Mechanisms
To start off I jumped back into creating my tiger legs, firstly, because I began experimenting last week but also because I feel as though its an easy mechanisms to start the week off.
I began by using foam and a kebab skewer just as a really basic first try.
I used foam as I thought this would have less friction and create the movement I was after however this wasn't the case and I had to apply pressure and force to get the leg to move. After two failed attempts of creating the leg movement Rachel Canning had spoken to use about I decided it would be best to find some images or videos of her Toto puppet to see if they helped me understand how she created the legs.
This is when I realised that the legs are single pieces and not two separate pieces working together as I had assumed.
I quickly did this by adding cutting a rough shape of legs out of cardboard and stringing them onto a kebab stick. This created the playful movement that I was hoping to achieve.
I then took this further by padding out the leg with newspaper and masking tape. Not only did this add shape to the leg but also added weight to the leg which I did think I needed however really like the effect this has on the movement of the leg. By adding the weight to the leg it created a more natural movement, still playful but not swinging as dramatically. I defiantly think this will be the mechanism I use for my Tigers legs. Designs to scale In order to help our tutors understand the scale of our puppets were planning on making they've asked us to draw them to scale. I decided to start with my tiger as I have discovered the exact movement I want him to have. I worked out the scale of my tiger by using the legs I created yesterday. His body and head aren't completely in proportion compared to his legs however I tried to play with this a bit in order to create the 'cute' factor of him being a young tiger were his legs are slightly to short for his body, his body is still cubby with all his baby fat and he head is still too big for his body. Once I drawn out he measures roughly 40cm x 75cm. This felt quite intimating at first however once I placed in the poles and hands onto the diagram it became less scary, especially because on this puppet the main movement will be his legs and then a slight movement of the head.
Designs day 2 and storyboards
When it came to my tiger I wanted to see how he would interact with the British wildlife.
see a small shadow of a 'cat' behind bars.
Once he's out all the other animals run straight for the woods/wild but the cub runs toward near by houses.
He sits outside a door looking excited. Bum bouncing every few seconds.
As it becomes dark we see him clawing at the door and then turn around and walk away with his head down and tail between his legs.
He's walking slowly through a field (visible houses in the background) when he spots a rabbit and begins chasing it.
He then begins attempting to hop like the bunny into the woods. The rabbit is visibly scared and darts of deeper to hide.
As this happens he then spots a squirrel climbing a tree and also attempts to follow it up. He manages to climb part of the way up but still can't reach the squirrel - who by this point has also hidden from the tiger.
clearly disappointed he walks away until he spots a badger entering his hole and bounds behind him. The tiger sizes up the hole before darting into it and getting stuck midway through. He manages to wiggle himself free and begins walking through the forest again. He spots a fox sniffing the ground, approaches carefully as his wary after his last animals encounter. Once he feels safe he begins following the fox also, sniffing the floor and prancing along this is until the fox darts down a hole (Rabbit hole) and the tiger stops abruptly and begins to walk away. I'm unsure of how to illustrate this right now due to our group needing to finalise our story and how we will create it, But, the last you will see of the tiger cub will be once he discovered the 'pack' of wild cats who have also escaped the zoo he was in - Mother tiger, Black jaguar and a panther.
I was really struggling with the storyboarding aspect of my elephant as I'm struggling to give her a personality.
The only aspect of my storyboard i could figure out it that when she's in her cage she can see a tree outside which she want to get to but just can't and the first thing she doesn't as soon as she gets out is goes straight to the tree and begins to eat.
During our meeting Constance helped me come up with an idea that after she's eaten her tree we can see her feet walk from concrete, onto grass and then onto leaves and through water. Just continue to see where is doing but in an abstract way. I think this idea could work really well with the elements of my puppet that I have chosen to create.
1:1 scale drawing of elephants trunk:
I've decided the best way to create the trunk and the movement to accompany it would be to create a puppet I could manoeuvre with my arm. This being the case means I would have the create the puppet that would fit the dimensions of my arm which very roughly measure to be 50cm long by 25cm in diameter (but this varies due to my arm shape). Reference images:
Scale drawings As for my elephants legs I think it would be best to just create the lower half of the legs and keep the puppet simple by puppeteering it via a stick protruding from the top. I think this will work well for scenes we are planning on filming, however I would like a slight bit of give in the ankle to make it look as though the foot is moving, I'm unsure how to do this. The only idea I've had about this mechanism so far is that I could possible make the leg and foot separately but join them together with elastic, springs or something of that nature. Originally I wanted to create the foot with the dimensions of roughly 20cm by 10cm however on reflection of this I thought I should do it bigger as I don't want the scale to look too unusual during filming but I also don't want to make it too big as I wanted me elephant to be pretty simple but finishes off with beautiful texture. I'm only going to make two of these to ensure I can puppeteer them really well.
When searching for reference images I stumbled across these autonomy related images which I think with help me massively, especially the model showing that their bones aren't he bottom of the foot and that they have significant amount of padding underneath their foot bones.
As for my ear puppet I decided to scale them using my trunk as a reference to make sure the ears don't look out of proportion to my trunk. When I googled this an elephant trunk is roughly 6ft as are the length of their ears. I'm planning on making these out of fabric and wire and be able to make it twitch and flap as elephants ears do. I was struggling to figure of how I would make this work with filming so I brought this up with Constance during my one on one and she suggest that I should attempt to make to attach to me trunk/arm as well as create smaller puppets of both the trunk and the elephant and attach it to a general shape of a head but make both mechanisms move with the same trigger.
Really quick drawings of the head concept on my body:
I want to make the ear out of calico and wire. I want a 'cord' that I can pull which will make the ear twitch I'm unsure how I will do this therefore will need to experiment while making my maquettes.
When it comes to my bear I really want to have an interesting finish to my rendering as I really want the audience to feel the most emotion towards this specific puppet. I think the best way to do that will be to create just the head and a paw so that I'm able to focus on the elements such as the eyes and head movement without having to worry about all the other aspects. In order to ensure the puppeteering aspect works well on film I will have to make a portion of the body coming from the back of the head so its less gaps for people to fill in in their head.
Textures I want to look into textures that I may use on my fully rendered puppet. I decided to look at the elephant texture first as I know the majority of this puppet will most likely be made from cardboard therefore I thought this would be an easy place to start.
I created this texture by applying toilet paper to cardboard with PVA glue and then painted and dry brushed to give it dome depth. Although this is a really basic technique I think it would be really effective to use on my finished puppet. This could also be beneficial in have a simple effective texture that can be quickly applied.