Big and Little

Taking part in the production of this short has been one of the most rewarding creative things that I've done so I really wanted to share it with someone.  I've been kind of hesitant to do so because it still makes me sad when I think about it. But, I felt like I should include it for the sake of continuity.  I blogged about making and designing these puppets for W here and here but things kind of got quiet as things starting to get awkward in our relationship. The world deserves to know what happened?

I think I'm at the point where I'm still sad because I won't be able to do fun things like this anymore, but I'm proud because some of my doodles in a notebook turned into this.  When I originally drew the very first design for Big, I never thought that it would be a character in someone's film.  I never anticipated actually giving it a three dimensional, tactile form.  I never dreamed that someone else would take that form and shape it, make it something as beautiful as this.

My Random Monday - 10/24

1. It is now week 8.  If there's anything you know about RIT, you need to know that there is a lot of work.  Some people might say "Hey, I'm in department A and you're in college B, I have more work than you," but I completely disagree with this. I think we're ALL overworked and cranky, but it prepares us to be overworked and cranky in the real world, so it's not so bad.  When it's over.  Right now it's pretty dumb.

2. I haven't been knitting so much, but I have been working on W's puppets all weekend.  I'm kind of disappointed to say they despite swatching, it took me three tries to get most of the body parts right for his little puppet. 

The cast-off parts have turned into a little bunny, which I still need to sew together and stuff... but I kind of like her.

Hand felting is a total chore - I'm not thrilled by it.

3. I'm on a mission to try all the noodle restaurants in Rochester, in preparation for this coming winter.  I will figure out the best!  A few weeks ago I went to Aja Noodle (twice) and I was impressed with some stuff but pretty disappointed in others.  Tonight I'm going to try Mamasan's Noodle Cafe.

5. And finally... You should try this!

I got loyal, restless, courageous, and sweet.  I'm interested to see what other people see.  No cheating!

Stop Motion Knitting - Pre-Knitting.

As you might (or not, I'm not sure if I've mentioned it on the blog before) know, W is working on his thesis.  I'm working as his "Fabricator" - a fancy word for how I'm helping him build his puppets.  He's doing all of the shop work, and I'm making all of the outside parts. 

The plan is to have felted puppets with an underlying wood and wire armature.  I'm trying to make the outsides so that if W needs to change the inside armature, he can just take the knit parts off like clothes and put them on a new armature.

Designing these puppets has been similar to designing toys, but you have to take a few things into consideration.  For one, the covers can limit access to he underlying armature, so if the armature breaks you would have to knit a whole new cover over a new armature (gulp!) or cut the cover.  Another is that these "toys" will get a lot of play time, so seams need to be tight and neat (because they're on camera! :) )

Anyway, I haven't actually knit anything (aside from a felted swatch) but over the weekend W and I sat down, looked at our supplies and my stash and made decisions about what fabrics I'm going to use.

I tried to give him a lot of options, since we didn't have a lot of options in the main color department when we went to JoAnn Fabrics - we noticed that most big box stores that we went to didn't have a very large selection of colors for 100% wool, but JoAnn's had the best. We even found a little bow for the girl puppet!

The monsters' horns are going to be wrapped in yarn - we have 3 options for that.   One is an acrylic, one is the Samba that I bought the other week at the Yarn store, and the last one (our top choice at the moment) is some handspun that I bought at Rhinebeck last year.  I wrapped each option around an index card so we could compare how they looked.

The other choice we had to make was what yarn to use for the monsters' socks.  We could order sock yarn, but without being able to see the color, we were hesitant - and don't get me started on the sock yarn options at the big box stores we went to (almost zero).  So, we looked into my stash and I wound up the possible combinations on this card:

I kind of like the idea of wrapping yarns around cards, especially when planning colorwork.  I think this could be a useful in the future - it's quick to make, and easy to see how colors blend together.