Elephant Frames & Painting Faces

Today has been progressive, but exhausting. With only six studio days left until both this project and the essay's deadline, I have been working completely flat out. I started the day by sketching out my plans for the elephant's head, then fabricating them in willow. It is a time consuming material, but is excellent for creating organic, flowing shapes with a good amount of durability.
I had some useful physical labour help in making the tail and trunk. They are simple circles cut out of some salvaged EVA foam mat, with a hole for a piece of paper rope. The paper rope is a fantastic material - it retains some rigidity whilst having a realistic swing to it, making it move realistically with a pleasing swish. It's also really cheap, which is always a plus.

The beginnings of the elephant's frame, with the trunk Emily made sitting underneath it.

The elephant's tail after being assembled including the goat fur tuft, but before the rope is painted and the backpack straps are added.

I looked at lots of anatomical pictures of elephants and their unusual head shapes in order to get a good representation of the elephant's head on the almost life-sized scale. The head has to fit two people side by side in it with the girls on their backs waving the ears, so not only does it need to be big and wide but it needs to be held on by some form of strapping. I think the next step for the elephant head is to attach the trunk, and fashion some tusks with some form of sheath to them to secure them realistically to the head.

Here is a brief timeline of the masks from the beginning to the end of the day. After spending some time on the elephant, I took a couple of hours in the afternoon to plan out and start painting Nala's head. Claire and Esme had worked on Simba and Mufasa who were looking great, however there are varying opinions on whether they look best with the gum paper showing or not showing. I personally prefer the gum paper to be covered, but with a limited range of colours in order to not over-complicate the design. On feedback of team members I am going to modify the orange colour on Nala a little to bring it down a shade of brightness, and then line her other markings with dark brown.

 Simba, with his partially raw-gum-paper design.

 My painting work on Nala for the afternoon, with the spots, eyes and lower regions still needing painting.

 Mufasa, who is personally my favourite so far. I think the boldness of his design and colour scheme works very well for the production style and character.