Making the sets

We have started work on the stage, street and hill sets for our stop motion short film. While I am enjoying the work, I am really anxious to get the sets do asap. We have been working for two weeks now and we have only gotten part of the way through making the stage set. With two/ three more to sets to go and characters to make, I am starting to feel the pinch already.

This time constraint is made a bit worse by the fact Liam lives out of town. Although he has said he will be there during the break week. I would like to be finished with the set and character by the end of that week with time during that week to work on 2D and comic. As such I am probably going to try to spend extra time in the Tin shed to get some more progress done. Whether this be after class or during the weekend is yet to be seen.

For the street scene we are planning to use cardboard to create the buildings as it as a lightweight material that we have a lot of. Making the buildings out of wood would be impractical. Liam is going to create the buildings at home and bring them.

For the last two weeks, Liam and I have been working only on the stage scene. This is because the material for the characters still has not arrived and the stage is one of two complex scenes to construct, the other being the street scene. Liam has been working on the audience and seating while I have been building the stage its self. The once aspect of the stage we still haven't figured out is how we are going to get the curtains to move when the show has ended. Liam wants to the something similar to a real stage or a shower curtain but I feel like that might be a bit too much work for something that should be simple and insignificant. I lucked out with making the stage as I was able to find several pieces that suited my purposes and required little to no cutting.

The hill is going to be made of polystyrene shavings/ cutoffs, papermasha and foam. Liam is talking about making the hill hollow, but I'm not sure that it be stable if it were hollow.

I have done a number of t pose drawings, one for each character. These drawings are simply to allow Liam and I to work on the sets while the puppet material is still in the mail and to give us a rough idea of what the final characters will look like. The drawings are around the size I would like the characters to be, 20 cm tall, give or take.

Claire: The Magician's Assistant

The Police men

Dr Lache

Character construction research

http://www.stopmotionworks.com/articles/artofSMchpt7.pdf

- Credited as: Head of puppetery  = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kll7aLqgDpE

- Academy Originals - YouTube channel = https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzuwS1ll2HuQ1wV-tqf43KQ