Sunday 17 October 2010

Décédé Dolls

Ive been thinking of doing customised dolls, and I've been thinking of a good name for them. Like the living dead dolls brand. After doing some vital research I thought of ladies of the night but if i was to make a male character it would suite. So it was suggested to use a translate a word into french and use that for my name. So I looked up the words death, gothic, Scary, undead, Corpse and got no names that I found interesting. So i tried using a thesaurus and used the word dead and i found the word deceased and I translated it to the french word Decede. From which I liked with put next to the word dolls, to create the name Decede Dolls.

Death = la mort
Gothic = gothique
Scary = effrayant
Undead = vampires
Corpse = cadavre
Deceased = décédé

I then started to research customised dolls to see what results I can get to inspire me and I founds these images that I liked.
 This is a 'Living Dead Doll', these dolls are sold professionally and have alot of variations and styles. I like these dolls because they are out of the ordinary and look pretty gothic. I have been into gothic art for some time and it pleases me to see a gothic range of dolls that are sold.
 This is a doll that has been customised. I like this doll because of its tacky style and also because of all the wires and masking tape make it look robotic.
 These two dolls have been created and I love the look and style of these, they have long skinny limbs which gives them a tim burton look, also the top image looks like alice from alice in wonderland.
This doll is more abstract and possibly more of the style that i want to do, because they look more original. Also I love the way its been painted and looks more mechanical.
After researching some images I came up with this initial design.
I decided to use a dead bug for a accessory because my girlfriend was working with a dead spider today and I thought it would look good, because theres a character from nightmare before xmas who also has a spider for a tie. I wanted to give him a cyborg face because I love cyborgs and the relation that humans have with machines. To reinforce this idea I decided to give a claw for one of his hands and make half of his face robotic and I knew I would have to cut off half of his hair. I made this clothes all riped off on different halfs to give him a contrasting look from both halfs. The contract between humans and machines, machine being perfect and neat and humans for being scruffy and making mistakes. I knew I will have to use foil to make the robotic effect on my doll. and I want to draw on his face to make him look gothic.
This is a cyber pony that I did last year on my art foundation course, I will use some of the same techniques to make my new doll. This was made by using a my little pony and a mobile phone and added wire.
This is the doll I started with.
I had to make a hole in his head so I put make him look robitic, to i got a hammer and attempted to make a gentle tap but it wouldn't even break. Unfortunately after a few taps nothing happened so I put abit more force into the tap and unfortunately it smashed the head into two pieces.

This is what I was left with, at first I was disappointed but I was determined to make this doll so it occurred to me I could turn this negative into a positive. So I decided to researched cybonic heads and other creatures from heads. and I found these.
This is a character out of toy story, made from a toys head and given a 'spider' body, it also has a missing eye like my head piece.
 This is a custom doll I found online that I think is relevant however I only have half a heads not the full face.
This is a alien form, from the film The Thing, I love this design as its scary which I want my dolls to be, I have watched this film in the past and this i one of my favorite moments. I want my doll head to look like this by cybonic. Because I'm going to do a head and a body, two set doll I shall call them Brain and Braun, because the head is all brain and the body is the braun. And I came up with these designs.

This is my design for brain, Which has adapted the designs of the head toy in toy story and the head creature from the thing. I will need foil, and wire and an old mobile phone in order to make this, I wants to cut half his hair off to give him a bizarre look.
 I started off by adding aluminium wire and gluing it into the head, these will be its legs, I glued alot of foil pieces to fill up the head and added a small mobile camera lens for an eye.


This is brain after filling up his body and adding the eye, I like the look of him as hes beginning to take form. So i decided to add more onto him.
To make him look more cybonic, I decided to add wires onto him. It worked very well how I felt he was lacking in design to I asked around and people made suggestions to wrap wire around his legs to give them more detail.
I wrapped wire around his legs which proved to make him look more details and creepy, I also added pincers onto him to make him seem more spider like. Then I added finishing touches, by adding blood and gelling his hair.
The finished product is this, which has a very spooky and gothic look, I does look different from my internal designs, but I feel this design looks better then my drawn design. By letting chance intervene with my product making I have ended up with a better design then I could ever think of.
Now it was time to make Braun so I drew this initial design.
So to make this design the first step I did was to cut up his clothes and smash his hand off.

In order to make his claw I will use pegs and wrap them around the arm with masking tap, his will make him took very poor put together and the pegs will add to the 'childish' effect because he is a kids toy.
This is the claw which is pink and purple so its very colourful, and should hopefully look cute to my audience.
I then decided to go off my design and add wires into his leg, because I could imagine this dead body would need alot of electricity to make the dead corpse move and come to life, therefore his limbs would need to be wired up. I also wrapped foil around to add make his look mechanical. I also did the same to his right arm.

The next step, was to edit his head, and I thought that it would be interesting to have a brain inside. So I was thinking of materials which I could sculpt a brain and it was suggested that instead of sculpting a brain I could use some thing else to achieve the same effect. I quickly thought of monkey nuts and I put them in to see what they looked like.
I think that i made the right decision and it looks very effective, I just need to paint it. I added wire into it because his whole body is full of wires so in turn his brain would need to be aswell.
This is the brain after I painted it red and added red ink to is, I looks good  because it looks bloody and juicy however its not quite the right colour. So I mixed red and white paint together and highlights the brain.
I think that highlighting the brain worked very well, bringing out the detail and making it look the right colour.
This is brain after adding red ink onto his body for blood and adding a 'tie' out of a mobile keypad to stay true to the robotic look I wanted. I really like Braun because he doesnt look very scary with out any eyes and head because I gives that illusion and you don't know what hes thinking or what hes looking at.
This is both brain and Braun together, I am very pleased with my end product. As a two piece set I feel they both complement each other and this is defiantly a doll I would like in my room at night.

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