My Papier-Mache Entry to the Animal Crossing Contest

So this post really has nothing to do with a party per se, but I wanted to share with you the steps I took to try to win this contest because I utilized papier-mache in the entry. This happens to be the same material I use to make party pinatas. Ok, so you may or may not have heard, that Animal Crossing just came out for the Nintendo Wii console. My kids and I have enjoyed playing this game in the past on the Nintendo DS, so naturally they were looking forward to the game release for the Wii. As a sort of kick off, Nintendo of America was running an Animal Crossing costume contest. The criteria was to dress your pet in costume to look as one of the characters from the game. The result could be physically implemented, or graphically, we decided to take it one step further! My kids wanted to participate in the contest picture as well, so I whipped up a couple papier-mache heads for them to wear as a costume head piece. I took pictures to show how the steps are really the same as making a papier-mache pinata. Except to turn it into something wearable, I cut a large hole in the bottom. Papier-mache is really a great forgiving medium to work with, and I have been able to achieve a variety of shapes by experimenting with different characters and their shapes. This Contest is just another fun way for me to experiment using papier-mache.

I started with balloons (2 punch balloons, and 2 15” balloons) then covered those with papier-mache mixture (see post: Creating an authentic pinata - for mixture). I sliced the two 15” balloon to make the girl characters hair. Rather than covering both papier-mache heads in tissue paper to make up the color, I instead painted them using Tempera paints.

I cut a hole at the bottom of both papier-mache heads so that they could be worn. Once all the pieces of the character heads were assembled together, papier-mache was used to adhere all the seams together just like I would when I am creating a pinata.

There was an air hole at the tops of each of the heads so that breathing was not a problem. The final outcome of the costume heads was very realistic.

Besides the character heads that were made for the contest, we made a blue outfit for our dog to wear. It was decided that she would dress up as Joan the Turnip lady/Warthog. So we made her a blue outfit out of felt, tied a blue bonnet around her head, and slung a basket (also made from papier-mache) around her neck filled with white turnips. A brown material strap was hot glued to the basket, so that our doggy could wear it as a sling style basket.

I decided to make the turnips as easy as possible; they were simply made from white and red balloons. I used permanent marker to draw in some circular lines, just to add some turnip aesthetics. Green tissue paper leaves were cut out and taped on to the tops of the turnips. I wasn’t too worried about durability of the props; they just need to hold up for pictures.

The fishing rod was made from the inner cardboard tube of a "wrapping paper" roll, some mason string and a small yellow balloon. I used a red permanent marker to color half of the balloon to look like the bobbin. Brown tempera paint was used to paint some strips onto the fishing rod poll. For our contest entry picture, the background was graphically implemented and each character was individually placed into the background. The Warthog nose, tusks and eyes were also graphically placed on my dog. You can see to the left is an image of Joan the turnip warthog from the game for comparison. In our picture we had the pink haired girl character buying a red turip on Sunday morning from Joan the warthog.

Although we were not one of the winners of the contest, we still had a lot of fun participating. My kids love dressing up as characters from Animal Crossing, and my dog, Well...she was happy to eat all the extra treats (just for sitting and staying for a few pictures). Good doggy!

This is just a short clip of my kids acting like Animal Crossing characters, and having fun with the papier-mache costume heads. I added in some animal crossing music to add to look and feel. Take a look, I got a giggle from looking at these two characters sitting around just being cute.

Comments

[Natalie]

Hi,
First time here but GREAT blog! Your work is awesome..I'l be back:)

[Shadowlites]

Hi. Fantastic artwork you have there i would say. Great effort! However, just out of curiousity, can the eyes be see through? o.O

[Carie ~ Cool Party Blogger]

Not for these, no. Since the pictures were just of the kids sitting still we didn't have the eyes see through. However we have talked about adjusting them to be Halloween costumes. So I would need to make the eyes see through. If I do, I will be sure to post how they turn out. Thanks for the comment. :o)