For the current brief I have been required to produce a 3D moving sculpture which will allow a successful animation to be created. My idea for the sculpture was to create a peacock whose feathers would open and lift creating the movement of a peacock. I decided to use cardboard for the main body structure as I felt this would be more durable to manage. In this I would attach a wire structure with peacock feathers which would allow movement to the final piece for the animation. Originally I had designed and attached legs to the peacock, however, once put together this didn't allow the peacock to stand well. The feathers were also too short to create a long peacocks tail which would look more realistic.

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The brief required a moving component in the 3D sculpture, which would create the animation, however this didn't go as expected. Due to the structure of the feathers, wire and hot glue, there was no way of folding in the feathers to create the opening up and lifting of the tail. Instead, I had to create a tail that was already open and create the animation from the tail just simply lifting up and down. This also proved difficult because the wire and feather structure was to heavy, meaning that as I bent the wire for it to move upwards, it didn't lift up much at all. To overcome this I decided to add fishing wire in two places to my tail and lift up slowly while snapshots were being taken. This method proved most successful.

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The main structure of the peacock worked well creating a good depth and shape to the peacock. However, when painting it, I realized that it didn't look realistic at all and was difficult to get accurate features due to the material and style. The background was a key part in creating a realistic animation. With my 3D structure being quite big I used a sheet of blue material for the sky and fake grass for it to stand on. To add more depth to the background I covered a small amount of stuffing with a green shade of material for bushes.

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If I was to do this project again there would be many things that I would change. The first being the mechanism for the tail. I would of planned and practiced further allowing me to work out the best way to create the movement I was looking for. Another key aspect I would of considered changing would be the overall look of the peacock, although the cardboard worked well, it didn't give the more realistic and clean lined finish I was looking for. The background could of had much more detail, showing clouds, trees and bushes to give a more realistic feel. Although there were many paths I had to overcome and change I feel my animation did flow well and I managed to meet the requirement of my animation being between 5 and 10 seconds long.