Quick Synthesis

When the brief was first explained to us in class, immediately I thought "I'm totally making something with my dolls". But multiple conversations later and reading the brief in details made one thing obvious: the project is not ABOUT the chosen discipline, but borrowing from it.

By then I felt a bit disheartened but I kept it in the corner of my mind. After some time it occurred to me that it didn't matter whether I featured my dolls or not, my interest for them did not just stop at their appearance and customization possibilities, but also the ingenuity of their stringing mechanism, the different joint types that people invented for better posing, the process of sculpting them in clay to later cast them in resin...

I started thinking of a way to mix one of these BJD traits to animation. My initial idea was to focus on customization and perception. I wanted to have different students have a go at dressing one of my dolls up and maybe give instructions to them like " this look has to show loneliness" or "this look must portray anger". But another idea was sprouting in my head. A part of me wanted to pay homage to what's happening inside of BJDs, the strings and hooks,  the tension and the joints. This is something that only hobbyists know about and appreciate. Companies with the best posing abilities get famous for that! This is something so important and constantly improving in the hobby! 

But how to apply this to animation? In theory, it's simple: rigging! But in practice, not so easy. How would I rig live action. I had to think about it for a long time. I had to strip the idea to its simplest shape. Strings. Hooks. Anchors. These are my skeleton. But what do I rig with that? And so I thought, why not a digital puppet? That's when it all started to fit in. My rig would be recorded on camera and my "doll" or character would be digital.

The last step was to determine how my rig would work and how I would present it. I picked up what I had available at home and started making a grid with a cork board and pins... 

This is how I had my brief ready to be put into words!

Society at its Best

2+2=5

Sweet Dreams!

Just sharing the Toddlerpedes:

Thank you Mr. Jon Beinart!

Exquisite Corpse

Involving my first doll ever because more dolls is more fun.

Cadavre Exquis

My first frame:

... I'm a bit excited about this...
Taylor's first frame:

This is going to be fun!!!! \(^.^)/

"Strings Attached"?

I've already established that I wanted to focus on what makes BJDs posable in the first place: round ("ball") joints, hooks and strings. One could even say that BJDs have a rigging system (insert laughing track).
So after some thinking I decided to jump right into it and try to use those strings and hooks in a creative way. My point is to use the very core of  BJDs' best feature (the stringing system...usually invisible) and make something interesting with it.  I needed a surface and anchors on which to apply the strings, so I grabbed a cork board and some pins + strings and "S" hooks, used in most BJDs. Oh and a little helper because why not:

 

I spread the pins around the board and attached some strings around it, applied a couple of S hooks and tadaaaa! I made a thing.

 

 

What got pretty obvious pretty fast was... I seriously underestimated the tension strength that these strings have. My pins started popping all over the place and my cheap 4$ cork board was dying a slow death.

NB: next time use nails and hammer... amateur~

Seriously though, I think I'm onto something:

 

 

And I've got a potential title \(-.-)/

Character

"Boil down your discipline into one character"

"History"

Without an intelligence recording time, there is no history, right?

BJDs 101

What are BJDs/ABJDs?

BJD stands for Ball Jointed Dolls and ABJD is specifically Asian Ball Jointed Dolls.

Hard to say where exactly and when they originated, but I think it's safe to assume that the modern BJDs are strongly inspired by antique Bisque dolls:

 

The japanese company Volks came up with the "Super Dollfie" line in 1999 and the popularity of BJDs has spread worldwide ever since. The biggest companies are from Japan, Korea and China, but smaller companies with more limited doll numbers from France and Russia are also very popular among collectors.


BJD sizes go from a few centimeters up to human size, but the most common sizes are ~25, ~40, ~60, and ~70cm.

BJDs are made out of polyurethane resin and strung together with a system of elastics and hooks. All the pieces of a BJD are hollow for that reason. The stringing can vary from company to company but they usually all follow the same logic: One string goes from the necks to both feet and a second string from one hand to the other, through the arms and torso.

I am currently looking into BJD stringing system and tension to make my experimental animation.

Jo's happy childhood memory

Brief from Jo:

"It's in a competition setting; judges, audience and rivals within a confined space.

It's in a high ceiling hall with a stage full of trophies, medals and certificates.

There was the smell of food (hard boiled eggs, mayonnaise, tea, coffee) and the feeling of flour and butter between my fingers.

Excitement and nerves bubbling up in my tummy. Hands shaking and constantly checking the time, anxious.

Relief at the time up but nervous at the judging, then joy at winning prize.

HUZZAH!"

LETS USE MAH DOLLS YO

After I talked to Dane about my ideas, something major came out of the discussion.

What are you trying to say through this animation. 

Indeed, the prospect of using my passion for this project somehow clouded the purpose of the brief and the potential message that could be behind it. What eventually became clear is that customization says something about people, and says something about me. So my view shifted from "LETS USE MAH DOLLZ YO" to what customization and dressing up reveals about people. I found a few good writings on the subject, which I need to take time to read through, but I think I'm going somewhere with this "quest of identity" themed project.

Something to read:

Stranger than fiction: Fan identity in cosplay

The Social Psychology of Dress

Clothes of play: The psychology of fancy dress

!!!!Congratulations! you are the 9999th visitor! You win a bonus doll picture!!!!!!

*No animals were harmed in the making of this picture.

Exercise 3 - Strange creature drowning?

Toot-Toot!

Something that have been on my mind

Ever since we started talking about trans-disciplinary project and experimental animation, this has been on my mind. "Pick a subject that you know well". Frankly, I'm dying to do something related to BJDs (ball jointed dolls), more precisely, related to my own doll collection:

It is something I am truly passionate about, but I don't want to just stick to a stop motion animation with dolls. It just isn't enough as far as I can imagine it. I need the spark. That thing that will make me go " OF COURSE! "


So I've started to do a bit of research and found some examples of BJD stop motion (risk of nightmare fuel incoming! ):

 

 

And these are pretty awesome -at least to me - but I can't settle for just stop motion. I am currently trying to think about disciplines around the BJD hobby such as sculpting dolls, sewing doll clothes, painting doll faces, etc.

I also recently got a nice hybrid camera and I would REALLY like to use it for this project. I need to start talking about it with classmates and staff, and I hope they can throw some ideas at me,  there may be things that I did not think about because I am so involved in my hobby. I will bring my dolls regularly to school in the meantime.

Another go at the taste visualisation thing

Mandarin peels

For this exercise in class, we had a selection of different food items. The goal was to interpret the taste into an abstract 3 seconds animation. The food item I picked was acidic/sour mandarin skin. I really enjoy this type of acidic sweet food. Through this small piece of animation I tried to portray the sensation I feel when the acidic taste hits the different areas of my mouth. To me, there are clear stages of "explosion" of flavours and they all end in that very strong and sharp taste, almost like it all gathers in a definite center point. The colours represent acidity and that feeling of "center" flavour.