Continuation of texture samples. Today I wanted to look at the texture I will apply to my Tiger. I decided to look at my tiger rendering first as I'm a bit intimated by starting this as that is the puppet I want to be the most impressive with the most character. My original idea was to create a texture with fabric as I want the tiger to be completely covered by the texture I was creating. I started this by layering acrylic paint onto calico, stippling in an attempt to get an interesting texture the more layers I applied the thicker and larger the stippling was getting. it was looking really interesting. My plan was to let it dry and then apply the same technique to a separate piece of calico however this time using black. I would then cut the second piece into stripes a layer it onto of the orange texture. I didn't get to attempt the second part as once I checked back in on my drying orange all the texture had been absorbed into the fabric creating a thick layer of crusty paint on the surface which the colour had lost all highlights and was just a large dark blob of orange.
I won't be applying this texture to my tiger because I feel as though he is already quite blocky and has a solid appearance to him I feel as though adding this texture will only make him look heavier when I'm hoping to create a young energetic vibe.
The second idea I had was to use wool/embroidery thread to create the fluffy fur texture a young tiger would have.
I created tiny pompoms, which I thought would work for my scale, by wrapping the string around a fork as seen in the image above. I then took the string off of the fork and cut the one end of it creating a fluffy tuff with a loop on the bottom. I then attached the tuff to my calico with a needle and thread I then repeated this 8 time with both orange and black wool and attempted to create a small sample of pattern that I would use on my Tiger's rendering.
Once completed i wasn't impressed by the outcome until I took a photo of it and thought it had a really nice effect on camera so could be a really nice idea to have this texture oh film. However, This was very time consuming so would take a while to cover the full body of the tiger and could make him heavier and harder to me to puppeteer. As well as the possibility of making him look like a stuffed animal instead of a nicely rendered puppet. Lucy suggested that I should go back and re-explore the paint on calico idea but with a washy finish to it and Dik added that I could use embroidery thread in certain areas. I was really stuck on the idea of how to render my bear head and paw. I brought this up in my tutorial with Constance and we were discussing different ideas when she suggested the Idea of using collage. I thought this was a really unique idea and could be really effective way of adding browns black and grey tones into the fur of my bear to portray his old character. During our meeting it was brought up that the shine of the magazine paper might effect my filming due to it glistening light back at the camera so this is something I will have to bear in mind when both making and filming my bear. To ensure this doesn't effect me too dramatically I will most likely make me bear with the closest thing I can find to spot lights shone on him, as well as maybe find a way to apply something to the paper to reduce the sheen.
I began making the trunk in order to fit my arm. This worked well until I got to my elbow as it doesn't taper in the same way the cardboard tubes inside each taper, so once I extended on past this point I could no longer wear it on my arm. I do however think this could bee fixed by adding a few bigger tubes towards the top of the trunk. Overall I really like the movements the trunk has and I will attempt to be able to wear it on my arm but if not I feel like it will still have an effective look by controlling it with dowels. I might even end up having a larger range of movement off my arm rather than on.