Second Construct The Moment Project

Constructing A
2 Meter area From Around The Waverley Building

CHARLOTTE'S DESIGN:

This year, my fellow second years and I had the opportunity to make our own 1:25 scale models of a 2m x 2m x 4m space that we would liked to have made in reality. However, like the year before, only 4 get picked out of the year group.

We decided amongst us who's was the best: Visually better pleasing, an interesting challenge, an adventure to make, and something that would have been a lot of fun to play with in conjunction with sounds, lights and projection mapping.

This is her model she created, It's from the very front entrance steps, and she focused on the right side, with the palm trees and back pillar:

STARTING THE PLAN:

We didn't have time to make elaborate plants and week by week schedules yet, so we just made a plan up of who's skills were most suited for a certain job, and who wanted to get on with those areas first according to those skills. A couple of people were more confident with he wood working, cutting and measurements, and a few other preferred scenic painting and creating bricks and similar stuff to that. Charlotte, who's model it was that we was making, has a passion for puppets, so she focused on making a puppet for the living element to our design that would come in later.

I took on the role of scenic painting and making. Initially though, I was focusing on making the palm tree, as I know it had so much detail and made up a 1/4 of the set.

While others were making the woodwork and basic structural frame of everything, I started on the palm tree

The tree was a mix of paper, foam and masking tape wrapped around a bendy yet quite stiff plastic pole.

Then we proceeded to wrap rope/twine around as the base.

These were the leaves half done, they had yet to have t he finishing touches of yellow colour and freyeing, but we realised quite early on that these leaves weren't going to hold the weight of themselves, So i suggested we back them with a wire spine, and so we just masking taped it on and painted over them. This upgraded their buoyancy yet firmness.

(Before the leaves had any wire to them. They'd either hang limp, or shoot straight up because of the fold in them.)

WORKING ON SCENIC PAINTING

By this time, the basic structure for the stairs, columns and the wall had been constructed, so when we finished the palm tree, we started to put the bricks on the wall, and to fake grout it made from sand/saw dust, PVA glue, and/or polyfiller. Each brick was ahead of this time already individually marked, scuffed, indented, anything to give each one its own uniqueness.

The structure for the coloum was also underway, with photo-like frames being made for the sections of the real concrete/stone blocks. rectangles of half cut foam was added to place on top for the effect of the grittiness that the real version had.

(Our reference in real life)

The above image was our reference photo, the steps were coloured the same as the concrete as you can see that the colours bleed together quite seamlessly. At this point too we realised there was a lot of moss that took up majority of that wall and concrete top, so we has to quickly put that in using sponges, hair, paint and some glue.

Once the moss had ben done, we were practically finished, every now and again, with fresh eyes, we'd add paint here and there, a few scuffs and marks.

Watered black paint was added to the edge of the stairs to draw attention away from the flat boring wall that it was, and to add a shadowy, aged feel.

PROJECTION MAPPING

This is a screenshot taken from the projection mapping software where we digitally mapped out every single inch of that structure so that the projection could be crisp and precise.

This task is one of those things where it's the most scary thing at first, but once you get shown and you actually do a segment, then after a bit its actually pretty straight forward and satisfying.

This is a photo I took actually in the room whilst it was getting digitally mapped, this shows how on the actual structure, how precise it was.

The base of the tree had a different natural pattern so here I had plaited, backcombed and fluffed up strands of rope and arranged them in a way that looked closely like that of the tree, while the top half was more tidier and closely arranged.

Next, we had to make each individual leaf. We used thick sugar paper, on top, we mixed paint and PVA glue to make the thickness and texture to give some structure. To the side are photos of the leaves we used as a reference.

Meanwhile, I finished the trunk of the tree, it took quite a while because there was so much rope that I had to unravel, backcomb, plait and then individually glue on strands at random patterns. Fluffy was added and then finally the colour paint. Once this was completed, It was just the head with all the leaves sticking out that had to be assembled.

A pineapple shape was made from foam as the base. Then we laid and glued each leaf onto a piece of cloth in rows and just wrapped that pineapple shape in layers and layers, one under each other until the pineapple wasn't seen anymore.

This is what it eventually looked like in the end.

All of this was then coated in a sand/stone colour paint mixed with sand to get a grainy effect to make it look and feel more like its actually stone. I also added on the curves that you can see where theres a dip/ditch, it was actually just 90 degree walls/edges, because of the 'frames' we had made, but in real life its not like that. Every stone block had angles cut into the tops and bottom of them.

Once the column had its basic colour on, it had to be lifted up and erected because we were nearing the last half of the time we had for the whole project. Extras were added on later, like more details and different colours to age it and rough it up a bit. At this point too, the 'concrete' was added atop the wall. This was made from just the same foam that the bricks were made from, and stuck together, chipped, different layers of paints of greys and sand colours. We then eventually airbrushed with light greys and whites and green to give the chipping off old effect, and moss growing on it.

I spent quite a lot of time working on painting those bricks to look as realistic as I could to the real thing. A lot of pinks, oranges, yellows, and greys had to be so randomly arranged. It was the most challenging thing I had to do this whole project.

This was actually one of my favourite parts, because its so pleasing to see it go from plain foam/wood with maybe one base colour on, to then looking like a piece of lovely realistic structure, that when you look back to, you think theres an actual concrete wall we've just somehow hauled up inside our building.

The tree was moved into place. We went outside and gathered soil, twigs, pebbles and rocks to cast around the tree and the section around the main base. I think here, with the lighting and the finishing touches, the actual real rocks look so similar to our fake painted bricks, this was when I was most proud of the project.

This is the final product with normal lighting from in front and a little overhead.