Work in Progress: Blue Jay's Head

A quick update about the finishing touches of my bluejay's head.
Took me a long time problem solve the wire neck, but I finally decided to cover the area with black velvet. That velvet area should make it hard to see any continuity errors Im sure to have with my first stop motion animation I'll ever do. I mounted the additional feathers and such all up on the foam head, so they shouldn't cause much constriction of the neck movements. I'm quite happy with the colorful yet moody results I've gotten with the bird so far.

Work in Progress: Blue Jay Puppet

So I've been working on my Blue-Jay stop motion animation puppet for some time now.
For some reason I thought I could finish this up in a day or two... but now its day 5. I guess I was being unrealistic, considering the complexity involved here. Most my crafts are essentially 2d, but here it is. My work in progress.

I began by using a pink piece of foam insulation I found on the street and making the body. I made a pipe cleaner neck and covered it with this fabric, but the babushka wasn't giving me the flexibility I needed.

Further along now, I've fashion some pipe cleaner legs, and made a little face with magnets I planned on attaching a beak and eyes too later. I did a quick animation test to see if I could get the bird pecking at the ground, which is did ok, the the whole structure was kinda wobbley. I decided to take a step back.

I attached the bird to a the wire neck of an old lamp which I can screw to my desk, making the whole thingmore stable for animation and able to leap into flight. Also, after a trip to the dollar store for fake flowers I have some nice brown stems I fashioned into legs and feet. There is wire inside so the can be posed to some degree. Also I made a nice white fuzzy under belly.



I fashioned some outstretched wings, out of a simple card paper and pipe cleaners. I ran a quick test to see if they'll give me the flexibility I need, and it seems okay.


Many many hours later, I have reshaped the head and added a beak and magnet eyes.


A detail of the Beak. Look it moves!... although it doesn't rest completely closed... which I haven't decided whether that's a problem... ayway, its made out of FEMO, cause you are curious.
I have made two sets of wings. Above are the wings at rest. They are made with a combination of card paper, fabric, felts, faux flowers and a blistering amount of hot glue.


Here are the wings stretched out. Pretty wild. I am pretty happy with the results.


So, I still have more work to to on this, such as;
1-Feathering the face and making it look all nice. I want to make a few sets of eyes, one that squint, and are completely closed.
2-Problem solving the neck. I think I'll try hiding the wire with some loose feather roughage, as to not obstruct the movement.
3-The tail... which birds spread an manipulate to control their flight paths. I'm not sure if I should worry about this detail... but mentioning it seems to make me more accountable.


And finally when I've made the whole thing, I have to make a replica that is mountable on a brassiere, like so...

Sketch Book - Of Birds and Brassiers.

As mentioned earlier, each Glamazon has a bird mounted on their chest. Our main Glamazon has a blue-jay, and for my video project I need to create a Stop-Motion version as well as the mounted version. The following is some sketches on the subject.

Above: An early sketch, problem solving what I need the puppet to do.

Above: 2 key frames on how birds kinda hover... shrug.
Also, the blujay mounted on a very wonder-womany bustier.

Above: The bluejay and potential designs for the lead Glamazon.
Perhaps tha blue hair is over the top...
I am not sure yet how the Glamazon choose their bird spirits...
so maybe it would be bizarre if it was completely reliant on aesthetics.

Above: My original drawing of a Blue-Jay Mounted on my second life size Glamazon.

Above: This full sized Glamazon collage grace my residence door this summer
at the Explore program in La Pocatiere. I chose the blue-jay, cause I had lots of blue paper that I had saved from being dumpstered...coincidentally back at home, I have a bunch of blue felt that I picked up for nuthing at a yard sale... So that's the practical reason that I am making a blue-jay.

I guess I could go further on about the Bluejay being a north american bird, that is relative to canadian identity, partly due to the Toronto Blue Jays. And then never seeing a Blue-jay my entire life, having grown up in Saskatchewan. The Blue-Jay carries this odd exoticism, of a country, my country that is tottally unknown to me. My Grandma had a book on Birds when I was young, that my cousin and I would look at and draw pictures from. My two favorite birds where the Blue Jay and the Cardinals, probably partly due to the baseball teams, despite me never actually liking sports. Now living in Montreal, I occasionally see Cardinals and when I fist saw one I was amazed that they actually exist. Their image was imprinted in my mind only in graphic format, and too see it in 3d real life, was awesome. (Kinda like seeing a great big red maple-leaf my first fall in Montreal) Anyway, I am losing sight of my blog... Blue-jays. I still haven't seen one, except for in photos of taxidermed at the wild-life museum. One day... one day...

Sketch Book - Glamazons!

I'm attempting to articulate the imaginary culture of the Glamazons. They are a tribe of sweet trans-peoples who model themselves after super-heroines, namely Wonder Woman.
So here are some drawings I've done recently. Often I draw at my day job, so alot of the pictures are from magazine photo-reference, but changing all the women into Glamazons.






So... for my project I have to make 6-12 Glamazon costumes, derivative of the wonder woman formula. The each need a bird on their chest, a corset or tank top, star-spangled bottoms, a tiara and boots... their wrists I suppose don't need to have bullet reflecting bracelets on it, but I think I know of a good substitute. More on that later.

BIRDS! - A book edited by Katrina Cook

I bought this gigantic book at Chapters, it was on sale for $20. But due to some crazy error in my favour, the computer said it was only $2. Huzzah.






Rembrandt's "The abduction of Ganymedes" 1635











Anyway, this is a nice big reference book of birds and their history of artistic representations.

Reference Material: Blue Jay

The following pictures are from the website for McGILL BIRD OBSERVATORY.



A pretty nice website, suiting my needs for a photo reference on bird wings.

Welcome!

Good day! I am Morgan Sea, and I am working on a new video project.
One that involves me creating costumes, props, puppets and digital environments.
It will be a long term project and in order to get feedback and advice from my online friends I'm going to post pictures and videos to this here blog... Awesome.