Well I've finally got round to amending the skip cycle. It turned out that the middle frame should have had the same silhouette as the first one (with the arms and legs in opposite positions).

 

I would have liked to develop the characters a bit more but I never seemed to have enough time - as usual.

 

After the group project 'The Deserted Village', we weren't given any more assignments as we were due to go on work placement - which would take us to the end of this semester. We did have a few tutorials in Cinema 4D which were very useful. While I already had a basic grasp of the programme I just don't use it often enough, so it was good to spend a bit more time on it.

 

For the work placement module I was lucky enough to work with Limerick based puppeteer Emma Fisher. Emma also works as an animator, set designer and puppet maker. She also writes short stories and illustrates them. In fact I'm sure she could turn her hand to almost anything artistic. The first project that I worked on for her was a commission to make fifteen masks for a short film. The film is called 'The Clockmakers Doll' and it's one of two selected as part of Limericks bid for the European Capital of culture in 2020. Here is a link to more information about it . http://www.limerickpost.ie/2014/12/05/films-swing-into-spring-production-for-limerick/

 

As the film won't be released for a while as it was only shot recently - during the week from Mon 20th April till Sun 26th, a lot of the images I recorded cannot be shown here yet. I was fortunate enough to be invited to assist the Props Master during filming, as he had commissioned the masks and Emma knew they were short staffed. Again I cannot show any images from that but I will be posting them at a later date.

 

During the first week at Emma's studio we worked full-time on the masks. They were made with paper mache, which is a slow process, and were all based on animals. There were six large spherical masks, which were constructed over inflated children's 'Space-Hoppers'. The only features added to these were ears - cut from thick cardboard and taped on before the paper-mache was applied. When several layers had been applied they were then sanded, varnished and then the faces were painted on. The rest of the masks were more detailed in that they were moulded in clay first for a more 3d look, but they still had to look cartoonish, which is harder to achieve than it might sound. We had some help from a 4th year sculpture student but realistically there was no chance of completing the masks on time. Luckily the deadline was extended by a week and we got two more people helping for the second week, and even with some people putting in very long hours we still only just managed to get finished in time.

 

As I can't post images yet (of the film's masks - or location shots) I decided to make a couple of masks for myself, to put what I had learned into practice. This gave me the opportunity to record the process and as the designs are my own I am free to post the images here. Not having a 'Space-Hopper' lying around, or any clay, I decided to base my designs on inflated balloons.

 

 

I wanted to make two masks in case something went wrong with the first one and I'd then have a back-up. The vertical ballon was to be a human (maybe) mask, while the horizontal balloon could be an animal.

 

I thought I might make some sort of alien creatures head instead of an animal

 

Some of the initial designs. I inflated the balloons fist and taped them onto cylinders for stability. My intention at this point was to make the balloon shapes and add features later. An update will follow in the next post.