Monday, March 23, 2009

Georgie girl!

Whoo! The mockup/dummy book for my children's book, Georgie and the Unicorn got into Best of Ringling!

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And as it happens, I'm currently at work on a certain part of my thesis . . . It's something a bit different than anything else I've posted on this blog. So far, so good and I'm having a good time with it ^_^

People in my Illustration class have been doing such nifty things with cloth and clay, I was inspired. I used to make dolls all the time . . . Why not revisit it? asked me of myself.

So!

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The head, hands and feet are made of Sculpey with foilforms inside. After I baked them in the oven, I started mapping out the cloth bits (arms, legs, torso). You can barely see it on the cloth, but the pins and pencil lines are there!

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The the feet, hands and head are then attached to a wire armature for the body, which is then softened and padded with pipecleaners.
. . . Also, don't you just love my sewing kit box? I'm a grown adult, I swear!
And is that my collar in the background? Blimey, I wonder if I realised I wasn't wearing that at the time. I usually feel downright naked without that thing!

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So, since the fabric portion of the doll is white, I laid down a white base over the clay parts, so as to maintain consistency in her skintones. Aaaand since Georgie is a redhead, I gave her an orangey-red hairline and eyebrows.

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And what is a hairline with no actual hair? It's . . . well, rather stupidly redundant, actually. So, yes! Hair time!
Heh, I ended up cutting snips off of my wig from my Megacon costume . . .

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(click to enlarge)

. . . And dyed it red with . . . er, dye. Go fig, eh?
(the blonde hair I started with is on the left, red dye's in the middle, and the freshly dyed redhead locks are in the bowl on the right)

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Except for the part where, duh, plastic doesn't asorb dye! Whoo! What sublte brilliance! Soooo, blonde it is. I'll have to colour it some other way.

So yes, here is the start of Georgie's hair. Also, the cloth body has been sewn and attached. Man, this shot is sort of . . . mind-bendy. From this angle, Georgie's feet look like they're close to the same size as mine O_O

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Aaand now, approx. seven hours and a tube and a half of Krazy Glue later, Georgie has a full head of hair . . . And what a head of hair it is. Very . . . 80's-chic :P That'll be fun to style later. Plus, I've still got to make it all gingery.

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I also gave her some pupils for the time being, because frankly, she was sort of scary without them, heh.

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To be continued!

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