Puppet Chaos

Since my last post, Nicole and I got together and worked on the script. First we laid out the basic things Jasmin would say, and then while discussing lines and inspiration we thought it would be interesting to incorporate references to film noir films in the interrogation scene. However, I think its best for me to discuss which lines we kept/modified once filming is done. 

In the meantime, I've been working on the stop motion puppet. 

After building the armature, it was time to try air-dry clay for the first time.I started by covering the styrofoam ball in a thin layer of clay, and then  I shaped it so that t was more face-shaped. It was important to have the head be made out of something light so that the puppet could stand on its own. Though this may seem like a simple step, making it smooth while maintaining the right shape took more than 2 hours.

Once the head was done, I sculpted mini Jasmin a pair of legs, which proved to be more challenging than it sounds as I not only had to make them the same length, but they had to be relatively the same in all dimensions. Again, while keeping the clay as smooth as possible(I didn't do a very good job at this).

Then came the fun part: sewing her a sweater. Again, this was another set of skills I had never in my life practiced, yet I felt the need to use for this project. Because of this, the first thing i thought to do was to find a way to get around actually sewing. I thought it would be a good idea to cut a rectangular piece of fabric along one side so that I could join the ends and from a sort of cylinder-shirt-thing. This actually kind of worked but I did have to sew the pieces together in the end. 

We chose yellow fabric-which would match her own costume- to symbolize the fact that Jasmin is trying compensate for her unhappiness with the things she makes/surrounds herself.

After doing that, i decided to sew some sleeves. I had no clue what to do, But I eventually figured out a pattern that I could tweak and somehow make sleeves- okay  I feel like all this sleeve talk is getting boring. SURPRISINGLY,(after many hours of pain and premature arthritis) it worked out!

Then I made the face details, and got into the actual painting. This was pretty straight-forward, though equally time consuming. Once that was done, came the hair. To resolve the issue of floppy, flat yarn hair, I made a kind of armature with clay to lay the hair on top. Once the strands were in place, i glued them together with clear matte media- which as the name implies, dries clear.

 To be completely honest, I was so exhausted after 20 hours of work, and I didn't know if I was gonna be able to get it done. Thankfully, I managed to put something together that I'm somewhat proud of. Although it may not be the most professional looking puppet, I truly feel its adds a lot of value to the production and it was a pivotal part of the plot. Not only was it important to have it be custom(because of the specific symbolism), but the hand-made look ended up working to our favor.

 If I ignore the loose strings and dead look on her face, I'm actually oddly attached to this wire-clay-yarn thing I made- as I imagine Jasmin would be.