New Sculpture Project: Robot

Here's the parts I have so far for my newest doll/sculpture, which will be a robot, of sorts.

The little jar is going to be the main bulk of the robot, but there will be arms and legs and plates and parts, of course. All the parts around the jar are made of sculpey, with the exception of the gray circular thing with orange in the middle. It is a glass pebble with orange glow in the dark sculpey behind it and silver sculpey around the edge.

The brain with it's delicate little brain stem will be in the jar, suspended in clear casting resin. The whole thing will be sort of '50's movie monster robot, mixed with a bit of steam punk nightmare.

There's a lot more that needs to be done to this thing before it's workable, but there you go, an update as to what I'm working on!

Insomnia, Updates, Robots, Etc.

So, I got to sleep at about 8 a.m. this morning. Long long long hellish night. It sucked. I think I've talked about insomnia before, so we'll move on.

The rat got another bake, but I don't feel like this step warrants pictures. She's got a bigger bust and butt now, and she has 'eyes' of a sort. Nothing else changed at all, so no pictures, yet. I've also started very roughly on her limbs, and I will post about them specifically later.

Today in my haze of having slept the morning away, and having a sleepless night, I went to TED.com to watch some sort of educational/science-y video to try to motivate me into doing stuff. What I got was actually a bit of a revelation. I realized why I make the things I do. I watched a talk by Cynthia Breazeal, who makes robots.

What I realized is that I make dolls, puppets, and the like because what I REALLY want is robots. I don't know how to make robots, but that seems as close to 'playing God' as one can get. Creating something that looks and acts like a living thing. Puppets come a bit closer than dolls, but you have to animate them yourself, of course, and that's fine. I LOVE puppets. Baby New Year, from the first post of the year is a simple rod puppet, but it still gets some expressive quality from that. I want to make more advanced puppets, but I tend to hit a wall in what I am able to do, versus what I want to do.

The whole idea of robots fascinates me, and not just because I want to mimic life. I don't see them as being creatures but more as being puppets with mechanical parts....which made me realize that a puppet I've been wanting to make may be actually doable if I buy a robotic arm kit. Honestly, I currently have two ideas for puppets that could use a robotic arm kit. If I manage to get a robotic arm kit (they are around $50, and you have to build the thing yourself, so there's some question as to if I will do this), I can tell you that I will probably do something really weird with it, and you will get to see it!

The photo today is Leonardo, a robot that Cynthia Breazeal made. He's pretty awesome and amazing...and kinda cute, so I figure he was a good example of what I want to do, even if it's not what I can do.