Applied Animation-Building the Sets & Difficulties- Week 11

Building the Sets & Difficulties- 

Week 11

When doing the first scene, I was having difficulties trying to figure out how to do it or build it. I needed to design the chicken wire, so it went up from the sides and back, and spreads up and out, this will give the look of depth, height and space as it was a worry of the characters being too big. For this, I needed to find a way to keep the chicken wire attached so it was strong enough to hold, while drying, as well as when I attach leaves to it. For this I firstly grabbed my hot glue gun, wire and pliers.

This was the only way I could think of attaching the wire, by gluing the section needed, doubling the wire back over itself, pulling it tight, and holding it in place from the opposite side, like the image below shows, with the flat section on the right being glued down. Another issue I had while doing this, was that the hot glue gun just came off of the wire and could be easily pulled from the base, this would mean it wouldn't be anywhere near strong enough to hold everything in place. This is why I turned to old faithful, UHU glue, this takes longer to dry so it was good that I had tied the wire down or it would spring back away like it has been doing when I tried to construct it. I then held down this section of glued wire, with a very heavy item so I could be sure it connected and the glue wasn't just on the base, going through the chicken wire holes.

These images below are from when I started to construct the smaller trees needed for set 2. I needed 3 small trees and one large tree as this can let me add depth within the board set, as well as giving the illusion of a full rainforest with different trees.

I constructed these trees using foil, paper, hot glue gun glue and UHU glue. This is similar to how I constructed the trees when doing character and narrative, but for that project, I only did one tree, whereas now I have 4 to do so this was a bigger undertaking. This is the first tree, I wanted them to all look different becuase of trees in the rainforest all being completely different so this was something I was keeping in mind when constructing them together.

This is the finished tree, after doing the construction of them all, I will be doing over the foil with paper mache, this is becuase foil is very difficult to cover as it doesn't take paint well, this is what the paper mache is for, but it will also harder the trees so they cant be bent or break when transporting to university when going to film.

After doing two of the smaller trees, I wanted to look at the scale I needed to create, this is why I started on the larger tree. I simply started by balling paper and stacking it on top on the next and gluing them with hot glue gun glue so it will dry quickly. This let me quickly add height without having to worry about it being messy as this was the foundation to the tree that I can change as I go. Here you can see the height difference becuase in the song we are producing it says the tree stands taller than all the rest, so this will draw the eye to the tree our orangutan will be in.

By doing the trees this way, I can make sure the project stays cheap and affordable to us as we are students, so this was a big concern with stop-motion as the costs really stack up quickly. This is how I have combat this, and will use better materials in the 3rd year, probably for the final animation we have to produce.

Here I have also added shapes to the base by adding in materials, this gives root to the tree and brings it to life more, as well as making it more stable. I was looking into the research I did at the start of this module at what the trees looked like for this section so I could try to build something that looks more like a rainforest tree than a forest tree which is difficult to do in the time scale that we have.