Dark Descent: Dog Shots

Grethe gave me a few shots of the dog to block colour, which were really nice to do because it was something a bit different and you had to think about where the markings of the dog's fur would be. Tom put together a really helpful sheet on how to paint the fur markings, so following its guidelines I managed to complete the block colours for these two shots. The 1st one was nice and easy because I literally had to colour in one frame and hold it throughout the shot; the second one below was a bit trickier, but still good fun to do:

Shelves and Herb Pots

The pasty shop set walls were looking a tad bit bare inside, so I thought it would look at bit more homely to have a few shelves up so that we could put some bakery bits and bobs on them. To make up the main structure of the shelves, I sawed two long rectangular pieces of wood and also cut 4 small triangles to make up the wooden support under the shelves.

Once these pieces were cut, I glued them together with strong wood glue supported by gaffa tape, and left them over night to set. Once the wood glue had dried and the shelf structures were sturdy I painted them with a few coats of wood varnish, and also dry-brushed some brown umber paint here and there to make the shelves look a bit older and worn. Here are the finished results:

To go on the shelves, Andy found some tiny battery parts that looked a bit like small jars and he said they would look nice as little herb pots. So I painted them with a base coat of black acrylic, and them painted the 'tops' of the jars an assortment of colours. Whilst they were drying, I made some tiny labels by cutting out cartridge paper and painting a ochre wash over them to look a bit older. Once the wash was dry, I added a different herb name onto each label with black fine-liner and then stuck them straight onto the little dried pots with pritt stick. Here are some pictures of my progression, and also the finished results on the shelves I made earlier:

Trays and Shop Bell

We had some spare milliput lying around and we needed a few more baking trays for the pasty shop interior. So I mixed the two parts of milliput and quickly sculpted some trays on some baking paper to stop them sticking (once milliput sets it is rock hard and welds to any surface!) Once these were dry, I coated them with a layer of poly-filler to help the base coat of paint stick later on.

Whilst the milliput trays were drying, I remembered that we needed an old-fashioned door bell for the pasty shop set, to be glued next to the front door and add the sound effects in post as the puppets walk in and out of the shop. To make the bell, I looked up a picture of one on the internet, and sculpted the different sections that make up a bell out of black fimo clay, and baked these in the oven for about ten minutes. Once the fimo had set, I let it cool down and then glued the sections together with araldite glue.

Once the glue had set, I coated the fimo bell with a layer of poly-filler which dried really quickly because I only gave it a thin coat. I then sanded down both the baking trays and the bell with a small nail file (good for getting into small places!) and then painted them all with a base coat of black acrylic paint.
The bell looked a bit too 'perfect' with just the black undercoat, so I added a rusty metallic effect with both acrylic paint and also metal emulsion. I forgot to take a picture of the finished bell, so I'll put one up soon :)

Dark Descent: Old Man Shaking Shot

This shot took waaay longer than I expected because the old man only moves a tiny amount in each frame to create a 'shaking' effect so it became a bit fiddly after a while. I completely forgot that Tom said the colour could be repeated after frame 20 because the animation is looped, and I only remembered half way through. But Grethe showed me a way to copy frames and place them wherever they are repeated which saved me some time :) Here's the finished block-coloured shot:

Dark Descent: Trickier Shots!

These next few shots were a bit trickier to colour because they had quite a bit of movement going on. The shot where the old man is running out onto the boat deck and staggering about had a change in movement very other frame so I couldn't repeat coloured frames more than once, therefore these took me longer to complete than the last few shots. However they were good fun to do because the constant movement kept me on my toes, here are the two shots with blocked colour:

Dark Descent: Another Shot

This shot was nice to colour because there is minimal movement on the body  so the colours for the body and clothes could be held throughout the animation. It was only really the head and hair/beard that moved in this one so I managed to get it done pretty quickly:

Dark Descent Colouring: Quick Facial Shots

These videos show the next few shots that I block-coloured, they were nice and simple to do because I literally had to shade in the skin on the first frame, and then hold that colour for the whole shot... easy peasy!