Coraline in color

Coraline in colorI did a color test on the botched head. The painterly quality tends to hide the glue spots, which is a bonus. Unfortunately, the hard line under her mouth shows where I didn’t get the seam tight enough.

I’ll let you in on a secret. Coraline only has one ear. The way her hair is done, only one shows so there just wasn’t a reason to put the other one on.

Her paint is asymmetrical, partly because I want to match Mr. McKean’s art, but also because I don’t like symmetry in puppets. It is unnatural. Sure, people are mostly symmetrical, but not totally. For instance, my nose pulls to the left. One of my eyes is bigger than the other. If you look in the mirror, you’ll spot all the variations in your own face.

More importantly, though, creating an asymmetrical face gives the illusion of life to a character, because the audience thinks they see the face change expression. Most of the time a face can be wildly asymmetrical and the audience won’t notice — but they will respond to the “changing” expressions on the character’s face.

This is the last of the head posts for awhile. I’m moving to the body next and will come back to the heads when I’m building the finals.

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8 thoughts on “Coraline in color”

  1. Well, yes, there is that. I suppose it would sound sillier to just call him “Dave.” He just strikes me as someone who lives in a space in your head that is odd to associate with “Mr.” Like when the Wall Street Journal does an article on Pee Wee’s Playhouse and refers to “Mr. Herman.” Only less extremely so.

  2. See, I’m a big fan of honorifics. I taught a stenography class at a drama camp. The kids ranged from 2nd to 7th grades. In one class, I did things as usual. During the afternoon class, I explained honorifics and said that we would all be Mr. or Miss or Mrs. I told them that if any of them were uncomfortable, just to say, “Please, call me [given name.]” Not one of them did. That class was also so well-behaved, compared to the other, that it was astonishing. I think it’s harder to yell “Mr. Bruner! Stop touching me!”

    A year later, I saw one of them in the grocery store and said, “Hello Miss Thompson.” She beamed like I’d given her an Easter egg.

    My… this is quite the digression, isn’t it?

  3. Hahahha! Quite delightful in fact. You may be warming me to the practice.

    The one place in which I have difficulty with it is when people feel free, in the same social context, to refer to one person by their first name and another person using an honorific. Like in grade school when teachers may call on students with first names, but students must refer to the teacher as Ms/Mr./Mrs. My feeling about fair play is, if you are Mrs. Smith, then I am Mr. McCamic. If either of us offers the other first name privileges, to accept is to make it a bilateral agreement.

    And referring to people solely by their last name should be punishable by law.

    Incidentally, the doll looks to be coming along beautifully, Mrs. Kowal.

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