Personal Project 1: Puppet Making

Personal Project 1: Puppet Making

By: Maxine and Flow

Instructions

1: Buy Fabric

2: Make Puppets

3: Decide How the Puppets Act 

4. Interview People at Convention with Puppets

     Flow has spent a few weekends this summer at different conventions. She went to one in July where she spent most of the time interacting with people with her puppets. Our friends started to talk about going to a convention at the end of summer. 

     At first we thought about potential cosplay options, but then we thought about making our own puppets, with which we will be able to interview & talk with other con goers. 

     The first step of this project involved getting together fabric. Flow has lots of furry fabric around, and this plan happened to coincide with a big sale at Fabricland. 

 

So with fabric all around the room, and cats in the way. We broke out the sewing machines and netflix and went to work. 

     My plan was to make a monster. I had found this funky headband that lights up in the laundry room (its kinda a communal I don't need this but if you do take it kind of place). 

So I got funky orange pattern and that solid orange which is CRAZY soft. Flow had a bunch of light blue fur from other past projects. 

     Flow's plan was to make a bird. This is the reference bird. Though he's going to be a reporter so I was going to make a hat for him and a microphone. 

     Flow ran into sewing machine problems, because every sewing project needs some kind of sewing machine problems.... (/sigh) 

This meant that after spending a ton of time trying to fix is she gave up and started just hand sewing most of her puppet. 

     Meanwhile my head started to take shape. First with a mouth and a place to put my hand.

  

Then I added fur and finally eyes.  By the end of the day I had a pretty good looking monster head.

     Where I started with the head, Flow had started with the body. The next day we continued and Flow shad a better day than me. She got started with her wings. Which look badass by the way!

I spent the day fighting with my body.. and getting frustrated every time I ended up cutting fabric and things not work.  

 

There were two major problems I was having. The first was making the body big enough to match the head... I kinda made a very big head. The second was my fabric. I real wanted to use that orange for the body but it just wasn't working. The fur fabric from the head wasn't blending well, so a new plan was needed. It just wasn't happening that day because I was to frustrated. When I was able to work on it again a few days later I was less frustrated. 

     I ended up using the blue for the back of the body but kept the pattern for the front, and kept the super soft belly.

 

 Then all that was left was to make some hands, a place for my arm through the center of the body and too stuff it.  

Yay Monster

She doesn't have a name yet, and Flow was going to help me put wands on the hands so that I can move them.

     Heres a bird head! I don't have as many bird photos because it was finished at her house as mine was finished on my own.

     Step three and four are yet to be done, but so far so good!

EDIT: Step 4 Didn't work out too well at the con we went to... it just didn't work for the type of CON it was and there were WAY more people than we expected there to be.... We will have to just try again another time. 

Assignment 2: Stakeout! By Maxine and Flow

Assignment 2: Stakeout! 

Title: The Lollipop Tree

Provided by: Deb Sokolow

By: Flow and Maxine

     This turned into the most fun Assignment we have done yet. Originally we had waited on this episode because when it came out it was winter, both of us didn't feel like leaving something out side and watching it during the winter, we also felt that there wouldn't be many people to interact with it. After watching the Highlights episode  there was a lot of great new ideas that we had been given. We decided that it seemed like it would be more fun if whatever we placed outside had multiple things, giving more people the chance to see it and interact. After some thought we came up with the idea of a Lollipop tree. 

     We broke out the cardboard, markers, and scissors for this one.  The trunk is a paper towel roll, the bottom part of a box. Cuts were made in both so that it can slit together. Leaves were also made from cardboard, stuck on dowels and silted to fit more leaves. Holes were made for the lollipops to fit into. 

         We also decided we wanted little papers on them. One side had a quote, or a thought, the other said #theartassignment. We also made a poster. 

Which also had the hashtag on it. (I have now realised that spelling got the better of me for that sine... oh well...) Putting this together ended up taking longer than we thought it would. Which meant that we put taking it out for another day... because we wanted to go to my house and make this:

Nothing is greater than Desert Pizza... even art!

(some things are just so amazing you need to share them... instructions found here)

A few days later we took the tree down town. We set it up in down town Toronto. On the Ryerson University campus there is a road that has been turned into a Pedestrian aria. There are chairs set-up and lots of people walking thought it all the time. So it seemed like it would be busy but a calm busy (not like Dundas square busy...). First we put it on a table, but that table had chairs the people sat in as soon as we walked away, this stopped anyone else from touching it. So we moved it to a big rock. 

The tree had to be taped in place... and blew over a few times...

I wanted to try with no sign at first, I wanted to see what people did with no instructions. To my sadness they didn't really do anything...

So many people walked right past...

 There were a coupple exciting moments. The first being after about 5 min these two people..

Followed by this man who was very interested but in both cases they didn't axially take a lollipop in the end. I like to think that this is a point about the Canadian tendency for kindness... that when people didn't know why it was there they assumed that there was a reason and didn't want to disturb it. (This happened after about 10 min's of watching)

I love the way he walks past, 

Notices it as he was passing

and then approaches it

and so after 17 minuets I let flow add the sign. 

Take a Fruit from the Lollipop Tree. #theartassignment

Three minuets later we had the first person to approach it and take one! Success!! 

Hurray!

From here on we had many more people approach it. It was fun to watch there heads turn as they walked passed, or to see them reading the note we put on it. Lots of people took photos of our little tree, every time they touched there phone flow was hopping that they were looking for the hashtag. Every head that turned towards it was exciting, but some just looked and kept walking. 

Something going to happen... Something going to happen... /sigh nothing happened

     The most exciting moment happened a little bit off to the side of the viewpoint of my tablet. There was two mothers talking, on had two children with her. They talked a bit then walked off, the one with the children off to the right, you could see her head notice the tree like many others, but she approached it along with her kids. 

Hurray!

      But this Mom continued to on to do something a little different than everyone else, she dug through her bags, eventually asking someone else for a pen, and she got her girls to write thank you to us on the poster.

Your Welcome!!

      This little act was so exciting to watch!! We continued to watch people notice, photograph, and enjoy our little Lollipop Tree for another half hour before we packed it up. The experience was really fun, it was neat to watch people. The people sitting at tables nearer us could tell we were the ones that had put it there because we had to refill the tree a few times (and fix the tape...) one man was really interested in watching people along with us.  This was extremely fun, the best assignment yet. It had ups and downs, and moments where we didn't think it was going to work but over all it was great. I hope that anyone who found it liked it as well and you are all welcome, from Flow and myself, we hope it made you day a little better. Lollipops should always grow on trees.

Assignment 7 - What, How, Where: By Maxine and Flow

Assignment 7 - What, How, Where

Provided By  Florian Rivière & Jim Walker

By: Maxine and Flow

(Summary written by Maxine)

Episode 7 Instructions:
1. Visit www.whathowandwhere.com and click to receive an instruction.
2. Do the instruction and document it using any medium.

     We started out deciding how many "What, How, Where " suggestions we wanted to make. At first I thought about rolling a 20 sided dice because it felt that the game was very much about random suggestions and the random die roll felt similar... but in the end we decided to just do 10 each (after I rolled a 1 and Flow rolled a 19...). We then took obtained 20 suggestions before deciding how to approach them. 

1. Make a phone call in front of a window a tea cup
2. Read a book in an email upside down
3. Stop, Drop, and Roll near your home with your heart
4. Tie things together in your favorite room in your palm
5. Observe a sign at the library with a stone
6. Listen on a sidewalk singing
7. Count to ten in the forest backwards
8. Listen in somebody else's shoes without looking
9. Share a recipe on the sidewalk with mud
10. Learn about the world in a laundry room with Gloves
11. Eat popcorn someplace you've never been with wings
12. Kiss on a swing with a book
13. Tell a joke in a tree with shoes
14. Stage and Opera in a Car for one minute
15. Act like a child in front of a camera loudly and with reckless abandon
16. Make music on a parking lot sitting
17. Draw a thing on a lamp pole lovingly 
18. leave and idea at a park with a ball
19. Talk on the phone with a cat in the woods
20. tell a story in a library sitting

     With the instructions set we broke them down in to where we needed to do them and what we needed props for. We started with the ones we could do in my house, which included the Laundry room ones, (the Laundry room counted as a Place you've never been  for Flow). Then went outside to the parking lot / sidewalk near my apartment. Before walking over to the Library and Park. 

     Some of the suggestions were not really proper sentences and so we just went with it... Also as we went along we lost count how many each of us had done... so it might be a little off... 

     This one looks awkward because we were trying to get both of us in one image... I do have wings on... but I have been to my Laundry room before...

     The cat wasn't really interested in the phone...

     We didn't have the ability to go in a car... but we had an idea of using cars as actors for an opera... Editing the images in photoshop is starting to feel like its own project so this one needs to be expanded on...

     I am not sure if Flow knows that Stone and Rock are not the same thing... :P

     This is my favorite image by the way... 

     Never criticize someone unless you walk a mile in his or her shoes, and then when you criticize them you'll be a mile away and have their shoes!

     By the way we did actually leave that Ball and the idea on the bench... it felt like assignment 2 in a way but we didn't stay to watch if someone picked it up... we wanted to move onto our final, selth made What How Where: