210311 - The sets pt 1

Today we started on the task of the sets.

Firstly I had to fit the second animation base I built to the table. A quick and simple task involving a drill and a few screws. Now we have two solid bases that won't budge and inch, this one will be used for our indoor/house scene, the other will be out forest scene.

Alex, May and myself began work on the forest floor. This is the rough design of how it's going to be laid out drawn by May, showing the different camera positions we'll be using to get the most from our set.

A high density pink foam is being used on the base to crease a banked/raised area in the forest. The rough shape of the area was simple cut out and taped into position use duck tape and hot melt glue.

Here's a shot, showing a few of the bare trees in position.

With the bare bones of the set now set up, May began work on the forest floor.

For this she mixed up a combination of sawdust, paints, PVA glue and water in a bin liner.

Once mixed and the correct colour and consistency reached it was them simple worked into the animation base.

Here I added a few of our brown leaves and bits of straw to see the effect and how it would look.

2 bags later and May had almost half done the forest floor.

While this was going Alex was working on a second back drop for the forest scene.

I was cutting down the MDF boards to size for our indoor set to create the walls.

By this point we realised that Tom and me made a mistake with the stairs. His measurements were off and the steps were way too big for the character, it was almost a leap just to get up one step.

To correct this, I quickly took the stairs apart and Tom cut each step in half, making them the right size for him to realistically walk up them.

The stairs now have about 14 steps, but they went together quicker than the first time round as all the holes were pre-drilled and it went together very easily.

It might've been extra work, however, at least the stairs are now to the right scale and when seen it should they will look right.

I'm just thankful he doesn't have to walk up them, as they'd have to be made from metal and it would've been a real pig having to cut welds.