Post 13: Another Side Trip, this Time Through Paper Doll History

   One thing tends to lead to another when I start brainstorming, and the playing card research led to another king of paper product that started to be created in the early 19th Century, about the time Cherubini was making landscapes cutting up playing cards.
   Even though I am working on a Light Show, everything here is revolving around paper it seems: the written music itself, going from Cherubini's manuscript to published printed score

the prints from the period that I have collected and gathered to tell the story in images

the documents and manuscripts by Royal hands

 the portraits of French kings and queens:

the playing cards I started designing

 and now the incredible wealth of paper dolls inspired by Marie Antoinette, to this day. There are delightful 19th Century plates:

old advertisement paper dolls

whole books , cutout figures and  sets of clothes still being designed by Artists

 especially the almost three dimensional collection of whimsical scenes by Rhonda Knauf on Etsy:

     These really got me thinking theatre, with the two sided design, the accessories, the spring winding key, the wheels(I love wheels). I then ran across these two jointed paper dolls:

and started brainstorming about a 2D animation sequence with paper sets.

  A while back, I got interested and researched old children toy theaters:

 and some of their contemporary re interpretations:

   I can envision building one of these in 3D in After Effect, cutting the paper dolls into parts, adding wheels, sets based on Versailles, and coming up with a sequence technically similar to the dancing écorché's "Danse Macabre" sequence in my Light Dreams Show:

   Except that the puppets would be Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the Princess of Lamballe, and other "courtisans", and the sets would be the Hall of Mirrors, the Gardens, the Lake, the Trianon, the Farm, any part of Versailles I could rebuild as a 3D stage: