Film Stills

The Shooting Set Up

Aquatic Elements Begin

This week marks the start of my work on all the underwater elements of the film. On deck is a kelp forest. 

Animated Paper

A few paper elements will be animated. Each petal has a wire armature running up the back. This particular flower was inspired by the ones I used to find when I was studying abroad in West Ireland. 

Puppet Making

Costuming for Underwater

Still a ways to go on costuming this marionette, but she's headed in the right direction.

Scenics and Puppet Progress

Style shift!! I'll be making the environments more painterly and planar, and less sculptural from here on out. This change is both aesthetically driven and time saving, so it’s a win-win. Huzzah! 

It’s all in the details

Jellyfish progress. The body collapses and should allow for a little bit of squash and stretch once in the tank. 

Two down, one to go. I'm changing the goddess puppet from last semester. The marionette will be more pose-able and have white costuming instead of red. 

Oxberry Testing

I would really like to use motion control on some of my shots,  but do not have access to a traditional system. So, I'm modifying our school's Oxberry system to capture my "underwater" sets. 

Shooting tests. So far so good! It took me a few tries (and hours) go get a basic understanding of how to run the Oxberry, but I think I'll be worth it in the end. This way I can do multiple lighting/effects passes for my environments. 

Upholstery

Next, I refined the foam by hand and applied primer. From there, I upholstered the pre-dyed fabric. To do this, I soaked the fabric in a 1:1 mixture of white craft glue and water. I pulled the fabric tightly around the set and used pins and staples to hold the fabric in place while it dried (over several days).

Hundreds of Pins Later... 

I also started sculpting additional forms out of Sculpy to dress the set with once it dried. 

Future Tube Sponge

I sculpted over the heads of pins to make a bunch of quick additions.

Foam Sculpting

First off, sculpting foam with a hot wire produces very dangerous fumes and should be done using extreme caution. 

In a well ventilated (and sadly very cold) area, I roughed in the shapes of the coral reef.