The Garvey project was the most involved project of all. I started with the idea of a lost garbage bag sometime in October; here are some of the first sketches I made of him.
Despite the fact that a garbage bag seems like a simple shape to work with, I found that it still took time to decide on Garvey’s orientation and where facial features would go. You can see I toyed with a few mouth/eye placements here, as well as different kinds of knot. At this stage I still had no idea how I’d pull off a plastic bag knot using Super Sculpey, but hey, it all flows from the idea.
In some of these sketches I played with some eyes that might at least work with the natural folds of a garbage bag. I also thought it might contribute to his story of sadness if he was oriented completely sideways.
Ultimately, though, these sketches were still unsatisfactory. That’s when I realized I needed to play with a real garbage bag, so I grabbed one and filled it with some scraps of foam and stuffing from my housemate, who’s a pretty wicked puppetmaker. In one of the configurations, I started to see a possible brow-line:
So, with some finessing of the bag contents and the help of a pair of scissors, I came up with these fairly convincing visages:
Bingo! A direction. I showed the sketches to Andrew, our instructor, and he suggested I could actually make a bag out of Super Sculpey and stuff it with tin foil. I was a bit skeptical that it would hold, but he assured me it would.
In the scanned image below, the sketch on the right is from Andrew, suggesting a post to hold him in to the base, and to surround him with debris. I also scanned some baby-name books for a good name, and that’s when Garvey came to light. Somewhat cute, somewhat distinguished, and referential to the character’s nature without hitting over the head too hard.
Aside: Making this character led me to investigate Marcus Garvey. I’d heard his name often but had no idea why he was a recognized figure. So for the uninitiated: he’s an awesome figure, one of the first Black nationalists and an inspiration for the Nation of Islam and Rastafari. No disrespect intended to him in using his name on a sack of trash! Consider him an underdog hero.
Coming soon: Garvey, meet Sculpey.
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