BA Art and Design Week 6 Brief 1 - Multiples

The Snow White Doll

My first attempt at "Customizing" an already made doll body, was with a snow white doll I found in a charity shop. I decided to start by seeing if I could at least create an outfit for the doll. I decided to basically recreate the "Snow white" outfit into my own design.

 

My first paper outfit design, I just used plain paper because I was simply testing to see if I could make outfit at all.

 

 

I just made up the outfit as I went along and taped it together with masking tape because it pretty much matched the paper and therefore blended into the dress.

 

It took a couple of hours, but only because it was so fiddly and I was making it up as I went along, but I was happy with the result; I knew that I could make pretty paper outfits for dolls, probably with patterned paper.

 

The second outfit

 

 

I removed the first and decided to recreate it, but in the colours of the original Disney snow white costume. (Red, yellow, blue, light blue and brown; But I left out the brown)

 

I used thicker paper because I was painting on it before using it, but because of that, I made it harder for myself to use. so this outfit also took a couple of hours to make, and I had to use glue instead of masking tape as it was too obvious and messy.

 

 

I used tape in certain places to hold the paper down while the glue dried.

 

I liked the colourful effect, but I would like to make less childishly bright outfits, so it is likely I will mostly use patterned paper (unless there if a colour or style I can only paint myself).

So I felt confident about making doll outfits out of paper, now I just had to experiment with customizing an entire doll, not just the outfit.

 



BA Art and Design Brief 1 - Multiples - Stop Motion

 

Stop Motion

 

For our video class we experimented with stop motion and I decided to try it further with my project.

I decided to create a video of the stories of one of my dolls in consideration of using this as an alternative to illustrations and display.

 

 

This is the story of my dolls "Tea Time" and "Pink";

 

"Tea Time" is a jealous doll who strives to obtain a particular boy as her husband, but the boy isn't aware of this, maybe not even of her. So the boy continues to flirt and mingle with other girls (as he is not tied down) but "Tea Time" is obsessed with him and is determined to remove any competition in the way.

 

1

 

 

I decided to make another copy of this video with different music in the background, because I couldn't decide which one I preferred.

 

2

 

The first ones music is more ominous and works with the story, but I like the second one because the music matches the Victorian style dolls and scenery.

 

It was quite time consuming even though it was a very short video, so I decided not to use this for my final piece (Also the other dolls either have more complicated or not even detail in their stories to make a video out of them)

 

However I enjoyed making these videos and now that I have a good idea how to go about making them, I'd love to use this method again for other projects in the future.

 

 



BA Art and Design Week 5 Brief 1 - Multiples

Artist Research

Since the Sculpture process in 3D workshop is currently slow (Everyone in my class is doing it and only two people at a time can make the mould - messy process) I need to find other methods of making dolls.

I decided to go about doing this by researching other doll artists and their methods.

Marina Bychkova

I have always liked dolls but these are beautiful. Porcelain dolls, detailed expressions and even their limbs can be moved. Porcelain!

Dorote Zaukaite

I like how these ones a messy-realism look to them; their bodies are skinny and disproportioned like a cartoon, but the colour schemes, blotchy painted skins and fabulous "Messy" hairstyles give off a sense of realism which I really like.

Miss Clara

This is one I've researched before, for illustrative purposes; she makes dolls to use as images for illustrations. Love the idea and the cute, detailed intricate dolls.

Sasha Petrov

I like these dolls because of how unusual they are; long and disproportioned from normal body shapes, I think they look almost sultry and intricate, but also quiet creepy.

Blythe

Finally I came across Blythe dolls from Japan, and discovered that one of the reasons they are so beloved is because of how easily customisable they are.

One of the interesting features of these dolls are the eyes, which can look side to side or change colour with a mechanism at the back of their heads.

These are examples of "Neo" Blythe dolls

(The biggest body, 28.5 cm)

These are examples of "Middie" Blythe, and is considered the most commonly used body

(Middle sized, 20 cm)

Finally, we have "Petite" Blythe

(The smallest body, 11cm)

I honestly think these dolls are adorable and the middle one is indeed the body I would use.

Rebecca Cano

What I found interesting about the last artist is the fact that makes her dolls by customizing the body of Blythe dolls

I really like her style (Especially the costumes) and thought that her method was really interesting; I've been struggling on "how" to make my own dolls (Other than the sculpture mould method) and I think I would like to try "Customising" already made doll bodies. However I want to make a point of completely changing them by redoing everything, from skin, hair and clothes; I want to make them into "my" dolls/work, so no leaving parts of the previous appearance left over.

But its just an experiment, so we'll see how it goes. 

BA Art and Desgin Week 4 Brief 1 - Multiples

Sketchbook pages, progress

 

After visiting museum of childhood I compared old toys (Left: photos by me) to new toys (Right), particularly the quality of dollhouses.

 

 3D going a bit slow still making the clay sculpture, never was speedy with 3D, a bit of a perfectionist in that area, which is also my downfall.

 

The Doll Room!

 

My Favourite Pages In The Sketchbook, introducing my expanding on my chosen subject. Also I wanted to convey how I felt when I entered the doll room at the museum; a sudden shock and moment of "...Whoa..."

 

All photos are the ones I took myself at the museum

 

 

These pages described how I felt in the doll room (loved it) and how it made me want to do something on dolls even more.

 

Extra

 

Scraffito techniques: carving (drawing) onto paint on top of pastel

 

 

 

 

 



BA Art and Design Week 3 Brief 1 - Multiples

After visiting Edinburgh with my classmates and having dinner at TGI Fridays, I was convinced that I wanted to do something based on the doll room at the museum of Childhood

 

Photos of sketchbook, planning for the trip and places I was interested in visiting; such as the national museum, graveyard, castle and museum of childhood.

  

When I was in Edinburgh, I joined my classmates to visit "Mary Kings Close", which described a lot of the nitty-gritty history of Edinburgh, such as the plague and the awful living conditions for people in the closes.

Left: Planning to see the museum of childhood
Right: After my unexpected visit to Mary king's close (Plague doctor mask out of leaflets)
 

So even though I really wanted to base my project around dolls, I really wanted to incorporate something dark into the project as well.

Moving onto our 3D side of the class, we were told to create basic 3D sculptures based on our chosen themes, so we could make casting moulds out of them.

 

 

I decided to create a simplistic doll shape so I can create my own "Collection" or dolls, in this case it will be many designs, using the one body.

 

BA Art and Design Week 2 Brief 1 - Multiples

I Know I ended the final line in my last post with the word "fro" instead of "for", that was obviously deliberate because I'm such a badass rebel... and the keyboard I was using in college had stiff letters

 

Sorry about late blog, got distracted by my project

 

But for week two we were to plan our trip to Edinburgh, other than that I didn't get much progress for any of my classes.

 

However I finally brought my camera to college and created several videos for "Video Class" 

 

 

This was filmed at my college and stars my classmates and their legs, music from "Wolf Children". The idea of this video was to be like an ending to some kind of coming of age story; a nice, slow, everyone's happy and getting with their lives.

 

 

This was filmed in the sound department at college, I just liked the music equipment and wanted to make a scenery video, but I started to play around with the settings when putting it together and it turned into a dream state kind of video. Music by Bruno Coulais from Coraline.

 

 

This is a video of  a guinea named Kevin, I was babysitting him for a friend for two weeks and fell in love. I just HAD to make this video for him and his fabulousness!

Music "I'm Fat" Weird Al.

 

It was a long week because I didn't know what to do with myself, however on the Friday we finally went to Edinburgh and my favourite place was the museum of childhood, which made me decide to base my project on dolls.