FABRICATION

My next biggest passion outside of drawing is definitely crafting. I get it from my mother who knows how do to just about every textile craft under the sun... I just try to keep up. I love knitting, sewing, embroidery, crochet. I especially love making and designing my own dolls.

Static Butterfly

Static Butterfly (dir. Damian Orpustan), is a hybrid 2D/stop-motion film capstone project for SJSU. I had the pleasure of voluteering for fabrication, and created all of the sewn pieces that appear in the film. All props for the film were produced at a 1/6 scale.

Check out more about the film here!

Uncomposited/early stills from the film. Lighting and photography by the Static Butterfly team.

Ronan's clothes. Amber's dress, mattress, and curtains by me.

Ronan doll fabricated by Damian Orpustan, rest of room and props fabricated by Isabel Buriel and the Static Butterfly team.

Amber's dress is a prop in the room that Ronan is cleaning up. This had to match the 2D counterpart of the character Amber, but I had some leeway to make something that felt a little more detailed. Since there would be no functionality in this piece, I sewed on seed beads in the back of the dress to emulate buttons.

sketching to try and imagine the character to scale in the real world.

Rough pattern I made for the dress.

A last minute edition to this piece was embroidering tiny butterflies on the front of the skirt.

detail photo by Isabel Buriel

Drawing of Ronan to scale by Damian Orpustan. Using illustrations of the character and reference material provided by the team, I started by producing a mockup of ronans clothes on an early version of the final doll.

Sweater knitting was done in the round for the body, and flat for the sleeves. The sleeves are designed as set in, but are not sewn to make it easier for the animators to detach the arms of the doll. The vest is lined. Buttons and pockets were added as details for the vest, and the vest closes with snaps.

First and second pass of the curtains.

The fabric on the first pass was too thin and immediately started tearing away from the stitches. The second pass I repurposed a dress my sister didn't want anymore. This fabric proved to be much more durable. The hemming, flower details, and bottom pleating were already in the original piece. I do wonder if anyone will watch the film and realize it's their dress.

(uncomposited still from the final film)

I was very pleased with this knockoff Raggedy Anne I made last minute when Damian mentioned they needed some extra toys to fill out the space. Made with a combination of needle felting, embroidery, and sewing.

Other props I created: mattress, curtains, blanket, various toys. Trashbag, bedframe, and hairclips made by Isabel Buriel and the Static Butterfly team.