Dressing the Birds

I'm dressing the crows. I found some great fabric for their shirt (Primark knickers no less!) which i retro fitted to the torso. Using black lycra cotton for the suit I used the same method. I really enjoy making costumes- I'm not skilled enough seamstress to make myself wicked garments but I can make small ones for my puppets instead. I think costume is a big part of designing a puppet for me, I've always believed clothes play a huge role in defining a persona. This is probably why I got in trouble at school everyday for customising my uniform.

Hands- Wire armature, sandwiched between foam, dipped in
 latex and white emulsion. I drew the bone detail with marker pen.

The buttons I made out of Miliput. The photo's not very good
but I made little needle holes too.

My original design had a proper ruff made out of feathers
that went all the way round the neck. It worked for the prototype puppet
but the final is bigger and the necks are more spaced apart so the collar ruff
looked odd and also it covered the detail on the necks... 

...So instead I made a sort of cape ruff and some shoulder  pads.

Birds...

Polymorph Bones

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Lightweight neoprene core for the chest gives something hard to
grip when animating.

Wrapping wadding round wire joints...

...Before wrapping the rest of the body.

Feet

Hands

Hands sandwiched between foam and latex then cut out.
I added thread dipped in latex to make knuckles and tendons.

I made the bones in the feet from cocktail sticks- glued and then
wrapped tightly with gaffer.

Bird Twins in the making

Got started on the armature for the Bird Twins today. I had to make a scale drawing relevant to the skulls.

Armature complete with polymorph and K&S.
Still needs polymorph bones...

Scale drawing and armature

Stuffing the skulls with wadding to make them less fragile and also for the
K&S to cling to.

Skulls avec K&S

Today I Have Been Mostly....

.... Cleaning Skulls....

Mmmm, what a delightful morning I've had. I got up early and ate breakfast, watched silent witness. waited a couple of hours until I knew my food was going to stay where it should and then I took my box of maggots and skulls up to the snowy downs and emptied it.....

Luckily the cold weather had killed the maggots before they turned into flies. But them dying in with what little rotting flesh was left on the skulls created an almighty 'perfume'. Now I know what medieval towns smelled like.

I sat in the snow with some vinyl gloves on, wiping away the soil and clusters of maggots. Molly came to keep me company but didn't last very long. She threw up behind a snowman. I'm stronger stomached than her. As I lay out the semi-clean skulls out I heard a caw above my head and looked up to see a crow staring down at me form the tree branches. I left the big pile of maggots for his dinner.

Back home i rinsed the skulls and gently scrubbed the dirt away with an old toothbrush. I haven;t got anything to bleach them with yet as I don't want to use anything too strong. At the moment I've left them to soak in a tube of vinegar and bicarb. It should hopefully harden them.

Just after de-maggoting.

Vinegar and Bicarb.

My Initials. Kinda Cool.

Crow Head Casserole...

So, over Christmas, I finally plucked up the courage to de-flesh the crow heads! And boy was it fun....not.
I put them in a metal pot filled with boiling water and left them outside, but because ot was so cold it didn't do much. Thankfully my parents aren't squeamish so they let me put the heads i the pot with a lid on in the bottom oven of the ago to slow cook.

Like a Crow Head Casserole...

It smelled so odd. The heads weren't rotting as they'd been frozen but the smell was indescribable. Not over powering just lingering like a musty room. It did smell like death.

Then I spent a morning with a tea towel wrapped round my face and vinyl gloves on, picking away at the flesh and feathers. Mum even helped too. I think she enjoyed it more than me. So much so that she took over while I wrote my dissertation.

A few days later I went to the fishing tackle shop in Penzance and brought some fine looking blue bottle maggots.
£2 a pint, cheaper than the pub!
I put the skulls in a tub covered with soil and emptied the maggots on top. They had to be kept warm-ish so they would be lively and eat the flesh. I put them on the mantle piece but took them down after a day and night as I didn't want them to cook.
Now they are sat behind the loo in my house in Bristol. They have probably died of cold now seeing as it's been snowing the last few days. I just want to wait a bit more before I empty them, somewhere on the Downs in a wide open space. I checked on them a few times but it smells so awful.

Dinner? 

I filmed them wriggling...

Mermaid

This character is one I'm continuing from my final project last year. She is a stop motion puppet. I want to use after effects to make her setting an underwater one- algae, murky tank.

Initial concept drawing

Clay marquette

Fins for marquette and prototype: wire, masking tape and latex

Tail armature- wire and polymorph

Prototype puppet test stills

The Siamese Bird Twins

This character is a two headed siamese twin. I had the idea from a doodle I did of a two headed bird creature. I wanted to use found objects too and thought I could use bird skulls for the heads. 

INSPIRATION!

I saw some work by artist Jessica Joplin at the Natural- Unnatural exhibition at the end of the summer down at RWA. She uses found objects like brass, leather and bones. She makes THE most amazing work. I was actually drooling a little and finding myself extremely envious wishing I had made the pieces myself.

Here's some sneaky pictures I took...

'Comet', Antique Brass, hardware and findings, bone,
silver, velvet, glove leather and glass eye.
23x20cm

'Raphael' Antique Brass, hardware and findings, bone,
vestment trim, glove leather and glass eye.
43x26cm

I started to do some concept drawings....

Very early concept design

Mirroring

Final concept design for the Siamese Bird Twins
or 'Alouette Twins' as I like to call them.
I made this collage using photos of crow skulls and real feathers.