Moving with the animal research

So far we have experimented with animal movements but we haven't used the research to the limits.
Today we focused on the animal movements with Chris W. It was centered on getting the animals right. So far the animals that I have worked on with Chris has been the horses.
The original idea for the horses was to use walking sticks to imitate the legs, however doing this does not capture the stature and physicality of the animal.
therefore we needed to delve deeper into the animal.

Then I thought of how horses have been presented by humans when on stage. An example of this was "Equus" where the actors used there whole body to imitate the front half of the animal which was very effective. when seeing it live the horses looked believable and made a great impact on the audience.

(image taken from http://www.international.ucla.edu/cms/images/EQUUS%205.jpg)

The Final interpretation of the Horses



Rabbit

Working with the Chris on the rabbit was to plan a scenario for the rabbit and reasons for their actions. Therefore i experimented with the rabbit stopping starting the jumps but making it a definant "rabbit jump" rather than a jump. I looked at some videos of rabbits and picked up on the sequence jump, jump look up.

The movement of the Thistle bush and flowers



The original concept of the thistle bush was a line with fabric however the technical side of moving the fabric did seem impractical at most times and the thistle bush did lose the sense of being a bush. When speaking with Chris we discussed the movement of the bush as being a similiar movement of scholing fish, overlapping one another, and one movement, cascading into one another. I did some further research of scholes of fish and their movement in order for us to interpret our own. (consult schooling fish video botton of page)

Designing Masks, Making Masks, Painting Masks

We are not just performing the show we are helping with all elements with the help of technical crew, stage managers and costumiers. My task in the group is mask designer this is where I work with Penny the costumier to design the masks that will be used in the show.

Step ONE
As I had to keep with Native American theme i researched their outfits and headresses they used for dances, festivites or everyday life. Also to research the animals to give traits of their physical appearence.

Step TWO
With these images and the research I could design the masks and begin to make smaller tryouts.
These tryouts are not the set layout but give an idea on how they are two be made.



Step THREE

With my mini designs Penny used the template to enlarge them to scale and simplifying the designs.

Process-
-First Draw a design that would not involve to many seperate pieces but was still easy to work with.


- Next is to bind the shapes together, we found it easy to use office equipment to attach papers, it does not restrict the movement of the mask but still is secured easily.




- Using the heat gun you can then manipulate the plastic to any shape, this really worked well for ears, beaks and whiskers.

- A few of the masks before painting.

Claire wearing Crow

Sophie wearing Horse

Periodical Evalutation- Video Review

So far we have done one rough run through which was filmed so we could review it.
After reviewing the video we made notes of improvement to improve it, these are the notes made by the group so far.







Points taken from Video and notes

- experimenting with the movements
- remembering that it's a kids show, appeal to the children
- bring in more magic
- more music
- make it funny
- getting the right pace for the show
- keeping to the original style