Mira

For Animals<>People we were asked to create a piece looking at a specific animal as an object. Here’s the project brief:

4. Animal Object
Due date: Mar 3
Format: pdf or other form (paper, film, web site) AND character model sheet (pdf)

This assignment is a combination of research, character development and implmentation of a documentary form.
You are going to make a piece about an animal as an object, depicted in the 3rd person.
The assignment is a combination of research and storytelling, with the goal of making a portrait.

You will:
a. Research a real animal
b. Do character studies (a character model sheet) and write backstory
c. create a storyboard or a short piece about the character

some sample subjects:
the real story of Bessie the Cow or Le Vache Qui Ris; a piece about Coco the gorilla; whatever happened to Willard (the rat)?

I chose to research and portray Mira, one of the first clones of a pet dog. As I was reading about Mira, I realized that almost all of the information about her was actually about Missy (the dog she was cloned from) or the cloning process. Any information about Mira was tied to comparisons to Missy or other cloned animals. There was almost no information describing Mira as an individual dog. So, I tried to convey that in the piece. I fell quite short of my goal. I think this is mostly due to getting so submerged in my own viewpoint and knowledge of the subject that I forgot to look at it with fresh eyes. Each part of the image was so packed woth meaning for me, that I couldn’t see it without assuming that knowledge.

Marina had some good suggestions for me, mostly based on trying to push the image more toward an infographic. The image reads in a circular way right now, so it’s hard to decipher the narrative, and the anonymous dogs don’t read as the multitude of dogs I’d like them to stand in for. I want the cloning process to be highlighted in the story, but right now it’s the centerpiece. My favorite thing about the piece is the handdrawn watercolor applied to the clone template (despite the crummy paper quality). I particularly like the detail on Mira, but my classmates had a good suggestion: since I’m trying to convey the lack of information about Mira, it makes sense for her to be the blank dog, while the rest of the image is meticulously detailed.