Intro to the making of session 2: week 10: 29/11/17: Set building and possible experiments with the set photos.

In session 2 of intro to the making of it was focused primarily on doing some set building for our background and concept art pieces such as our floor plan and elevations. I decided to do some set building and one of my focuses would be on the corridor piece that I would be doing for my interior piece of the abandoned alien mining outpost on a destroyed planet. I began by finding a sheet of A1 thick cardboard and began sketching out the elements of my set studying from my bas corridor sketch in my journal, and for the floor I isolated one of the long edges on the card and needed to establish what would be included on this set and decided to do a floor plan for this set on the floor elements.

Floor plan for corridor

I sketched out the floor plan and the cross pattern of the floor which would represent grates in the abandoned complex then I separated the floor into sections to show the positioning of the corridor supports/doors of the corridor. These were approximately 13cm apart from each other and in these I sketched in some squares for the position of the supports and even mapped out in words what these elements were even shaded in the squares and lined the floor from the cubes to show the distance of the pillars and supports. I even included the props and pipes included in this set using sketched shapes, and to secure the walls to the floor I included tabs that could be glued to the walls when constructing the sets themselves.

Using the measurements of the corridor lines I began sketching the pillars/ supports for the set using the measurements and guide lines when sketching out the shape of the supports which was a polygon like shape as I wanted this set to look very hexagon like to give a space like feel and it was inspired by the sanctuary base from series 2 of Doctor Who. This was one of the more difficult elements of the set building process as I had to make sure that the tabs and floor shapes fitted in and if they didn't I would need to create separate parts to stick onto the archway when putting it together. From past experience of model making from my child hood I remembered that some of my constructed parts were slightly bent out of shape and out of alignment.

This was shown when I cut the archway out using my craft knife but using health and safety rules I used a cutting mat when I was cutting and made sure that I cut away from my hand to avoid any injuries. I didn't put the piece together yet as I needed to use this to trace out the shape of the archway and tabs as I wasn't sure I would get the measurements correct on the second archway with risk of it being out of scale or wouldn't fit in terms of width. I sketched around the piece then drew in the lines and tabs of the archway which was then cut out and assembled.

Assembled piece

However as I suspected the arches seemed slightly bent out of shape and needed further elements cut out separately and stuck to the archway. To stick it together at first I was using my glue stick to assemble the archways which did seem to work at fist but it didn't seem to stay together for long and so I switched to masking tape and carefully cut strips of masking tape then attached them to the structure and then were attached to the floor which I'd cut out previously. Before doing so however I measured out the wall for this piece and to make it fit along the side and on the support structures. Before cutting it out I sketched in the wall patterns from my journal so it would be a rough representation of what I was trying to create in terms of alien like patterns in the hallway such as the hexagon wall panels and an opening in the wall to show where the pipes would run through above the lockers in this hallway.

I even sketched out windows between the two archways and using a craft knife I cut them out and this was then taped to the floor and supports. However there was a problem the area near the window seemed a little loose and kept flexing and to correct it I tried folding the middle and taping it together using the masking tape. However there was a floor section that didn't seem to match up with the wall and so I measured out an extended section and then glued the two together to make it more filled in terms of the corridor length.

Extension of floor.

Looking at the piece I then had an idea that I got from Annabeth last session which was we could digitally paint the photos that we took of these sets in Photoshop to keep the structure within the model. I decided to do this but then I had a more creative idea and thought bigger, I decided to so some work in After Effects using this piece and do a little green screen practice for this module. To do this I got some green paper and cut some small sections of the paper and using the masking tape I stuck the paper to the walls, specifically the windows as I wanted to green screen a nebular behind the windows. The next step was to do some of the props within this corridor such as the pipes and locker in the beginning of this hallway.

Using what I had left of the card I sketched out a small cuboid net and did some cross like patterns within the piece to show the locker was within a grated security fence. This was carefully cut out and put together using the masking tape which was then placed into the set. However before doing so Annabeth and Tasha could see that my set looked a little bent in the middle and needed straightening out and they suggested using foam board to stick the set to so that it would straighten out then I could put my piece into place. I could find this at the back table, and I used white foam board. Using the base of my set I took the necessary measurements to show how much of the foam board that I needed, then using a longer metal rule and my craft knife I cut off the piece of foamboard that I needed but moved slowly, so as not to, cut myself or move the rule by accident compromising the shape of the board.

Following this was using double sided tape to stick down the base of my set to the foamboard, and this as Annabeth predicted did straighten out the base. This was then time to place my locker prop into place onto the base set near the archway in the start of the corridor. I was starting to piece together the pipes in the set but I couldn't finish as the lesson had just come to an end. Before we finished I took angled photos of the corridor from a point perspective view for me to play around and paint later in Photoshop/Clip studio Paint. My first few photos had the flash on but Annabeth advised that I shouldn't as this would compromise the visibility of the green screen and so I took normal photos without the flash.

Looking back on the session I felt that I was on track for fulfilling the module criteria as I had done a floor plan and elevation of my corridor background, and I was most looking forward to playing around with this in Photoshop and After Effects to help push the boat out and give an additional deliverable for the deadline next week. Doing this project it made me feel like I was 14 years old again doing card model sets of elements from my favourite television shows from my childhood and getting to use what I've learned from those years and what I learned in high school and College about 3D elements in art and set design. In conclusion I would think that I produced a good outcome and whilst I didn't use the pipes in the model they could still be incorporated in the digital illustration version of this concept set piece.