I absolutely loved this excercise! It was a really fun way to generate ideas and even found that having the third impetus thrown in at a later stage actually helped to move the story along in an exciting way. I might even try and put this story idea into production if I get time at a later stage.

Pick two words from a dictionary at random. These two words will then combine to become a character to write about. (15 minutes)

The air was hot and humid which made it difficult to breathe. A drop of moisture slid lazily along the surface of a leaf before plopping dramatically onto Sphere Mightiest little pointy nose. Startled, he waddles from the cover of the luscious plant he had been hiding in and snagged a claw on a twisted tree root.

He had to admit, this was the furthest he had ever travelled from home and was starting to doubt that a forest in deepest darkest Wales was the best place for an Armadillo.

If only those pesky ants hadn’t dared him to prove his worth, if only his mother hadn’t given him a ridiculous name like Sphere Mightiest, a name which gave his fellow creatures a right to question how mighty he is. Not that he usually wants to prove himself mighty, for that is exactly what he is not.

I coloured some latex a light pink skin colour which I then applied around the eyeball in its socket, I also painted the inside of her mouth while I was at it and once her eyes are set I can get going with a different colour!

I first applied a layer of foam and latex directly onto the skull, covering everything other than the K and S hole where her body will be attached. For the hair surrounding her mouth I sandwiched the bits of wire between two pieces of foam covered latex which I also secured to her face.

Once this was dried I was able to cut around the excess bits of foam to reveal the strands of 'hair' and also cut away the bits of foam in the mouth that had been covering her little teeth.

I then started work on the strands of wire coming out of her head. As these were all higgledypiggledy unlike the straight line of wire in the sides of her face I decided to wrap each strand with a seperate bit of foam at a time.

I'm just waiting for these bits to dry before I can start to colour her...

The wire jaw and ears attach to the light weight sculpey 'skull'.

I then started to add some facial detail with milliput, which is how I also attached the hair wires to the cheeks...

... and to the head. Jess is currently looking like she's been struck by lightning but as soon as that milliput has dried I can start to apply her 'skin' over the armature.

Here are a few doodles from my sketch book of character ideas for my upcoming Librarian character:

I will be developing the chappy with the monocle further into some 3D sculpts.

She's now got her slap on and is ready to hit the town!.. Or more likely curl up on the sofa with a cup of tea if I know Jess at all!

I wanted to make a 3D version of my Jessica character in clay. I have decided that I will be making a stop-motion puppet of her so I firstly need to get my ideas off of the paper and into a 3D form.

Here's how it's going so far:

I created a wire structure that would support the clay, especially the wispy bits of hair above her eyes and around the mouth. I then started to build directly on top of this with the clay.

I started to mould shape into her face before adding hair onto the wire strands.

I've left the clay to dry before I can continue working on it...