So my second piece of coursework of my 3rd and final year is finally done and dusted, to say I'm relived is an understatement. I loved working on this project, the building side that is not the write up and flatwork though. I wanted to share with you my final set builds and little character models, though I shan’t bore you with too many details. Here are my final design ideas and a bit further down I'll give you a butchers at my final, finished pieces.
If you recall, though if you don't you can always check my previous post, my brief was to build two completely different sets and a character, posed in different ways, to fit within each set. My idea slightly changed whilst building, though not too much. Instead of my little boy character, that's Rhys to you and me, being fixated with the Shakespeare story of A Midsummer Nights Dream and being within the magical forest I chose to go a different way. Not to be to depressing I decided to have him still in the bedroom reading a book about forests and then to have him in a forest for the other set but I changed the way they were linked slightly. So, Rhys' back story is that he lost his mother and is now living with his grandparents, in his bedroom he has a photograph of himself and his mam in a forest and he loves the thought of being back in that forest as it's where he shared his happiest memories of her.
I'll start with my sets, showing you a few of the steps I took whilst constructing them and then my character models.
Bedroom Set:
Here is the bedroom set in a sort of step by step way. I've only included the key parts of the room, such as the door, bed, window, etc. there are other pieces of furniture but you'll just have to wait to see them.
I made the basic structure of the set from large sheets of relatively thick card, I would have preferred to use wood but I couldn't find any that was large yet thin enough. I then decorated the walls with a cute fox and tree wallpaper, that ties the two sets together nicely yet subtly.
I made both the window and door from pieces of balsa wood that I tried to cut and construct in a way to make them appear more realistic. I even added small sheets of clear plastic to the window to replicate glass.
The bed frame is also made of balsa wood and I even made miniature mortis and tennon joints on it to fix it together. The rest of the bed is made from sponge, for the mattress and pillow, and some fabric for the sheets and pillowcase.
For the floor I constructed it out of hundreds of lolly sticks that I cut to shape and glued into place. It gives a really nice laminate floor effect.
The rest of the bedroom was made in relatively similar ways to these.
Forest Set:
The basic shape of my forest set is a card base and a similar size canvas for the background. The trees are made from kitchen roll tubes that I've then bent into shape and then coated with newspaper and covered in tissue and watered down PVA glue. I can't tell you how much I felt like Neil Buchanan during this part of the build - amazing stuff. Once the trees were dry I stuck on some twigs to act as branches on the trees.
I then painted the trees and glued hundreds of flowers to them and painted the ground before covering it in fake dirt and grass. The canvas was then painted and holes cut into it, in the shape of stars and the moon, for the light to shine through.
Character Models:
I had to sculpt two models of the same character, and to make sure they turned out relatively similar looking I made them side by side. I started off with a wire skeleton that I could then pose and sculpt over. To sculpt them I used a mixture of Fimo air drying clay and Plasticine, for parts such as the head and hat I used tin foil as a base so they wouldn't become too heavy or even take too long to dry.
The Final Products!!
I'm sorry for the picture quality, I'm not the best at photography but I hope you liked nether the less!
