wind in the willlows

its an english children's story about a toad, badger, rat, mole and a gang of weasels. the animals in the story have both characteristics of the animal and human. its quite a slow start to the story but once the reader gets deeper into the whole plot the pace quickens.
Rat and Mole meet and become friends. they take an adventurous ride down steam when they come across Toad hall. this is when they meet Mr. Toad who's very sporadic, egocentric character who's life is for filled with fads and mischief (the two are often linked). Toads obsessions lead the group into many adventures all to operate a motorcar.
the friends seek help from badger (who is basically the wise old man of the story) because toad has got himself into some bother due to is careless attitude. mole and rat feel as if they almost have to protect toad from himself through out the whole story.  even a word from the wise badger didn't change toads mind. to save toad the trio decide that he needs to be kept under arrest. mole then steals a car and crashes it. he is then sentenced to a 20 year prison sentence. he escapes form prison with great help from the jailers daughter.
due to toads arrest, toad hall has been broken into and taken over by the gang of weasels who have set out to vandalise and abuse the hall. toad heroically saves the day by taking back the hall and casting out the gang of weasels. he then apologises to the trio and they live happily ever after.

weasel character analysis

The weasel actually only appears towards the end of the book. Although his scene is short it is important for the story as the weasels downfall brings the group of friends closer together. The chief weasel is the leader of all the weasels and stoats and therefore leads them to do his bidding. Being from the Wild Woods all the animals themselves are not the nicest and are described as scary and mean characters. But the Leader (my character) is especially manipulative and nasty. He is cunning and will do anything to get what he wants. In this case he will do anything to take over Toad Hall. He's a ruthless leader and that is why he fights against the four main characters in his quest to have the best residence. Perhaps he does this in his hopes to up their ranking from the wild woods to the best place in the book and it's all just a status thing.

The blue print/designs process room

In this room it shows how much thought and effort went into each individual piece. Each of these pieces of paper consists of all the dimensions and mechanisms each piece will have. It's also been drawn in multiple angles so that when it goes to actually be made there is no guess work and everything turns out to plan. Personally I find it befalling how much work is for one of these sheets and then in the next room it showed quite a few of the paper models which came from these design sheets. Finally after you walked through that room/hall it showed you the final outcome of the whole castle which was fantastic. these blue prints gave me a real life example of how my wind in the willows costume and mask design work should look.   

COMEDIA DELL'ARTE

Introduction

Comedia dell'arte is a body of characters that consists of roughly 10 to 11 depending on what version/ variation it is. 

at the top theres magnifico and at the bottom its zanni 

Flaws of my mask

The parts which don't work well are the handles to support the head so it didn't fall. To get around this I would create a chest and back plate which would be able sustain the weight of my mask without my partner having to hold anything. Therefore, she could act as the character more believably. Another issue I had was that the hat wasn't held on properly so in time it started to fall and break. To solve this problem I am going to glue it to the mask and give it more strength on the inside so it stays balanced and doesn't fall apart.

Evaluation of sewhat

Overall I enjoyed the whole experience of getting a piece of work ready to be show cased and performed however, it was very nerve racking going on stage even for those 30 or so seconds. In our dress rehearsal I could see fine through the mask and didn't need any adjustment but when it was actually time too performe the light were dim and I couldn't see getting up the stairs and nearly fell up them. 

Build up to sewhat

This was the beginning of my mask where I just got a solid based so the mask wouldn't collapse when I added too it. I also took the measurements so it would fit perfectly when on. I held it together with glue and duck tape.

Here you can see that ive started to add a facial structure which will be the based of the face. I created this by cutting strips of cardboard and rolling them up into a filter shape which would make a nice curve in the face. 

Here I began to fill it out so it didn't look boxy. I did this by scrunching up newspaper and sticking It down with duck tape.

This is the piece just before I covered it in paper mashay however after more research I realised that the ears were rounded so I decidd to make a hat which would cover the ear and still fit in with the context of wind in the willows as in the cartoon sketches the weasels had hats 

This is the painted piece with the hat. I did the base colour brown and then sponged some black in too it to unevenly to make it look scruffy and worn. I Lao tried to make the hat look worn by not making it tight to the cardboard structure and letting the meterial flop down. I tried to go for a bowlers hat sort of look. 

The final adjustment I made was the eyes ,which I originally planned to do in the first place. I also used green glitter to make them stand out as the overall piece was very darkly coloured.