Today’s prompt was interesting, as it called for a 240-character story to go along with a drawing of Pinocchio. I quickly started imagining a mask, lies, and something about social distancing. The tension between a growing nose and the matter of distance struck me as worth working on. Initially, I thought about the nose as a yardstick for measuring social distance: If we all had Pinocchio’s nose, it would be easier to know we’re staying six feet apart.
I wanted to treat the challenge as a meme or GIF, so I headed to Google to look for images and possible clips I might trim for a GIF. I settled on a scene from Benigni’s Pinocchio, which I liked because it was not animated. Then I decided he needed a mask out on the end of his nose – or a mask on his face, with a hole through which his nose protruded – or a very elongated mask, with his nose stretching it near the breaking point. In the end, a dangling mask seemed to be the funniest (and, frankly, the easiest).
As I worked on the GIF in Photoshop, my mind worked on the text to accompany it – and the story I’d need to tell in the Tweet.
Puppet or Boy? Coronacchio was a wooden toy, immune from COVID. After a fairy made him real, Dad said, "Be safe in the pandemic." Unable to tell truth from lie, he repeated what he heard on TV & the Internet. #tdc3058 @ds106dc #ds106 @eng304cripps pic.twitter.com/nEwy7Clhrh
— Michael J. Cripps (@michaeljcripps) May 27, 2020
The mask itself is available from DarkShirts on Etsy. I did a significant bit of twisting/tweaking to dangle it at the end of Coronacchio’s nose. I thought I’d need a bit more “bounce” in it before I ran the GIF on export, but the animation isn’t so extreme that the mask needs to flutter or swing to work.
DS106DC