Metamorphosis Unit: Kaa Humanoid Costume

Reminder: The Deadline for the Costume is March 12th! Please do not forget!!!



For my Metamorphosis Unit, I'm going to use some techniques that I've learned and have been using in my previous year such as Latex, Mod rock, Wiring, Paper Mache, etc.

The subject that I'm basing my unit on is Humanoid Animals, why I've chose this subject for my unit, is that it's not just going to be used in college, but at the play too! The play in question which I'll be wearing in the play for is The Jungle Book, which have made me play the upcoming role of Kaa the Snake, a minor antagonist in the story!

His characteristics is very sly and cunning, as he tries and fails humorously to capture and eat the "Man-Cub" for himself, but his attitude is very elegant, but he disguises his sneaky ways into a friendly and calming mood for his 'prey'.

 The way he walks is slow, but precise as he moves in the trees or on the ground, however it becomes short-lived as his approach to other creatures, especially Mowgli, as Kaa's head moves very rapid and and he mostly invades some characters personal space like moving his head with straight eye contact to a character and would hypnotise in eye contact (reenacting with smooth head movement and body movement).

However, the main objective to maintain is his appearance in the play, his costume. So I did some research about the film and it's setting, in the beginning of The Jungle Book, Bagheera reveals that the story is set out in the deep jungles of India, however the time of the film is unknown. So I decided to make a costume for my character of Kaa, by looking into different outfits that are linked or wore around the Indian culture:

I will be making a puppet tail to act out as a third limb in the play (controlled as a Rod Puppet limb), which will either be attached to the skirt, one part of the sari which could be one end of the sari, or on the end of a scarf.

Dada String Experiment Experience

15/09/16 -

In our practical session, we were studying about the use of positive space and negative space.
Positive space is the space used in enclosed space, but negative space is the space around the object, to explore this experience, we used string to create positive and negative space

Evaluation:

Pic 1 - "String Angel"
I've taken the inspiration from my thought and personal experience from our classes' experiment with string, by placing string to objects, walls, floor, (And maybe the ceiling? I'm not certainly sure...). But the experience in my personal opinion, was that there was not much space around the room to move around in or lack of negative space and it makes it pretty difficult to move around and feels pretty "enclosed" or "trapped" in a limited space.
Most of the strings are linked from the shoulders, wrists, waist, thighs, knees, and ankles, this body parts are most of the functioning parts of the body, like the ball, (Wrists, Ankles, Shoulders, etc...) the hinge, (Elbows, finger joints, knees, etc..), this is linked to my experience with the movement around the room, not being able to move freely without chasing any of the strings (and maybr trippping over in the proccess!)
Most of the string was either a little loose to draping downwards, making the experience a tad hard to walk through with the string being too low down or the string being too tight or high to get past. I've first recorded my experience by phone in my own POV (Point Of View), showing the difficulty of my route taken by me through the string lines, sometimes getting either struck or not knowing if there's a string line nearby, usually being too close to me.
Then I've created a few sketches of the experience, one of them, "String Angel" is the one that I've explained about the strings around parts of the body. The string is wraped and attatched to the mentioned parts of the body, then the strings looks like they are attatched to a wall (or the ceiling?), lifting the the other end of the string higher to resemble an Angel-like look with the string.


Pic 2- Cat's Craddled One of the techniques I've tried out in the string experiment was a technique called the "Cat's Craddle" and I've wanted to try it out by making different forms and shapes with this technique. Again, strings are also on the body too, since the experience of me trying to escape the cluster of strings around where I was working at also made my route of safety a little challenaging and a bit wobbly, seeing that the figure is a unbalencing position, which makes the figure in the picture look wobbly on it's feet, expressing that the figure is in a difficult and tight position, just like when I was with I was in the string experiment.

Insulation (Where shall I stage my MashUp?)

I've looked around the Oscroft area to try and locate where I can show my video on and where it shall be staged at.
At the moment, I've found some windows halfway through the hallway that's connected from the entrance of the Oscroft centre, to the 3D room and the Textiles room, and then to the 2D room, which both walls have windows which belong to the 3D and Textiles are facing each other. My idea with them is that I can put the projector on one side of the window and block the other window from the other side of the window, to make sure the video does not go through the window, and maybe block the other window, but cut a rectangular opening for the video to project on the other window for two reasons, to block the sight of the projector's location and try to block out any unwanted light from behind and around the projector, that way, the video is more clear for the viewers to see the video clearly without any light by in the way of the projection, however there could be a problem, passer-by's will walk pass the video, this will block the projection or cast shadows on the screen.

In the Textiles room, there are some cupboards inside the room, beside the outside windows, I had two ideas with cupboards, one was to let the cupboard doors closed and projected the video on the cupboard doors, but the problem is that, the colour of the cupboards are striped in black and white, and my video is in colour, this will mess up the colour of the video and the image, plus it'll be irritating to see the video on. Or, I can ask if I can move all the equipment from the inside of the cupboard and place a screen in the middle of the cupboard and maybe place some extra stuff around the video, and maybe I could let the viewers to open the cupboard to see the video on the inside, However, the video will also share the same problem, since the video is being projected around the room, passer-by's will walk pass the projection, blocking the video and casts shadows on the projection.