For the starter of session two of intro to the making of we would be in the maker space being introduced to the basic elements of set design and what we may consider exploring later in the course or for next week. Later on we would be going to the Manchester Animation Festival to attend some exhibitions from McKinnon and Saunders and even a making of talk about one of their more recent animations Twirlywoos a stop motion based animation. The method of set design that we would be exploring was white card modelling which would be moving us from 2D work to 3D work in the maker space and this would actually be a consideration for use in either Maya or Stopmotion animations that we create later in the years we have on this course. This was also an exercise in working with scale and maths in this session we could construct sets using a traditional material of foam board and that if we wanted sets constructed we could go to the New Adelphi building at Peel Park campus.
The idea of this was to try out ideas in our sets and if they go wrong refine and try again. For this exercise we would be constructing a room using white card such as a living room or room of our choice in our own homes, to begin we needed to create a sketch of the room first and then translate this in scale on white card and construct it using a rule and craft knife. The traditional material for sets in a television series or movie for small scale is foam board making an excellent starting point for full-scale sets and storyboarding creating a photo based storyboard. I could feel an idea running through my head about this particular lesson and its subject. In this we would be using a perspective method called zero point perspective which I wasn't aware of or even heard of it or how to use it.
One thing that Annabeth mentioned was that we needed to think of this exercise as floor plans for a construction project and how floors going up in models are called elevations and were shown an example of this by Annabeth to show us what it was we were working with in building it. This started to feel like something that I was taught in graphic design back in High school many years ago, and when constructing it we needed to consider lining up and measuring the walls and windows on the model using a rule then cutting them out using a craft knife.
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| example of floor plans |
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| example of model |
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| Model built. |
When doing a model within the floor plan it was important that we mapped out the doors and where they opened and closed within a room and the same could be said about the height of the walls. That was where the sketch of the room came in to roughly calculate the maths in terms of height and width then translate it into a floor plan. We could stick down the walls to the base using glue meant for wood which did take slightly longer to stick unless you added enough pressure to the card tabs. I began sketching out a room using two point perspective and I decided to do my own bedroom at home as I can remember what it looked like in terms of the structure and the objects in the room. Whilst sketching I noticed how Jolanta was using crosses and squares in her perspective drawings and wondered if this was zero point perspective and so I decided to try it starting with crosses and then adding a square within the crosses centre this seemed to create an open box like view.
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| two point and zero point perspective. |
The room began to take shape as I drew in the bed, shelves and windows within the room I this was something I would need to consider in my own illustration work. I then began the construction process of my room piece and measured out a medium sized square then sketched a square inside of it to create a frame for the tabs to be placed into when stuck down. In past experience of model building the trickiest element was making sure that the walls base and height matched up with the floor of the room, since this was a view from the door entrance I didn't add a door but I did measure out a rectangle across the walls so that I could sketch in the windows and keep them an equal distance apart, even sketching in shelves and the book case. It was time to measure out the length and width of the walls with the base and so I measured the base and had the measurements of 24.6 cm wide and 15.2 cm tall in terms of the base and measured out the walls with these measurements as I sketched on the windows and shelves in the room.
The next stage was cutting out the walls and base which had to be done using a craft knife and a metal rule. Having used these tools before I knew the health and safety rules such as cutting away from my hand when cutting the straight line. To ensure a clean fold the fold lines in the walls and the tabs needed to be lightly scored with the knife but not enough to cut through the card and compromise the design. The windows were then cut out with the craft knife but took extra care to make sure I didn't cut through the line across the window frame once completed the tabs were stuck down with a glue stick and though the tabs did over reach the boarder on the floor the walls and the whole composition was a very sturdy and simple in design.
I decided to add a few more elements such as the floor plan of the piece showing where the bed, boxes and draws would be in this model/set design. Annabeth even mentioned that if there were enough time and materials I could easily build the furniture and frames for the sets walls and room composition. What peeked my interest was that I could use the photos that I took in this class and illustrate characters and colour in Photoshop this would create a visual storyboard that she mentioned earlier, and I may consider approaching this over the weekend when my research projects are completed. She advised that with the measurements they would be doubled in size when constructing the actual set in large scale and even shine a light through the windows to show shadowing in the room if it was dark or even use the stop motion room for different angles.
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| Light through a window provided by Annabeth |
By sessions end I was rather pleased with the work that I produced and it made me wonder that I could use my volunteer connections at Art With A heart and Fab Lab Altrincham to create sets for my animations in the future if it involved using a laser cutter to create a better presented set design or final piece as the maker space didn't have one. Looking back I would say this has given me some perspective into set design and I felt that it took me back to my years of building models out of card and paper be it Mystery Machines or even houses from old cartoons, so this brought back some past experiences from childhood and with age came experience in model building and set design.
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