Taste of Cold Blood - #1
I grew up in Colorado, in a town that nobody ever recognizes when I tell them where I’m from. I remember my hometown as the rustic buildings downtown, the heaps of snow in Spring, the frosty fields of overgrowth behind the neighborhood park. But my once small hometown has changed a lot over the years. The buildings have been renovtated, the snow no longer comes in May, and the fields behind our park have been blocked off and turned into oil drilling sites. Everything is different, and yet, I still feel a sense of familiarity when I visit.
I’m a person deeply driven by inspiration and passion. I’m inspired by the music I listen to, the movies and tv shows I love, but also by my world experiences. I’ve been through the Rockies several times, and I’m always drawn toward the mysterious air that looms over each remote mountain town up there. It’s alluring, and like the awkward, urban transformation of my hometown, I can’t help but find inspiration in places like these that evoke uneasy curiosity.
Cold Blood is a self-written, stop motion short film that follows the eerie history of Bristlecone, a once lively, small mountain town now abandonded by tourists. It is a town shrouded in mysteries, shaken by a set of grisly murders, and filled with unsettling, self-loathing people. I am incredibly excited to be bringing this short to life, so excited that I cannot help but share pieces of my creative journey along the way! This blog will be the home for all things Cold Blood and I’ll be making weekly progress posts documenting the creative process, today is all about Detective Benni McKinley.
Detective Benni McKinley is born
Worldbuilding, Character Design, and Fabrication
During my final semester at CalArts, I took a course with the amazing Melissa Piekaar and Troy Morgan on Costume Design for Animation. The ten week course took us through the process of creating a world and building a character within it, then taught us how to design and fabricate that character in 1/6th scale. For this class, I chose to focus on developing Benni McKinley, the sole detective at Bristlecone’s Police Department. She is a very strong force in Bristlecone’s narrative, all mysteries start and end with her.
Benni’s Worldbuilding and Moodboard
I started with some worldbuilding that led me to pry into Benni’s character more. What is Bristlecone’s society like (morals, rules, customs, etc…) and how does Benni fit into that? What textiles does she like/dislike, how does she speak, how does her exterior change through different emotions? This was before I started the first versions of the film’s screenplay, so not only did the process aid me in understanding how to approach Benni’s design, but it made the world feel more lived in once I started working through the screenplay.
Through this physical collage I started to cling onto an image of what Benni would look like too. Benni is quiet, vigilant, and wise, but these traits mix together in a way that feels uncanny for a human being. I knew I wanted Benni to have this owlish look to her: round-faced, large eyes, beak-like nose. Her costume should either blend in or feel uninviting against the pale, cool colors of the town.
Further Exploration
I started to explore Benni in her own world through rough drawings, as well as through an exercise called the Ghosting Technique. This technique explores how the character at hand lives through the five senses:
It’s cold, the wind is blowing and it makes my face numb. I can’t move my fingers as much as I’d like to from how cold it is. My hands are in my pockets, my pockets are soft with lint. I bite my lip anxiously.
The fresh scent of the snow, it’s hard to pick up any smells.
The whistling wind and isolated murmurs fill the air. No echoes of voices, my heavy breathing as I trek. The flickering of lights. Everything else is absorbed by the snow.
The faint taste of blood from biting on my lip. I try to keep my mouth closed from all the snow.
And white. Just white heaps of snow and ice, a path through town with dim lighting. the cold, blueish light flickers occasionally.
I immediately got to work on giving Benni the perfect owl face: big, round eyes and a sharp, almost beak-like nose. She’s buried in years of stress, and what better way to show that than eye bags and grays? Her eyebrows are perfectly plucked, hair neatly pulled back into a bun. But a detail I’ve fallen in love with is her bangs. When I showed the character rendering (first image) to my Costume Design for Animation class, the instructor had commented on how he could imagine Benni huffing her bangs out of her face in frusturation. Bangs can be high-maintenance, especially in wet, snowy climates, and so I really loved the idea of Benni leaving the house with perfect bangs, just to have them disturbed by the snow. Including little things like this in the design have made Benni feel so much more real and well-rounded to me!
Now the costume— I had seen this really cool jacket that used pintucks to create a tapered waist, and I loved the idea that Benni altered her own clothes to look her absolute best. This film takes place in the late 1980s, and I wanted to give her this blue pussy bow blouse which would’ve been period relevant. As much as I adore this design though, I pivoted toward a more androgynous, uniform look (image below). I wanted her to still be recognizable as law enforcement, and while Benni’s a small town detective, she takes her job very seriously. The black suit and tie heightens Benni’s professionalism, something that she feels she needs to do regarding her praising reputation amongst Bristlecone, but also as a woman in an eighties male-dominated workplace. Her costume undeniably pulls inspiration from characters like Fox Mulder and Dale Cooper, reflecting Benni’s self-image of how relevant she finds her job to be despite the slow days in Bristlecone.
Benni McKinley’s Final Rendering
The Armature
Now it was finally time to bring Benni to life! This was my first time making a puppet armature.
I made a 1:1 scale drawing of Benni’s puppet, then used tracing paper to ink out her armature. I followed my armature blueprint with 2mm armature wire, then coated it with Pros-Aide, which is a water-based adhesive used for prosthetics. I wrapped quilting thread around the armature to tie the wire together for durability, as opposed to twisting the wire around the armature which would weaken it. I then built the torso and pelvis body blocks with SteelStik epoxy putty.
Not pictured, but I bent the wire loops for the feet forward, then settled #6-32 tee nut fasteners in the loops. I then built epoxy shoes around the fasteners. This was so I can tie the puppets down for animation. I also used athletic foam tape to pad the body.
The Head
Ignore the makeshift body padding, this gets fixed later! I’m going to go through a few head variations (left to right, as pictured) that I made before settling on the final one (keep scrolling to see it!)
First, I made a full, very skinny head completely of Sculpey. No aluminum foil or wood ball in the middle, just straight burnt Sculpey on the outside and raw on the inside. That was a mistake.
For my second attempt, I made an aluminum foil ball, then sculpted clay around it. It was too big, and the nose was too soft for Benni. So onto the next one.
The third head wasn’t round enough in the back, and Benni’s eyes were too close together.
The final pictured head made it pretty far. It was the closest I had gotten, and I finally figured out a method for the eyes. Rather than making a moveable eyeball, I used a bit of musuem wax to slide her pupils around the sclera. But, I still wasn’t satisfied. Her eyes were pretty far up on her head and the skin was very rough. I knew I could do better, but it was time to start on the costume and hair.
The Costume, and Briefly, the Hair
The shirt went by pretty quickly, I used tinyapparelpatterns 12” scale button down pattern for that. The tie is made from a thick, neoprene for the top of the necktie, and a thinner black fabric for the tail. The pants were made from Cindy-Luby’s Chanterelle Barbie pants pattern, linked here. I accidentally had the pants on backwards for these photos, but don’t fret, Benni will realize her pants are on backwards eventually.
The suit jacket sleeves taught me a lot, and humbled me deeply. The amazing pattern, yet again from tinyapparelpatterns, was very helpful. Sleeves have always been tricky for me, and so sewing in Benni’s sleeves at sixth scale was no easy feat.
Lastly, her hair. It’s yarn superglued to her hair, then painted gray in some areas. When I switched heads, I was able to salvage her hair in big pieces and reattach them to her new head.
Benni’s Makeover
Speaking of, our beautiful Benni got a glow up. Her skin is much smoother, and she is looking owlish as ever. I hemmed the sleeves, and gave her these temporary epoxy putty mittens. And would you look at that, her pants are on the right way.
She’s Alive!
This was my final for the Costume in Animation class. As you can see, I remade the suit jacket, but incorrectly altered the pattern so it lays a bit weird. A lot of it is held nicely together with pins. My next steps with Benni are to redo her hands and make her the crisp suit jacket of her dreams. I’ve already added some light in her eyes, but no pictures of that yet.
Detective Benni McKinley’s Puppet
