she never completed it.  It was about spirituality and masks in southern and eastern Asia, which I am very interested in, so I was pretty disappointed she did not have any animation to show about it.  I will probably go to the upcoming comics symposium talk this Tuesday with Warren Bernard.

I was sick for half of last week, so I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked, but I did manage to finish painting all of the skeleton characters.  I’ve looked at what they look like with dowels for arms and legs, but it doesn’t really match their bodies very well so I’m going to make bones out of sculpy in their place.  This Friday I am going to start making a cardboard version of the coffins so I have more of a set idea of how they are going to look.  From this point on my focus will be more on the packaging of the characters.

I’ve finished molding and baking the mother and father characters.  I am going to paint and assemble them later this week.  After They are done, all of the figurines will be complete.  Then I will move on to designing the packaging: coffins with windows to the figures with obituaries written on them to explain how each one died.  I can’t think up a name for the collection yet, though.  When I do, that will be on the front cover of the coffins.

I’ve made two more characters: the dog and the little kid.  I had to get skinnier wooden dowels and wire for them since the ones I used for the grandpa are a little too big to look right.  I am going to bake them tonight and paint them over the weekend.  At the moment I am having a difficult time coming up with sketches for the mom and dad characters.  I want them to not look so generic, but at the moment that’s what all the sketches look like.  I’ll have to figure out some kind of characteristic to make them stand out.  As far as the containers go I’m thinking of having a window to the faces of the characters in the coffins.  The dog’s is going to have to lie down sideways, though, because of his body shape.

So I’m almost done making my first figurine.  It’s the grandpa skeleton.  I’ve baked the Sculpy with wires stuck in it to turn into fastens for the limbs to attach to.  There is also a wire at the top of the skull so it can hang up.  At the moment just the skull and body are attached to each other, but they are fully painted.  I am trying to figure out the best way to attach the wires to the limbs, which are cut from a 1/4″ dowel.  My first intension was to cut notches in the limbs and twist really thin wire around it and thread it through the wire loops on the body, but I think it would look cleaner if I can figure out how to use the same sized wire as I’ve already used for the body and skull.  I’m going to test out making small holes in each side of the dowels and try gluing pieces of the wire into them.  Hopefully that works.  As for the hands and feet, originally I thought I was going to make them out of the dowel pieces too, but I’m going to make them out of Sculpy since I think that would look better.  For the packaging of the figurine I’m going to make a coffin box with information on the side or back about how the character died.  I’m going to make a test of one out of cardboard before I figure out what material to make those in.

Ben mentioned that it would be more interesting and give the project more depth if I provided a background story for the characters.  How did they die?

• Little Boy – tried to self-prescribe medicine for his cold, and overdosed on the wrong thing, so now he has a permanent runny nose in death.
• Dog – was newly adopted by an old lady, but she did not know anything about dogs and fed him a piece of chocolate in celebration of his adoption day, so he was poisoned.
• Mom – died in childbirth, has always wanted to be a mother, but was robbed of her chance in life.
• Dad – overworked himself in life and died of a heart attack.  His job kept him away from the family he was supporting, so he didn’t get to spend as much time with them as he wanted.
• Grandpa – died of a broken heart shortly after his wife died, leaving him lonely.

All of these characters died separately in life and came to the underworld on their own.  They each want to be part of a family for slightly different reasons, so as they wander around they come to find each other and create a make-shift family.  They end up getting in death what they had wanted in life.

I tested out two different materials: paper clay and Sculpy.  The paper clay is lighter than the Sculpy, but it is a little more difficult to shape since it doesn’t stick to itself as well as the Sculpy does.  When I do get it to a shape I like it is hard to retain that shape since it is a rather soft material before it dries.  It air dries, which is nice, but it takes a few days to fully dry, so it would make it a slow process if I decided to use it as my material.  The only drawback I can see with the Sculpy is that it is a little heavy, but it is easier to work with than the paper clay, so I am going to try to use this as my material.  I will experiment with it some more this week.  I want the head and body to be separate so they can move, so I’ll probably try sticking wire into the Sculpy before baking it to see how well that works as a connection.  I’m going to buy some wooden dowels to use for the limbs.  Hopefully I’ll have some test figures done by next week.

Work in progress shots:

I’ve been sick since Friday night and haven’t been able to speak or do much else, but I’ve narrowed down my senior thesis idea to the skeleton figures project.  I looked through “The Book of Skulls” that Stephen lent me last class and did a few sketches to try and come up with some faces for the skeleton characters.  On Tuesday I’m going to buy a couple of different 3D materials to try them out and see what works best for what I want to do.  Ideally the product will end up durable and light after I finish shaping it, especially since I am planning on attaching the body parts with wire.  The head and torso are going to be made from the same moldable material (whichever ends up being best) and painted with acrylic.  The limbs I plan on making from wooden dowels and painting them white with acrylic.  I want to be able to make a hole in the top of the skulls for the skeletons to hang from wire.  Some of the materials I’m planning on experimenting with Tuesday are Sculpy and something a classmate suggested to me called “paper clay.”  I’ll see how it goes.

9/1/16

Idea 1: Skeleton

During a 3D class in my junior year I had to make a character out of newspaper and paper tape.  I ended up making a skeleton character that had the effect of looking chubby, but still having the ribcage and pelvis represented.  I am interested in making more characters inspired it, but in a more durable material.  I want to experiment with other materials like Sculpy to see what works the best.  The final product I am hoping to have from this is a family of skeletons of all different shapes/sizes and maybe even some pet versions along with them.  If I have time at the end I would like to try taking staged photographs of them participating in daily life, but I don’t have any experience in photography, so I’m not sure how it will turn out.

 skeleton_front skeleton_side (front and side views of paper tape skeleton)

Idea 2: Painted Portraits of Ugly Faces

In a technical painting class during my sophomore year we were required to paint portraits as our final projects.  I didn’t want to just go with a traditional, straight-faced portrait so I had my brother make ridiculous faces and went with that.  It was way more fun to paint and the end result was more interesting than my previous paintings.  I think it would really enjoy doing a series of these portraits and taking photos of people’s best “ugly” faces for references.  It would be a new, interesting spin on portraiture.

Linden (portrait of brother)

Idea 3: Folktale Crossovers

I have always been interested in folktales, particularly Japanese folktales.  I think it would be interesting to do crossovers in scenes from similar stories found in both American and Japanese folklore.  For example, if I find a story similar to Little Red Riding Hood in Japanese folklore I could illustrate the scene of Riding Hood talking to her “grandmother” (wolf), but swap out the wolf with the antagonist from the Japanese folktale.  I am researching Japanese folklore for my Lang major’s senior capstone project, so I will be getting familiar with Japanese stories anyways, but I don’t feel as confident about this idea as I do about the other two.