Coppelia is the result of a school project. I took a course on the History of Animation, and one of the projects we had to do was to create an animation of our own. I thought, and I thought, and I thought, and I came up with lots of ideas, but always had issues trying to bring them to life. Eventually I decided that if I were going to collect articulated dolls, there was no better opportunity than now to put them to justifiable use. And so, Coppelia eventually emerged.

I was inspired in part by the Muses in Girl Genius , and my desire to do a Steampunk doll. I refrained from gluing random gears on her. If I'm going to have gears, they're going to be FUNCTIONAL. Some of her decorations do hint at gears, though.

Coppelia is a 1/6 scale (Barbie sized) Obitsu doll, imported from Japan. She has over/around 20 points of articulation, making her very posable. She even has interchangeable hands in different positions, and her head is sold separately, so I can customize her looks.

While you can get prewigged heads, I had blank ones, and so did my own wigging following my one inch scale method, which is mainly lots of tacky glue. I used thread to 'sew' in the beads and fascinator on her head. Strangely, not all of them show up in the photos!

Once the doll was finished, I had to figure out choreography and photography, and how to make a short stop-motion animated video that needed no explanation. The explanation was given at the beginning of the video, in a simple, vintage style advertising poster.