Sculpting

There are several things we did this fall in school, and one of them was sculpting. We each choose a celebrity to sculpt. This was quite new to me, though I have some sculpting experience on a small scale for things like warhammer and other miniature war games, I have never sculpted anything in this scale (around 75% of the original was the goal). I also have struggled with copying things/people when I draw. Thankfully we had a great guest teacher, Fia Reisek from a prop making company (http://www.fixas.se/) to help us out.

As I have known for a long time, I have had a long time to think about who to sculpt. Though I actually made a decision quite early, Sir Patrick Stewart. Maybe today mostly famous for his role as Professor Xavier in the x-men movies or as captain Jean-Luc Picard in the TV show Star Trek: the next generation as well as his voice acting as Avery Bullock in the show American Dad. The list could go on and on, but if you want more information about the man i recommend googling it as this is more about my school project then anything else.

The following are some pictures of the process. The idea is to later make a silicone cast of this to make the final a casting in plaster.

The humble beginnings. Making some marks to block out the basics. 

More blocking and getting the nose on. It is important to not start
on details to early and work by making lots of measurements to get
everything right and to scale. 

Side view with lots more details in place and ears are test fitted. 

The same stage as above but another angle. 

The almost finished sculpt. Only a bit of smoothing to be done here. 

Same as above, different angle.

Another angle of the near finished sculpt. 

Covering the finished sculpt in silicone, several layers will be added.
Then there will be a coat of plaster with plaster bandages added to
give the form some rigidity for casting. 

Silicone is done and the whole thing is being made ready to have its
plaster cover. The silicone mold will be in one piece while the plaster
jacket around it will be in two pieces. 

The first cast, before polishing, there where a few places (like one ear)
where some air got caught and it will have to be plastered a bit after.

The (first) finished casting of Sir Patrick Stewart. Picture is from our small exhibition at the campus.

So this was a very exciting and good class to have. I have learned a lot about how you can do something like this. I will absolutely sculpture more things like this, actually have clay and everything ready to go, as soon as I have some time to spend on it.

I uploaded this 15 second clip of the finished sculpture on my youtube channel if you want to see some different angles.

Time flies.

Well this blog has not been updated much. But a lot has happened since the last post. Well first of all summer happened and that ment not a whole lot of school activity happened then, of cause. The end of the semester was the end of the internship and as the TV-show I was working on, Jordskott II, is just airing now there was/is not much I can/could say about that. I will post things related to that as they air though. Now I will get on with making som posts about what has happened after the summer, and that is a lot. My first thought was to make one big post, but for search and indexing reasons I will be making several posts instead.

Once again it has been some time since I made a post, but I have been occupied with the internship through school and not really made time for it. So yes, the news is that the school is technically out for the semester as we are all out in the world to get some experience from real work. The way it works is that we have to find and apply to various places for an internship (though to be honest the school gets a lot of mails about productions, prop makers and so on about internships). Then we spend 7-8 weeks as interns at where ever we end up.

I ended up on a production, so I can't talk about the details, for a Swedish television series called Jordskott, season 2. Since there is one season of the show I guess I can mention something about what happened in that one to give you a feel for what is going on. It is a police drama with some supernatural influences, basing things a lot on old folklore and nature. (Fun fact, the first season was filmed in Sala where I actually live when not in school in Skellefteå, though season 2 is not). But yeah there are some props and sets to make and I am having the time of my life doing so many things that lets me learn things but also put to use some of my skills with computers making some really cool things (details later on).

The second season will be aired in the fall (2017) so after that I might do some back posts about some projects that I took part in. I do how ever have a new video up on my youtube channel with a fake speaker I made that might be used for something (much hush hush about details though) Press "read more" if video is not showing.

Paint and patinate

So this last week was  a real exciting one. We got to try out to build a set, and then have it filmed. There where four different sets to work on in the studio and I opted to be in the one that was to be a kitchen in a cabin, wood stove and all. The four of us that worked on this particular set quickly agreed that making it look abandoned and old would be the best way to do it, it would give us the most things to try out to do. The basic layout was done, we had walls, floor and a wood stove (no that is not a real one in the picture, someone made that before and it got re-used). The plan was to put plaster on one wall, wall paper on the other and work it down from that. We did not have any wall plaster though so we made some, with casting plaster, sand and some PVA glue. 

The room as it was build when we got there, more or less.

One wall plastered and one with a dark spot where the wall paper would be lose. 

The whole plan was to make it look like it has been abandoned for about 80 years or so in the end, this was done with several layers of paints of various kinds applied to almost everything. The wallpaper of cause would have to be painted to look dirty and we also wanted it to have come lose a bit.

Wallpaper is pit up and floor has been painted once. 

Walls are seriously dirty looking by now and derails are added.

Quick picture taken during the shooting of the set.

And that is it. I will post a short cut of the shooting of the set so you can see it in better detail and quality then the picture above, as soon as I get the raw footage and can edit it.

Latex, part 3.

A bit of an update on the latex mask then. Got it all put together now and even took it out of the mold and managed to put on some ears. The ears where made of an thermoplastic called airX (not sure how to spell it actually), the same thing used for the helmet in a previous post. They are then covered in latex, three layers, and set a side to dry. Then I glued them onto the head and covered the edges with some more latex to make sure they stay on.

Cat mask with ears glued on, and a layer or latex that is just put on, to blend in the edge
with the actual mask.

He looks a bit odd, i know, but the fur will change everything. I hope.

Latex, part two

Just a quick update on the latex animal mask. Here the molds are getting covered in latex before putting them together. Then latex will be applied in the part where the line between the molds are to make a complete mask. So in a day or so this should be done and hopefully there will be a mask.

Later this week we will start doing fur on the masks, using various techniques. But that will all come in a separate update. 

Movie time

One other project we just did was a quick n dirty short film. It is not what it might sound like, quick n dirty simply means it is done fast and does not have to have a high quality. We had only two and a half day or so to get this project done.

The setting was the classic story Little red riding hood, but we could make changes to it and not even do it all. Another thing we where told to do was to use puppets of some kind. We spent half a day listening to different methods and techniques we could use. Then we worked in small groups, and my group ended up being only two people while most where three, due to the fact that there are only four set designer in the class and eight prop makers.

Here is one of the two finished movies, we each did one cut and this is not the one we ended up using in the end.

Then we have some obligatory behind the scenes pictures.

Our camera, my Samsum S4 phone on its custom made stand and the actual set,

Here are all the props we made and used for this set, besides that one of the pyramids that went missing.

Latex mask, part 1

The next project in school is latex masks. Requirements where animal head, either as a wearable mask or mounted on a wall like a trophy. I choose the mask options and opted for a cat. First of we sculpted a base onto a bust, do not have one of my head so I had to use an existing one I found. This is simply done by adding to the mask until you get the shape you want and then put plaster on it, to simplify the process. One thing you have to account for is the fact that the fur we will add later on is going to build quite a lot of volume.

Blurry picture of my finished sculpt.

You add plaster to one part first, in this case the cast will be made in two parts but depending on the complexity of the sculpt you might need more parts, and then the other parts.

The bust with sculpt is covered in plaster and left to cure. You can see marks
of play around the line in the middle, that soft clay will removed when you
split the cast and is used to drive wedges into so it is easier to separate the
parts without them breaking apart.

One thing to note here is that you should not be sentimental about your sculpt as it is not likely to survive the process of splitting the cast, though mine mostly did. Still removed all the clay from the bust in the end though.

Front part removed after the plaster had cured.

And that is it, so far. Cast is going to dry completely and then it is on to latex and fur, more on that in a later post.

Old school helmets..

Another thing we did during the fall was making a helmet, based on a historical type. So something preserved or from an archaeological dig. The main purpose here was to try out a material called
Air-X, that is basically a plastic material you can shape and reshape by heating it up. The helmet I choose as a base idea was from Slovenia, from around the 15th century. It had been found in recent years and was very worn and rusty, so I thought Id get a chance to play with some textures as well.

My Air-X helmet. 

Language change and more

Big news, well first of all I am changing the blog to English as Swedish is a bit limiting, second of all I am more or less caught up with things and so I plan om making weekly updates now, I do realize it has been, lets call it sporadic.

So moving on, and showing of some of the things that have gotten done in school during the later half of the fall up to Christmas.

There have been a bit of technical drawing, not much fun if you ask me. Fun to post anyway, it is kind of fun to do. Maybe if I find one that looks cool I will post that to.

The big thing before Christmas was a thing called "the Christmas card", basically we made a short film with Santa coming into his house/workshop and then rushes of in a sleigh. We would build everything from scratch, the whole set and all the toys etc. We also built a sleigh. I was responsible for making one of the toys, a doll made from wood.

Doll made from wood and painted with acrylic paints.

The sleigh, how ever, was made as a collaboration. Everyone in the group, there where six of us, made a drawing of a sleigh. Then we shifted them around and you got to make a technical drawing of a sleigh you had not designed. After that we changed projects again for the building of a scale model from a technical drawing made by someone else. My design was not the one chosen in the end though but I still learned a lot and had fun doing it.

My sleigh design.

The finished sleigh.

A bunch of this and that happened of cause but I wanted to focus on things that got built. Since that is why I am here in the north of Sweden at the university.

And finaly here is a link to one of 4 versions of our Chistmas card shot film:
https://vimeo.com/195463686