Wednesday 6th May
Today was the continuation of yesterdays work.
Started the day quite frustrated and lost as I was trying to understand the functioning of the movement and how to re-create it for my leg. I wanted to work on the cardboard crab I had made the other day and animate its legs, but quickly realized that cardboard was not the best to work with and since I hadn't started it to be able to move I was getting even more frustrated. I did manage to get some action in his two main arms and claws by moving them only with metal rods. But was not entirely satisfied by the end result.
Therefore I worked on another type of mechanism for a spider leg using card and elastic bands. Inspired by our chat with my group yesterday, I used card and pieces of wood to create the joints. Once I had the ability to move the joints, I played around with elastic. It took me a while to understand where are the strategic points to put the elastic so that it actually helps the movement.
Later in the day we then met up with the group of amphibians to catch up and chat. We shared our ideas about our narratives and found similarities in the ideas of setting our animals in a "human" setting.
During our meeting as a group we shared our process on legs. We all seemed to be focusing on spider legs, as they seem to be the most interesting ? Or the most easy to replicate? I would want to find a way to work out a centipede's body and leg, but it seems pretty daunting for now.
I am happy with the leg mechanism I came up with today, but after talking with our group, I realized Louis had found another way to work with the spider legs which seemed to be more practical and stable. He gave us a few techniques to work with drum strip to create shapes. I will try to recreate his mechanism for the legs.
I still need a lot of work figuring out the engineering and the basic puppetry mechanisms.
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