I have to admit, I was quite proud of my previous post; cheesy and theatrical, I had such fun writing it, I just had to leave it as it was. However since I've talked about creative concepts, it deems appropriate that I make a reference to one of my other subjects, in this case "Specialist skills", the theme; "Transformation". I decided to base my theme of transformation on a story called "The Last Unicorn" written by Peter S Beagle.
It sounded like a great idea at first; I love pretty things, "Imagine all the gorgeous work I could based on a story of a Unicorn who transforms into a beautiful lady," I thought. Then of course we began our workshops, starting with 3D and our first task was to use a technique called "slotting" to create a figure based on our transformation theme. That was when I started to think "How the feck am I gonna' use that for my unicorn project!?" However I quickly sketched how I could logically make a horse shape with straight card shapes and with about 4 hours work and patience I managed to create a basic unicorn shape.
I was quite proud of how it turned out, it's very basic, however all the paper pieces were very fiddly to put together, I even had to glue the slits on the unicorns leg joints because they wouldn't stop bending. At the time I noted how this technique would be handy if I wanted to make an animation, as these are models which, created the right way, I could bend and move at will.
The next week we were told to repeat the process but with thicker card paper. My lecturer advised me to attempt the unicorn again but to make it bigger! I was instantly drawn into the work, but quickly ran into problems, when I made the first unicorn I didn't plan any precise measurements to the body parts, I winged it on the sizes and the head and horn were in fact leftover pieces of cards that I'd cut around to get to my planned shapes; they just worked so well. So I had to measure everything on my first model and had decided to double the sizes for my second model.
Due to the thickness of the card the process was much longer as the card was harder to cut. I had to take a break for a few days after only working around 6 hours due to how sore my fingers were, my index was actually slightly bruised because of how much pressure I had to apply to the cutting knife and scissors. However I persevered, and the second time I set to work, I managed to complete the big unicorn. Due to all the precise measurements of body parts, and the thickness of the card, this model was much more stable than the first and didn't require glue to keep it together.
With my first set of card materials, I actually made a another model after the first unicorn, however I decided to attempt making a woman, as technically speaking, a simple "Woman" model still holds big reference to my transformation theme and so it made sense to me to create both models.
I think this model turned out pretty well too, I'm not sure how much more I could do to it; it was hard enough trying to portray it as a woman, the only way which I could do that was to slot two circles onto its chest... it made everyone laugh at least. Not as much as the fact that the model wiggled... I discovered that when I lifted it by its platform, the feet are indeed stuck firmly onto the square but the whole model would bend sideways at the knee joints, which causes much amusement and further portrays the fact the model is a woman.
All and all I believe this was a successful first try for this particular technique, and one I'd sure like to experiment with in future for my work.
