Poly filler everywhere!

Now that some of the walls for the sets were cut out, we thought it would be a good idea to put poly filler on the sections that were cut so that they could dry whilst the others were being cut. The poly filler gives the walls a bit of texture and prevents the grain of the wood peeking through. I had a few difficulties cutting out the windows and walls out of the special polystyrene-centered boards because the polystyrene itself kept going against the blade and snagged along the edges. But this wasn't a problem, because poly filler hides any damage or imperfections, even ones that my clumsy hands inflicted! (thank goodness!) So I have spent the last few days in overalls covering all the cut sections of wood with this magical stuff, which is satisfyingly messy work! Once they are dry, they can be sanded down and then have another layer of poly filler applied for added texture and support. Here are some piccies of the drying walls (and evidence of the mess I inflicted on the poor downstairs studio... I hoovered up I promise)

Set Construction!!

Now that we had the plans and dimensions of all the sets, we could get cracking on the construction side of things, which we had all been looking forward to!
Using the initial plans and also George's 3D models, I drew the dimensions of the walls for each set onto either plywood or on a special light board we found that has a section of polystyrene down the centre (have't got a clue what it is called!)This board seemed to be a good option for the exterior walls of the pasty shop because it is really light yet pretty sturdy. Once I had drawn up the different sections for each set, we put on our overalls, whipped out the tools and all had a go at cutting out the outlined sections which was pretty good fun! We have a really good team and we all work well together by bouncing ideas off each other, so the sets should be done in no time. Here are some piccies of our progress...

Pasty Child Seagull Armature Plans

Sash asked me to have a think about how we could make the seagull puppets in Pasty Child, so I did a few doodles,painted them on Photoshop and then added a pasty in the background for good measure! I think we have now decided to scrap the idea of making actual seagull puppets with armatures because the wings are a pain in the bum to figure out, so I think we are going to stick with replacement seagull models to avoid any wing conundrums! Here are my initial seagull puppet designs:

Pasty Child Set Designs/Plans

Oops forgot to put these up earlier!! To give us an idea of the size and scale for the sets, Sash figured out some rough dimensions for the interior and exterior walls of the pasty shop and also the dungeon bedroom, and I drew them into birds eye view plans for George to take away and make accurate 3D models of the sets. These 3D models turned out to be really handy because from them I could get all the dimensions and measurements for each set; so I drew a few rough sketches of sections from the model sets, complete with the accurate dimensions for each wall and corner...

Pasty Child Mock Up Sets

Before we can start properly building the plywood sets needed for filming Sasha's stop-motion concept Pasty Child, we thought it would be a good idea to build some cardboard mock-up sets before we got stuck into the official set production, to figure out what bits worked and what bits didn't. So me and Sash grabbed a HUGE pile of cardboard, got settled in our living room and got cracking. After a heavily gaffa-taped few days we managed to construct the pasty shop interior and exterior (we plan to have these two sets to fit together like a jigsaw to avoid building the same shape twice) and also the pasty child's dungeon bedroom. It was reallhy helpful putting together the mock-up sets because we could figure out how the scale was going to work out with the props and puppets, and we could tackle any problems with sizing there and then. The exterior set, when put together with the interior, turned out to be pretty bulky which made it diffult to transport to uni. So we will have to make the real wooden sets while we are in uni to save having to fit it in Sasha's car. Here are piccies of us constructing the mock ups...

Eighteen Ninety Character Colour Test

Here's one of the characters I drew for Eighteen Ninety with a cheeky bit of colour added. I took the colours from the original colour palette I put together last week, just as a small test to see if they worked with the design. I think some of the colours are a bit too garish and stand out too much, but some work really nicely together. Here is the coloured-in version :)

Eighteen Ninety Character Designs

Now that the rough colour palettes were done, I had an idea of what the character plans could look like. So I got cracking on some character designs that would fit to the style that Insa was after. I used the artists Erone and Amose as inspiration because their illustrations are really unique and have a lovely flow to them. My first few attempts were appalling and didn't fit to the style that Insa was interested in. But, after lots of rubbing things out and doodling with fine liner, I managed to come up with these two designs: