Although the prototype workshop was helpful in many aspects, the prototype that I produced from it is not the direction I want to go in for my film. Here are the two main reasons:

Aesthetic quality - The puppet looks spongey and cartoon-like which is not what I want the Librarian to look like. One cause of this is the use of fabric and wadding, he doesn't have the angular textured look that I would like him to have. Another is the latex hands, by using acrylic mixed in it gives the skin a block cartoonised look so I would like to try using latex mixed with gouache to see if this achieves a more realistic skin look. The third cause is the white round eyeballs in the head, also giving a cartoonised appearance.

Armature design - Although using the armature shape that I have experimented with in this prototype does give the puppet an elongated neck and unusual body shape, it won't lend itself well to movement. The sholders sit awkwardly hidden behind the collar so all camera work would have to be face on to the puppet. The neck itself is extremely weak as it is relatively unsupported holding the upper half of the puppets body weight. It may be best to try and make a prototype in a similar style that I did with the marquette - normal shoulders, better control of movement. However I do need to test animate this prototype still.

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.