Friday, February 18, 2011

Episode: Design

Problem: Kid needs to clean his room, but doesn't exactly know how/what/when/where. Enter the Imaginauts, with an episode all about design!

Lessons: The Principles of Design
Balance
Proportion (including Golden Ratio/Mean)
Rhythm
Emphasis
Unity

The worlds in this episode could be organized around a Jason and the Argonauts/Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets-esque adventure around the Imagination. Island hopping? Overcoming challenges/puzzles? Mazes?

Thursday, February 17, 2011

ROVING CHOICES?



Here is what Jonathan and I picked out for colors. We thought it would be best to get one of each color and then try and mix them when we need more specific hues. These 9 skeins(?) cost approx. $144.
We need to put in this order today before 5
 but won't do it until we hear from you guys that these are okay. If there is a color that you need that you don't think we can make from the colors here, say so. Keep in mind that mixing colors is not like paint, and they will look more like the natural 'brown' color with different colored strands than a solid dye color.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Homework for Friday 2/18

On Sunday before we left, Ha, Jonathan, Kirsten and I decided on 2:30 at Cabell for our Friday meeting, where we would begin felting our puppets and discuss the Design and TV/Video/Animation episodes (alternatively, we could begin actually storyboarding the literature episode?). (Allie does that time work for you?)

SO! To accomplish this, our group homework is:

- Decide on the colors your puppet will require and what he/she will wear. We thought it would be pretty excellent to dress the same as our puppets, so pick clothes that you own and that can be easily simplified into puppet form (We will probs be making tiny clothes for them.)
---Kirsten - bring your huge box of barbie doll clothes plz!
WE WILL NEED TO HAVE THIS INFO TOGETHER BEFORE FRIDAY. Since we need to order the roving before Friday, we need to know what colors to order. Also, if we need to arrange a roving shopping trip, it will probably need to be either before Friday or on Friday morning before the meeting.


- Do some background research on Design and or TV/Video/Animation (look over old blog posts to refresh your memory about what we've already worked out) so that we can start throwing around world ideas and main messages.


Other notes from the Sunday meeting:
- The puppets will probably have no wire frame - they will be solid felt, since they are not big enough to merit hollow interiors to save materials.
- We'll probably use the stick-and-wire method of controlling the puppets from below, but that needs more work. For now, we'll work on making the puppet bodies so that our control experiments will be more informative.
- The puppets will be about Barbie height, but normal human proportions, not stick-bug proportions.
- Our self-puppets' defining features will be something like:
          -Allie: long blonde hair, blue eyes
          -Emily: blue eyes, brown hair in little buns
          -Ha: asian, long dark brown hair
          -Kirsten: long dark brown hair, side part, brown eyes
          -Jonathan: beard, glasses, short hair.
Of course we'll do what we can to make them look as much like us as possible, but if they all come out looking like this, at least we will know who is who. (Although this is our goal, of course)


Roving for Roving

Okay, so from what I can see here is the lay of the land re: felting wool.

The Fiber Warehouse (aka mystery phone number guy):
Undyed is 13.50/lb, Dyed is 15.70/lb
He doesn't ship till Friday, so he said we'd probably get it by Monday or Tuesday.
POTENTIAL PROBLEM: do we have to buy 1lb at a time? Can we buy less than a lb. of any one color?  A pound is a LOT, right?

Harrisville Designs (aka the other place VCU orders from)
$16/ half lb. bag.
Would probably ship 3-5 days after we order, plus delivery time.

Holly Spring Homespun - I called the Yarn Lounge in Carytown and they said the closest place they knew of to buy roving is this place. It's about a 45 minute drive from here.
They don't have a wide selection, but their site lists a pack of rainbow colors (see link) for $24. I THINK it's 6 oz. total, and the lady kept going on about how it was sooo much more than we needed, but she doesn't really know what we're doing.... anyway, it's an option we could get immediately and use as a stopgap while we waited for another order to ship, since time is of the essence.

We also have the option of buying little starter bags from places like Ben Franklin or Kmart I think - they sell little assortment packs of 1.76 oz. with 8 colors for something like $11, or individual color .22 oz. packets for $3/ea. Couldn't confirm the availability at Kmart but Ben Franklin said they have it. Hobby Lobby out in Short Pump sells .25 oz packets of 2 colors for $2.


The Fiber Warehouse is by far the cheapest, and it's actually the fastest shipper compared VCU's other place. The places we can drive to seem to be marked way up in price and we'd have to drive quite a little bit. I suggest we order from the Fiber Warehouse asap, and in the meantime get some of the little packs to tide us over and get us started working.