I spent Tuesday's class working with Matt to fit the finch head and lower beak into the body I had made last week. We decided to keep the lower beak in a fixed position and attached it to the body using some of the epoxy clay. The upper part of the head will be able to pivot up and down. We also decided to make the wings out of something lighter/thinner. Maybe we'll just create paper and wire wings and cover them with feathers to have some varition in texture. We would just have to drill holes into the sides of the bodies in order to attach the wings. I spent the last part of class making the body for papa finch. It might need another coat or so of plaster but we should be able to start figuring out the mechanisms for him and fit the head to the body during tomorrow's class.

wings

So I came in earlier tonight since i didn't get a chance this weekend and cut open the bird body I made on Thursday and made wings to attach to the body. I only plastered one side of each wing to make it easier to take out the clay. I figured it would be too difficult to try to cut such a thin mold in half and we don't really need the other side to be covered. We'll see what the group thinks of the wings tomorrow. They might still be too thick so maybe we'll need to use a different method to make the wings altogether. I let the wings dry onto the halves of the body that they will be attached to so that they could kind of form to the body and not be completely flat.


Here's an idea of what the bird might look like once we put all the parts together.

mechanisms and bodies

We spent yesterday's class cutting open the hollowed heads we had made on tuesday and figuring out mechanisms for the different movements each character would require. I drilled two holes in the back of the egg so that we could pass a wire through them and make the egg wobble.


Farrell, Mike and Matt worked on attaching the lower beaks to the heads using wire and wooden dowels and also cut horizontal slits in the eyes so that we could insert wires with cardboard pupils attached to them and have simple eye movements. Jan and I began making bodies for Mike's and Matt's birds, respectively. We used the same clay and plaster bandage method that we used to make the heads. I finished all three layers so I should be able to come in during the weekend and cut the mold in half and make wings to attach to the body.

new heads

So we spent the morning remaking our bird heads and egg. This time we made the heads relatively proportionate to one another and gave them more similar features so that they look like a family. We should be ready for paper mache next time since we got as far as hollowing out our molds and then plastering them back together. We'll also start building the bird bodies and figure out how to attach the lower beaks to the heads.

I brought in some fabric remnants from Wal-Mart (it's amazing how much you can get for $5) and we upholstered our styrofoam couch in some traditional and muted plaid fabric. Farrell started making an armchair for the papa finch to sit in and i think we'll use the same fabric to cover it with.


Since i missed class last thursday, i put a few more layers of plaster on my bird head to cover up some holes. I should be able to remove the clay next class and perhaps work on building a body to go with it.

As far as the script goes...it didn't go today. I assigned us all to watch some sitcoms for homework. We need to get a handle on how to begin and how to move through our plot. We agreed that we're gonna have to develop some very strong dialogue but also develop a more detailed storyline to guide us with a beginning, climax/conflict, and ending. We hope to have a good brainstorming/scriptwriting session on Thursday.

Finally got my aerial pictures from our beach outing...I guess we were so excited to get the rig in the air we forgot to move around and get different views. I guess we gotta work out balancing the wind and blur factor or find a way to really push the distortion but that's for next time. Rebekah's boyfriend Scott also suggested hooking up a wireless webcam that we could control from a wireless laptop. the possibilities are endless!



Kim: "We need to get a picture of team awesome plus Cecilia."
**remember the couple that was rubbing sand on each other? they're behind us and to the right :)



Here are some photos of us setting up and of Bowie's first visit to the beach.