Plastazote and Willow

The plastazote and willow workshops were an amazing experience to get to know two new materials that I have never used before - Both of which are seen a lot in the carnival industry. By attending these workshops i was able to play with shape and form, as well as develop in my construction techniques to build scale and frame work.



Plastazote - Plastazote is a very light weight material that can be cut relatively easily and is great for creating head dresses due to its flexibility and weight, it means the head dresses are easy and comfortable to wear. It can also be sculpted with the use of head guns and then have extra decoration applied on top of this to create more height, scale, shape and pattern.

When working with plastazote in school it is important to do a prototype to see how the material will shape and mould, when I was working with it i discovered it can be easily manipulated into the shape you want.

Plastazote Head dress - Developing shape

Adding Onto the head dress to create even more height and scale

End of Plastazote workshops - Wave and boat head dress Idea

Willow - I found willow to be a great material for making puppets as well as a cheap way of creating frame work. It does however have a very organic feel as exact smooth shapes cannot be created easily. Working with willow could be a great way to create a large scale puppet however i think for individual costumes this material wouldn’t translate well. It would also mean a lot of the frame work would be done by myself in uni and transported to the school for decoration as I would fear the children will be lost on how to create the correct shapes.

Creating Ball Shapes with Willow

Once Covered it was very clear it wasnt that much of a ball

Developing shapes of seahorses through willow