For my final major project at university, I will be redesigning the original animated studio Ghibli character Ponyo, from the film “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea”. The redesign will feature Ponyo as an untooned realistic character, meaning that I will bring Ponyo into our reality with realistic skin, eyes and hair etc, but keeping with the same proportions as shown in the animation. To create Ponyo as realistic as possible I will be sculpting in monster clay which is great to add intricate detail, and casting her from silicone, adding hair and skin colour pigments using specialist techniques that are used in the industry.
My sculpture will be 1:2 scale of an average 5-year-old Japanese girl, as the story of the little girl Ponyo is originally set in Tomonoura, a small town in japan. Being this large in size I will ensure that the internal structure is sturdy and as long lasting as traditional museum models, which are made to last years; this is the benchmark I must meet.
The function of this model is to be able to share a different outlook on the animated character Ponyo in the form of an exhibition piece in a museum, like the Ghibli Museum. My Ponyo sculpture will be used as promotional material for the film Ponyo in order to promote the heritage of Studio Ghibli’s animations. The audience that I will be directing my model towards will be all Studio Ghibli animation enthusiasts as well as the animation industry as a whole, especially fans of Ponyo.
I have chosen the character Ponyo as I really enjoyed the story of Ponyo and am also a major fan of all of Miyazaki’s other work. Ponyo grabbed my attention especially due to the amount of magic, curious creatures and colour incorporated in the films animation and I was really interested to imagine what she would look like as a real life half human and wanted to bring that into reality. I also knew that by creating my proposed idea that I will be able to develop my already growing skills of designing and sculpting, as well as learning new specialist techniques such as fiberglass moulding, Hair punching and silicone painting and touch-ups.
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