Since Barbie is on everyone's minds these days, here's a throwback to the old Barbie paper piece that I made for the Mattel art show at Gallery 1988! It's hard to believe I made this back in 2019!
Made a collage! I only had a handful of magazines on hand tho so I had to make do with what i had! (which was a bunch of nature and barely any clothing)
INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE PLAY: LOST AND FOUND - CHARACTER ANIMATION TEST.
For the final stage of my project, I created an animation test to experiment with the 2D paper cut-out puppet I had made. I also created a background with moveable parts to go with it.
I briefly experimented with drawing blueprints for a puppet with articulated elbows and knees, which I drew using the template parts I'd made to make the prototype puppet parts. However, I ultimately scrapped this idea due to wanting to focus more on getting the background and animation test itself done and because I felt the character having non-articulated arms and legs would add to the feel of the character being a cheap children's doll and would give her a unique style of movement that I could experiment with.
For my final puppet, I used the template parts to trace around lavender/periwinkle card paper. I believed using this light-coloured card, would not only help the doll stand out from the black background, but also give the piece a splash of colour contrasting with the dark monochrome colour palette.
During the process I did make some mistakes with this puppet, like making the shoulder articulation point on the left side of the doll a bit too close to the chest, resulting in an unnatural and slightly lob-sided arm placement. Not to mention, the arm later breaking off as I had placed the articulation hole too close to the beginning of the arm. Therefore I had to make a second one with the arm hole slightly further down the arm. Had I made the puppet again, I would reference the points of articulation on my previous prototypes so that they would be properly placed and symmetrical.
For the background, I used a black piece of paper and shaded it with a BH pencil. Adding and shading the floor and dust in the air, portraying the feeling of a dusty, dark underside of the bed.
I also wanted to use charcoal in the shading to add further texture to the piece. However, I discovered I didn’t possess any drawing charcoal (likely to have gotten lost during a house move). If I had more time, I would have gone out to buy more charcoal before starting the background. Along with this, I also cut out shapes for the background dressing such as a lost teddy bear, a baseball and a discarded pencil, objects that could conceivably be found under a child’s bed. I shaded and drew in details with the pencil I had used for the rest of the background.
With these assets made, I went to the Media City Campus to film the test. I was hoping to use the down facing multi-plane camera in the Stop Motion Studio that is specifically designed for 2d animation such as paper cut-out animation. However, another student was already using the multi-plane camera and had already set up their project there. So Instead, I used a regular camera. I modified the position of the camera and tripod so it would face down at the table.
For the set-up of the background and doll, I initially wanted to experiment with placing a piece of Perspex on the background and some pieces of the dressing, to give the illusion of depth of space in the scene. However, when I placed the clear Perspex over the scene, I saw on the camera how the reflective surface of the Perspex showed the glare from the stage lights, which was very distracting and would break the illusion of the scene, so I ultimately decided not to use the Perspex.
I used the program Dragon Frame to animate the sequence, which overall took me a day and a half to animate. Once it was done, I exported the film to a USB, edited a title and credits into the film using Premiere Pro and exported that as an mp4.
Overall, I am proud of how the test came out. I think I managed to breathe a lot of life and character into the doll puppet and the movements conveyed the doll's personality well. I’m also glad I was able to complete the test under some of the circumstances and with the resources that were available to me.
Doctor Heinz Doofenshmirtz (better known as Dr. Doofenshmirtz, or simply Doofenshmirtz) is an evil scientist hailing from the country of Drusselstein. He is the head of Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated, and he tends not to be evil in the traditional sense, but rather overly dramatic, eccentric and generally clueless. His usual lair is an office building that he apparently owns, though he's worked from other locations when necessary for his plans.
Doofenshmirtz attempts to wreak generally "evil" havoc and assert his rule across the entire Tri-State Area. Despite true dedication to this mission, nearly all of his schemes have been thwarted by his nemesis Perry the Platypus. Doofenshmirtz has become so accustomed to this dynamic that he tends to feel empty or even upset on those few occasions where Perry does not stand in his way.
The cad is voiced by Dan Povenmire and first appeared in the debut episode of Phineas and Ferb, airing on August 17th, 2007.
todays herbarium story: new fucking way of dating things to confuse future archivists. someone wrote 66-1-3 as the date on a specimen. obviously i assumed 66 was the year and either the day was January 3rd or March 1st. put “1966” for the year in the file, marked as needing confirmation.
anyway one of the historical archivists went back and used the guys name to figure out about what month he confirmed it? and it was fucking 1866. the guy who cataloged it died in 1920.
i inadvertently handled a specimen thats older literally everyone i know and love and my only thought was mild irritation because it was dated weird.
we still dont know if it was found in January or March.