What the edge of your seat was made for

Blog time has struck and I'll begin from the beginning. I began my reaction to the project topic of movement by looking at prosthetic limbs. I was interested in the development of them from non functioning object which looked like arms and legs to pieces of technology which imitate our natural limbs.

This victorian leg for example is simply a wooden carving with hinges. Made in the time to look the part, not do the job of a leg.

This piece by contrast is more aimed at practicality and functionality than aesthetics. From studying these I then constructed my own model of an arm to understand the movement involved. 

From this I began to think about the control of movement and how we move our limbs. Also from this came the relation to prosthetic limbs and how machines control their movement. the general movement of limbs from controlling signals sent from the brain was interesting to me so I began making animation of arm movements. This is a short piece of a hand drawing a hand which comes to life.

With the idea of the control of movement in mind I moved onto puppets. I looked at how the arm and leg movements are controlled by strings or sticks. From the different designs of puppets I focused on shadow puppets. I took inspiration from the likes of Lotte Reiniger and designed my own puppets.

After failed attempts to animate thes with string I decided to put them into photoshop and edit their movements by computer.

 Sadly my blog won't let me uploade this animation but here's the first frame anyway. This is a precursor to a story i will create through shadow puppets which will hopefully be ready by next week! :)

If you've read through that whole blog and watched the video well done and thank you very much. :D