Of Lady Rangers and Symmetry
Those of you English folks are no doubt aware of the low-budget prequel to LOTR that's filming over in your neck of the woods:
http://www.bornofhope.com/index.html
I like the look of the photos so far, aside from the one casting incongruence that has Aragorn's mother looking like Eowyn's. Little Aragorn is adorable! The writer/director of the piece has written herself a role as well, as a lady Ranger. I highly approve of lady Rangers, of course, and will look forward to seeing this. It's a non-profit film, so they'll be putting it up on the web for everyone when it is done. Hope they complete it.
Now, about this symmetry thing...Aside from its occasional, accidental inclusions in my fanfic, it turns out the wretched concept is essential to doll-making (you can stop laughing any time now, altariel ...), as in-the more symmetrical your features are, the more beautiful the human eye perceives you to be. So to be beautiful, doll features must be symmetrical.
This is a problem for me. Apparently it's a problem for everyone, because the only way to check if your dolly's features are symmetrical (goes for the body too), is to look at it in a mirror. You face the dolly into the mirror and stand behind it and look, and presto! you can see that that face you thought was symmetrical and beautiful actually looks like Quasimodo! It's really weird, but apparently doing that forces the left side of your brain into the picture, and the left side is what picks up on symmetry and such.
Wish I'd known about it during those months I spent trying to figure out what was wrong. The insight came from a Japanese doll artist's website and was confirmed by several others.
So I generally end up looking in the mirror, putting stone clay here and there in the appropriate areas, waiting for it to dry, sculpting it down to where it hopefully should be, and then going back to the mirror again. Over and over and over... The good news is that apparently if you do that long enough, your brain begins to train itself a little bit to look at things in the correct way. You still need the mirror, just not as much.
http://www.bornofhope.com/index.html
I like the look of the photos so far, aside from the one casting incongruence that has Aragorn's mother looking like Eowyn's. Little Aragorn is adorable! The writer/director of the piece has written herself a role as well, as a lady Ranger. I highly approve of lady Rangers, of course, and will look forward to seeing this. It's a non-profit film, so they'll be putting it up on the web for everyone when it is done. Hope they complete it.
Now, about this symmetry thing...Aside from its occasional, accidental inclusions in my fanfic, it turns out the wretched concept is essential to doll-making (you can stop laughing any time now, altariel ...), as in-the more symmetrical your features are, the more beautiful the human eye perceives you to be. So to be beautiful, doll features must be symmetrical.
This is a problem for me. Apparently it's a problem for everyone, because the only way to check if your dolly's features are symmetrical (goes for the body too), is to look at it in a mirror. You face the dolly into the mirror and stand behind it and look, and presto! you can see that that face you thought was symmetrical and beautiful actually looks like Quasimodo! It's really weird, but apparently doing that forces the left side of your brain into the picture, and the left side is what picks up on symmetry and such.
Wish I'd known about it during those months I spent trying to figure out what was wrong. The insight came from a Japanese doll artist's website and was confirmed by several others.
So I generally end up looking in the mirror, putting stone clay here and there in the appropriate areas, waiting for it to dry, sculpting it down to where it hopefully should be, and then going back to the mirror again. Over and over and over... The good news is that apparently if you do that long enough, your brain begins to train itself a little bit to look at things in the correct way. You still need the mirror, just not as much.