Set Building

concept sketch

After an initial concept design, I had some sort of idea of how I wanted a portion of my set to look. With this image in hand, I set about coming up with the integral tree which has a hollow in it's base that a small child may hide in if they did so wish.

tree in progress

I had collected a small mountain of recycling by this time: cardboard and other things which I thought may be useful. Especially, so, when the whole project is coming (as always) entirely out of my own pocket. What I did buy for this (so far) is around 160m of garden wire, kitchen roll, and PVA glue.

Taking up the entire kitchen table, I'm sure it annoyed my housemates as well as amused them at what I was doing when I set up camp. They all could recall the days when the used PVA and kitchen roll for school projects. 

It's front heavy so I had the PVA put in the back to help it stand.

It looks really weird.

While making the tree, I was also busy making other things. A prototype figure, sewing together the ground and such to name a few. I thought to purchase a hand held sewing machine, however it needed four hands to operate it. As such, it ended up being completed entirely by hand.

Checking what will be seen from a ground level shot...

Deciding which piece of fabric will go where...

Finally, these two things were done, and I could do some mood lighting experimentation to see how it was all looking. Thankfully it all pieced together quite well.

The river has been wound on too...

I think this one was with two lights, a daytime shot so there was a lot of light pollution.  It looks alright though.

With these done, I then had to make sure I had the rest of the set was done also.

The seat of the chairs.

Rosie's bedroom...

The kitchen...

The two drying...

The back of Rosie's bedroom (the cereal box) and the base for her mattress (the green thing)

 Meanwhile, upstairs other things were in the works, too...

The seats without backs around the freshly painted table...

Lining up the seat backs...

Half the seats done...

Now just to add paint...

The letter and envelope. Written in font size two.

You can actually read it. Hopefully it will help explain the story without loads of dialogue.

Hand painted plates.

There were a few other things which I have not photographed made, such as the mushroom and the other trees. But you will get to see them, in the photographed animatic or in the finished piece.