The soul-destroying moment when you realise your stupid oven has burnt your tree!

Nothing a bit of primer couldn't fix. Merely an aesthetic issue.

Trees! (For Reals this time!)

 Tree #1 using the proper method of sculpey tree making (read: using welding rod as a skeleton).

The first tree was made through the process of creating a rough skeleton out of welding rod, which not only helps the sculpey hold itself up, but enabled me to make a really strong base for the tree to stand up on. To create the main bulk of the tree, I created long thin rectangles of sculpey, which i wrapped round each of the welding rod "bones", and then twisted and curled the soft sculpey to give a bark-ish texture to it. While I liked the main effect of the process, I felt I could work more with the effect i gave the end of the branches, where i wrapped the thin ends of scupley round the wire in a spiral fashion.

 For the second and third trees, I employed the "spiralling" technique of applying the sculpey. While I feel this technique may result in less realistic looking trees, I think it fits within my surrealism theme, as they look like trees, with their distinctive shape, but up close, the texture is slightly off.

When painting the trees, I stuck to the same three colour schemes I used on the bushes; blue/green, orange/red, and green/orange, in order to give a sense of solidarity and theme.

Model Box Woe

J'aime! :)

Je déteste!! >:(

A brief insight into the creation of my model box.

Technical drawing

The Technical Drawing of the theatre was possibly one of the hardest parts of the project at first, but as I got into it, it became a lot easier.
After being given copies of extremely bad plans (I mean EXTREMELY bad, bit's missing, blurred lines ect) I worked out how to find the scale of said drawings from the one measurement we were given. After the scale had been worked out for both the plan, and the view of the proscenium arch, it as a quite simple task of measuring the original drawing, scaling it, and entering the measurements into autocad.
Some parts were a complete pain to try and decipher from the original drawings, but with a bit of time and patience, all was achieved quite successfully!

Once complete, came the task of printing both drawings at full 1:25 scale to make the building of the model box simpler. This was a task in itself. While the drawing took 2 days at most, from start to finish, working out how to print the drawings at 1:25 took the best part of a week, thanks to impossibly difficult software. Eventually however, I worked it out and was rewarded with my lovely plans in full scale.

The production of the "trees"..or not, as it turned out.

 When beginning to sculpt my trees, i began by making the bathtubs. I found a technical drawing of a traditional rolltop bath (thank you bathstore!) and scaled it down roughly to 1:25, building the shell of the bath around a moulded ball of tin foil (genius!) I didn't craft them as well as maybe would have been expected, partly because damn, sculpey isn't as easy to work with as you may think! and secondly because I didn't want them to be perfect. They're baths with trees growing out of them, so I made the assumption, based on my own designs, that the baths would be extremely worn and dirty, possibly falling apart, therefore it seemed pointless to craft them as perfect little ceramic tubs.

When I started to craft the tree sections, I stumbled upon a problem of sorts. I had no support system, and the sculpey really doesn't hold it's weight very well when it is soft. This led to the "in the moment" design decision to make the bathtubs contain smaller, more bush like formations that could sit alongside taller, more graceful trees, in order to give a little more variety to the stage.

I made 3 of these bathtub bushes, of varying design and height, and painted them in 3 seperate colour schemes: oranges and reds, blues and greens, and a combination of greens and oranges.

Working with foamboard

Andy gave a workshop on creating 1:25 textures in foamboard. Or rather, the snazzy expensive foamboard, the name of which escapes me. As made obvious by the photo, the task was to create a section of brick wall with a plaster coating. We peeled the top layer of paper from the foam in a haphazard manner, trying to resemble chipped and crumbled plaster. Once this was complete I scored a accurately scaled brick pattern into the foam, and picked out random bricks. I them applied fine surface filler to the remaining paper cover, making sure not to get any on the brick pattern.

Once the plaster was dry, I mixed up a brickish colour using acrylic paints, and lightly coated the bricks, trying not to get any into the scored cracks that represented the mortar. I then used a green colour for the main body of plaster, leaving the edges, and small patches white to recreate the chipped away sections.

I'm very proud!

Set Design ideas.

Whilst contemplating ideas for my set, and thinking endlessly about roll top baths, I came up with the concept of having a central focal point of a much larger bathtub in the centre of the stage. A main plot point in the beginning of Iron Hans is the discovery of the title character in a large lake in the middle of the forest. As this is the scene I am focussing on for my set, I needed to have the lake in there somewhere. Not easy on a theatre stage, let me tell you that. So I investigated the idea of replacing the lake with a large scale bath, greatly adding to my surreal element, and honestly? I think it's fun!

I've been toying with ideas for backdrops, i.e whether to have one. While it would give the opportunity to bring the back of the stage forward and leave less space (claustrophobic), part of me wants to see what it would be like with no backdrop and no floor decoration, just the trees, the central bathtub, and some low key blue or green lighting. Green would give the traditional "scary" feel to the scene, and the position of the lights could be used to cast shadows from the trees, increasing to the fear.

I think the set will end up being essentially quite basic, with a lot of the atmosphere being created through lighting effects.

Baths...trees??

Using my original drawing of the tree in the bath, I've started to think about how to create a sense of a foresty environment with this strange design. Because of the bath, I decided that I would only be able to have a limited number of trees on stage, as to not crowd the area. I want it to feel a little claustrophobic in the forest, but not crowded. I scanned my original drawing into Photoshop and played with the brightness and contrast to create the strange mix of colours I discovered when looking at Dali's works. When making trees for the set, I like this colour scheme of orangey red bark, with greenish blue foliage. I'll remember this for later.

 After endlessly googling, and then flicking through a good number of books on the subject, I decided to take Surrealism into my own hands, and start thinking about my design.
During my research, I stumbled across an image of a bathtub on a beach, and it brought back into my mind the idea of the juxtaposition. I liked the idea of having something very odd, and completely out of the ordinary in my design. Something to confuse people, but without any kind of explanation behind it.
Because I am clearly as unoriginal as it comes, I got my mind stuck on the concept of the bathtub. I had the idea of combining the trees, and the bathtub, somewhat replacing the roots of the tree with said bath.
I came up with this loose idea of the swirly, curly trees, coming out of a traditional rolltop bath.

What could be more surreal?

Surrealism Mood Board

Investigating Surrealism

After the suggestion from Chris that we could use somewhat unconventional interpretations of a genre, such as art movements, I started looking into surrealism. I like the idea of the juxtaposition of objects, a theme that runs through many surreal works.

 I started by looking at some of Dali's work, arguably the weirdest/surreal of all surreal artists.
I particularly like Dali's use of colour in his paintings; the colours are vivid and vibrant, without being too bright, if that is at all possible.
If I were to create a Surrealist based design for Iron Hans, I think it would be interesting to switch up the colours a little, to try and make the atmosphere on stage as strange as possible without being too obvious.

Looking at the painting above, I like the appearance of the slightly curly trees. As Iron Has is based heavily in a forest setting, ideas on how to create surreal trees are always appreciated, and this gives me a good basis to start working from.

I also took the liberty of sticking "Surrealism" into google images, and scanning for what looked interesting, or images that fit the themes I'm looking to create (anything with trees), or anything that generally caught my eye. The image with the tree definitely caught my eye, the creepy, witch finger effect. I'm going to look a little more into anything under the surreal theme, for more inspiration for my design.