I knew one part of the Dugong I didn’t draw too much was the mouth, since I thought it wouldn’t work well with the stylized composition piece. I went back and studied the Dugong mouth from a few angles, and messed around a little:
While I was drawing the mouth, I was thinking about what kinds of shapes I would need to create this complex form, with respect to water bottles and containers. I later found a piece that would work perfectly for the mouth but I’ll revisit that later.
My first experimentation was with a clear plastic water bottle. I don’t have pictures because they were rather insignificant and only told me things that I shouldn’t be doing, like using clear plastic, trying to flatten already textured plastic, etc. I quickly moved on to deconstructed milk jugs, which I felt would be a lot better since it’s made from a more solid plastic and is colored, so the form is captured much better. As of Tuesday’s class, I had this:
I used an iced tea jug to create the tapered part before the and a flipper. I think I’ll be able to get the entire shape of the animal pretty easily because it’s just a tapered tube with a round part in the middle, so I wanted to focus my energy on working on the more notable bits first. I was also on the hunt for something that was suitable for the tail, so I didn’t want to start attaching pieces together.
My feedback from Thursday was to be expected, since I had only an amalgamation of parts. I don’t have a picture of the entire body that I’d loosely taped together, but it as essentially a tapered cone. I asked for some advice on how to attach pieces, though I didn’t get much feedback on how the project was going because it was hard to imagine the entire animal when it wasn’t assembled. Either way, I had a pretty clear idea of where I was going to take it next.
I sourced quite a bit of jug-plastic from various sources and found two little dustpans, and I was able to make a tail by sawing off the sides:
This is one of the two notable pieces that I had to find, rather than create, so everything measurable that was in my control had to be cut down to size to be proportional to it. I also added a point of articulation because it was convenient and fun:
I think one thing Daphne did say to me that stuck was how the body I had felt extremely stiff, so adding easy points of articulation so I can adjust the body’s movement will help with making everything feel more active. Or, if articulation is too much to incorporate naturally, I may just glue everything in place so the form suggests movement.
I also refined the attachment and made another shoulder joint:
Here is what I have as of the 14th:
I’ve just been loosely taping pieces together and avoiding cutting everything to size in case I need to scale up or down or make other adjustments. I’m waiting for feedback on Tuesday’s class to get suggestions on refinement before actually setting everything in stone, since I’m still not sure if the approach I’m taking is the best. I realized that I haven’t exactly been embracing the form of the plastic, because I felt that the Dugong’s form is too complex and I couldn’t find any containers that would work.
In regards to the mouth, I spent most of my time yesterday figuring that out. I think from my drawn studies, I noticed three significant portions that create a someway raised flat attachment on the head, which is slanted downwards in relation to the rest of the body. I found a perfect piece that I knew I had to use for part of the mouth, which was the inside part of the handle of a milk jug. I also noticed some of the jugs had a rough texture that would somewhat emulate the hair and texture of the Dugong’s mouth, so I decided to only use those pieces when creating the mouth. Right now, I’m pretty satisfied where it is. I do wish I had a larger upper mouth part so that it can slope down, but the base piece is too good to not take advantage of.
Some things that Q pointed out to me were that while the base of the body seemed correct, the proportion of the side-fin was too small. He also mentioned how the black cap I used as a shoulder drew too much attention. I think moving forward, I’ll try to have the shoulder joint inside of the body of the Dugong instead of protruding outwards, as well as adding a larger piece to make up the flipper.
Another thing Q said was that the mouth was too wide for what the Dugong is actually like. I’ll have to find a way to slightly press the sides of the Dugong’s head in towards each other. Other than that, I am set to start attaching and cutting pieces down.
Final Update:
I easily spent the most time on Wednesday working on the face of the Dugong. I had to adjust a lot of pieces to get something that looked right, and I think one of the most impactful ones was the top piece for the face. I used a fishing line attached to either side with hot glue to create a more drastic slope. Most of the rest was just a slow process of cutting down pieces to fit together better. I struggled a lot with
I wasn’t very happy with the brad placement on the mouth, but it held everything together and I tried to place them in places that wouldn’t be too distracting.
The rest of the body was pretty much just about undoing the tape, cutting the piece down to size, and attaching with hot glue/hiding areas of high overlap with brads. One part that gave me a lot of grief was the neck, which caused me to have to switch up my approach in order to attach the face and body at different angles. I do think I could’ve done better attaching the head, but it was 4 am and I was out of larger pieces of plastic, so I could only get so dramatic of an angle.
Final Images:
I’m pretty happy with how the end result came out. I felt that I captured the chunky-ness of the Dugong pretty well and incorporated more dramatic curves to suggest movement. I ended up scrapping the flippers with articulation I’d made because they were both too small and too contrast-y for the final product. I just recreated the most important parts with two pieces of scrap plastic and glued them into the holes I’d cut for the bottle-cap joint and I felt that it came out pretty well considering it was a last-minute decision.
Overall, I found that this project pushed me to really think about the Dugong in a more dimensional manner that I hadn’t before, and to consider how my found materials could represent the form I’d been only recreating in 2D. I think if I’d had more time, my method could’ve been refined to include more points of articulation and smoother transitions.