Online journal entry #5: prepared speech and illustrations for presentation

Hello, and I'm here today to talk to you about my proposed stop motion music video, Patchwork of Our Love. I will be making this video for my Sculpture class project. 

I will make a music video for my parent's 50th wedding anniversary.  I will commission Anna van Riel to make an original song- she and I will collaborate on the lyrics and she will write and perform the music.  I will make 2 sets of puppets: my parents in the '70s and my parents in their 70s.  I want to show how they are the center of the family and how it grows over time from the beginning to today.  The theme will be the love they have for us and our celebration of them as the foundation of our family.

I have experimented with 2D and 3D concept art. I started with drawings of the style of puppet I wanted to make, rough technical drawings of the puppets proportions to use to make wireframe armatures, sculpting 3D concept art of faces, and experimenting with types of painting and accessory making.  As a result of my experiments, I have decided to use clay to make the hands and feet but to use 3D digital modelling techniques so I can print "replacement heads" and use them to lip sync to the song. 

One of the ways that I will show time passing is through changing the couches that the puppets sit on.  I made a rough pattern out of cardboard and then made and tested the pattern for a cloth cover.  This is the 1970s couch that the young Mom and Dad will sit on as the quilt is being made.  Behind the couches, the wall will fill with family photos.  

There are two creative industry pathways that interest me: Puppet Maker and Director.  These are the puppets for Rilakkuma nd Kaoru, a stop-motion television series on Netflix.  Mackinnon and Saunders made these puppets and also worked on Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and Bob the Builder.  They hire teams with lots of different skills.  I already have experience with costume design and construction but I think that I need more experience making armatures and using foam rubber to make puppet bodies.  

I am taking a remote class put on by Aardman Animation.  Two of their directors, Mark Simon Hewis and Will Becher, taught lessons about how director's focus on the emotion of each shot and let the animators work out how they'll animate the puppets to get that across to the audience.  They also emphasised how close up reaction shots really power a film because showing how the characters are thinking about events is more important to the audience connecting with them than the events themselves.

The look of my film will be influenced by the stop motion film Anomalilsa and music video Odd Socks.   Anomalisa uses puppets with natural-looking clothes and proportions and movements .I also love the warm colours of this poster.  Odd Socks layers photographs of the musicians moving and creates stop motion out of that.  I will use this style to make the photos of the family move on the wall.  

 Thank you for your attention today.  Does anyone have any questions?