project 02: animal

February 20, 2021

I chose the Island Fox for my animal. They only live on the Channel Islands of California and are pretty small — about 6 inches tall and 19 inches long.

They became endangered in the late 1990s/early 2000s because of a rise in the golden eagle population. Previously, the Channel Islands had been home to bald eagles, which don’t eat foxes. However, as the bald eagle population declined, more golden eagles started living in the Channel Islands and preying on the foxes.

Island foxes are curious by nature and generally not afraid of humans. They will eat basically anything they can find on the island, and have learned to climb trees in order to prey on birds’ nests.

They flatten their ears when being aggressive towards each other, which is the interaction I plan to create using brads.

This is my plan for my model. I have two of these jugs, and the bottleneck is the perfect shape for the snout of the fox.

February 25

I used one jug to make the first iteration of my fox head. The head/snout shape was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be, but the ears were tricky.

For the head, I first cut the bottleneck (part that the cap screws on to) off, then cut off the handle. I ended up slicing and scoring the area above the top of the head to fold it down and create the right shape.

I struggled quite a bit with the ears. They’re actually quite large proportionally, but I wanted to keep one jug untouched for the next version I’ll make. I had a bit of a hard time finding an area of the jug that was the right size and shape. I ended up using the bottom of the jug for one ear, which worked perfectly. Unfortunately, since I didn’t want to cut into my other jug, I had to make the other ear out of scraps left over from creating the head shape. Hopefully I’ll be able to reuse the good ear from this model in addition to an identical one from the other jug in my next model so they match and look correct.

I ended up just taping everything together, but in the final version I plan to use brads.

I bent in the bottom to create the shape of the head/neck more accurately. This also helped make the face wider, which helps increase the similarities to the actual fox’s face shape. I put the bottleneck ring into the mouth of the jug to create the nose. Overall I’m pretty happy with how this turned out. However, I haven’t added eyes, and I’m not sure if I should or not. They don’t stick out of the head like a frog’s would, but it might help with recognizability.

March 2, 2021

After hearing feedback on Gia’s fox, I realized that my fox needed to have a wider head shape and more tapered/curved ears. Sam offered me an olive oil bottle she didn’t plan to use, and I found a laundry detergent spout in the bin of plastics Connor brought in. I used those in addition to the conditioner bottle I finished last night (perfect timing!) to create my new fox model.

The laundry spout fit perfectly on the nose of the olive oil bottle, so I didn’t have to attach those pieces with anything. I cut off the top and bottom of the bottle and connected them with brads to give the head the full dimension it needed. I also cut off one corner of the bottle to give it a head shape closer to that of the fox. The real fox head looks kind of like a pyramid with the point shifted off-center, so cutting off a corner helped me achieve that.

I cut the ears out of my conditioner bottle and attached them with brads to the back of the head, making sure that the slits allowed them to spin. The ears rotate now!

March 6, 2021

The feedback I got from Daphne and Q on Thursday was that I needed to make it a little bit more detailed, and try to get a little closer to the actual form. I changed the angle of the ears so they would point straight up rather than slightly out, which I think helped immensely in coming across as a fox rather than a dog. I also added a nose to the snout, as well as an upper lip. I decided to make the lower jaw separate and used a yogurt bottle to create the chin and lower cheeks. Finally, I added eyes and a neck. I think this version looks much, much more like the island fox than either of my previous iterations.