More 3D Doll Designs

Last weeks success with using clay on a barbie doll to make some 3D designs I thought that I would have another brainstorm/idea-generating with the doll again. Instead of going straight to clay I felt like I could use other materials other then clay to make these designs - I had a empty Nero's cup knocking about (as you do) and I thought I could use this as a starting point for a design.

Sticking the barbie in the cup wasn't particularly fantastic but it was a start - I then tried to squeeze the lid over her head which kind of looked like a halo and I wasn't too keen on how this looked. 

After cramming it down a bit more I got it to fit back on top of the hot cup - it made me laugh the thought of walking around in a giant coffee cup. Also this design shows how I could possibly go about making something that would cover the whole body (it also reminided me of the top-hat idea I had.) 

I cut out room for arms but I preferred it without them - I think it had a more comedic effect without them (apologies for the upside image.)

I kept using random objects I picked up around my room for inspiration - I used two headbands and a badge for this one - after using the coffee cup I really liked the idea of using everyday objects making them large and abstract to create a design. The big flowers on the headband was a start. 

The beads from the badge looked a bit like a wedding train and reminded me of how in Victorian period costume/dresses they used to have those big puffy underskirts to make their bum look bigger - so maybe I could look into that as another possible inspiration for a design.

Next I felt like pinning. With a handful of scrap fabric from my mums sewing bin I thought I could use to make a sort of mix-and-match/thrift-jumble-shop design.

I had thought just to ignore the pins and safety pins but I thought that they added to the design, I liked the ideas of oversized pins sticking out and making it seem a little hostilse amoung the bright and cheery colours. I wanted to explore the idea of using these safety pins as a more main feature of the design again going back to the idea of using simple objects and abstracting them for the design purpose.

The downside of this design is how exactly will I make these giant pins without them being a massive health and safety hazzard - but also get it to serve its purpose as an actual pin? I also found that they really weighted the dress down so making them out of a heavy weighted material stuff wouldn't work. Also it could be a cause of a serious case of the chafe's on the pin-arm-sleaves!

The next design came from a newspaper and the puffy bum idea from the bead-trail on the second design - I first made a base dress so I had something to stick other pieces of newspaper. 

To create the puffy look I was going for I decided on rolling up strips of newspapers to add volume - but quickly found which way of rolling and sticking the newspaper was more effective, hint its not the left side!

Carefully I went around the doll and made a sort of skirt which definably made the puffy effect that I was looking for but I didn't want to cover it - originally the newspaper was just an underskirt and I was going to cover it in fabric but I liked how the text covered the dress and the possible more meaningfull message that could be conveyed by this dress.

So with other stripes of newspaper I wrote the first thing that came to mind was 'Breaking News' and 'Read All About It' - and I wrote it in red Sharpie and simply stuck it on the torso, which definitely made this design more AMW I think. 

After finishing with that I added another loopy layer on the torso so it now didn't look so much like a dress but more like a random shape now.

I then squished the writing in between the layer loops, but I wasn't as keen on this as the previous idea.

Then since I didn't want to rip it all off just yet I looked at how in college I had layered up bubble wrap and then covered in fabric to create a more realistic skirt look - it definitely reminded me a prom dress skirt which wasn't really very AMW so I won't got much further with this design.

So in an attempt to make it look more funky I covered the top loops in the same way as the bottom layer - it did look a bit more playful but my feelings about this was just 'meh.'

Getting the clay back out I just threw and squashed the clay on the doll not really knowing what I was doing.

It ended up as a giant lump thing of a costume, but after having a look at Allan Kaprow, the whole point of this design was so that anyone can can take part and change the shape of the dress and make it something new. Not really a realistic design which sucks because it would be pretty cool if I could but I can't think of anything I could make this out of, other than clay which would be heavy and wouldn't work at all.

To get across the idea of viewer particpation to get hands on with the dress I wrote in some encouraging words that would allow viewers to get up and play with it.

The next time I'm at college I'm going to take the newspaper dress idea which was my favourite of this lot and make it on a larger scale to see if on a big scale it would be manageable and achievable.