This is the product of my day today. I've been working on a new scale drawing of the librarian puppet along with a new design for the armature. Following my previous designs with the abnormally positioned shoulder joints and finding these didn't really work, I have re-worked my design back into a more 'normal' human body shape. I have also re-worked his outfit so that the coat tails are on the back as the main shot of his whole body is from behind him and will look better on screen.
I'm still yet deciding on the design for his head armature, it depends on what materials I use to create it. If I carve his head out of balsa wood then he wont need a lightweigh core, the K and S will slot straight into this, however if it is made out of paper mache or mod roc then it will need a lightweight core for the K and S to sit in.
I wanted to be able to visualise the Librarians head shape in 3D as I have currently been working from the 2D image I had created of him. I have therefore made a 3D version out of sculpting clay. It was quite hard to translate from 2D and I'm not sure it works as well or is as visually appealing in 3D form, I definitely don't think it works too well from a straight forward point of view but at least I have a 3D form to work from now. Time to start experimenting with materials!
I am now doing a series of workshops to build the first prototype puppet for the Librarian. In order to do this I had to draw a scale drawing of the puppet and armature, this would in no way be the final design but just a starting point so that I can start to prototype and then build back into these drawings to improve them.
For the workshops my scale drawing needed to be under 20cm, this proved difficult as my puppet needs to be long and gangly, yet extremely skinny. The drawings below were the first attempt, however when finished I realised the legs needed to be alot longer so they would need to be redone.
| | These will be the drawings that I will be working in during the prototype workshops. The scale is just over 20cm.
(Top - scale drawing
middle - soft layer
bottom - armature)
I still need to add detail to the armature drawing such as where the bones will sit and if there will be K and S, however because my puppet is such an odd shape I will work on where these will go during the workshops.
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I have refined the idea of the 'other mother' body shape by now thinking about how the character will look.
I will be taking the left hand Librarian in the top image and the one from below to develop into a 3D form; I love the way the neck disappears into his clothing. The top right image has too much of the femine qualities that I discussed in the previous post.
I've had a lot of time to think about the Librarians body shape between all the classes that I have had to attend with not much time for design work inbetween.
I was sketching exagerrated and sharp body shapes when it came to mind that the perfect character to look at to research what I want to achieve would be 'the other mother' from Coraline:
I love the spider and bug quality that she has whilst still keeing a basic human figure. The aspect that I most like about her design is her very slim and slender waist, neck, legs and arms that protrude from an exagerrated chest and hips; her neck is of particular interest in the way it is made to look longer by continuing down into her clothes and then forming the waist.
I have done some sketches of her basic body shape from looking at the mood board above:
I was particularly taken with the images below for their unnerving quality. The body shape in the image above, whilst good is slightly too femine with the larger hips and slim waist coming down from a slightly larger chest piece. The images below will work better with my Librarian character design and the masculine qualities I need to bring to the body shape without too much obvious human definition.
Some initial feedback that I have had about the image that I had chosen to develop was that I might encounter problems with the neck being as long as it is in 3D form if I chose to make it that extreme. I thought that it might be a good idea to consider the Librarians body as a whole so I know how the neck sits on the body:
After completing this design I realised one thing: that I do not like it! I want this character to be more extreme in body shape, I want to emphasise his long limbs and push this to the point where the audience will view him and know that he is human but that there is something quite unnerving and alien about his body and the way that is moves. However I need to keep in mind the constraints of this in terms of puppet making.
Back to the drawing board...
This is the image that I have deided that I like the most out of the sketches that I have done. Rather than dwell on more design work in 2D form I want to get started on developing this image as a 3D form seeming as that is what the final outcome will be.
Wirey claws, full of flaws.
I like the idea that he sits smoking his pipe in the gloom enveloped in an old arm chair, slowly considering the despair that tightens around him.
I have started doing a few doodles of possible Librarian characters. I do like a nice crooked nose and exagerrated features! I don't really have any idea about the story line yet, but I want the Librarian to be a miserable, bitter and twisted character and I want this to reflect in his facial and bodily features.
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