flying ship scenery progress

Well, the last couple of days I have worked on the captain’s chair for the ship interior shot, it is wooden and will spin as the captain works all the controls, it is mostly done now.

I did a lot of paper mache work on the first scenery part, but had a bit of a problem. Where I am working on the set is different than where I store it so it has to be moved. The first time I moved it a lot of the paper mache cracked and fell apart. So today I redid some of it with thicker plaster mixture and I also added a big dose of wood glue to the mix. It seems to stick a lot better now. I painted some of the finished plaster flat black and then added some grass turf mixture to it with watered down white glue. More photos to follow, but just a quick update for tonight. I also realized I need to make a new puppet for the young deck hand. None of the ones I currently have will work for the young reckless puppet. I will probably start the wire armature for that tonight maybe.

Some set building

I have just begun the basic set building for the flying ship film. I bought 4×8′ sheet of 1″ thick styrofoam insulation from the home store for about $20 US. I cut it with a razor knife, bandsaw, handsaw, and a file. I cut the basic hills and rocks and landscape items, glued them on with liquid nails in a caulking gun, and then paper mached over them. The next step is to apply a layer of flat black paint with a brush since spray paint will melt the foam.

The pepsi can is there for scale.

Go ahead, make a mess, have some fun.

My new film

I have started working on my next short. Here is the basic storyline.

A serious hardworking captain of an airship and his young deck hand are piloting an airship to their delivery site. The deck hand quickly gets bored and plays a prank on the captain. The captain is not impressed.  The airship continues to travel across a very detailed landscape. Eventually the captain gets the chance to prank the young deck hand and justice is served.

The airship will travel across a set I am going to set up in my wood shop. I am planning a 10-12 foot long set so the airship can travel over a varied and detailed landscape. Most of the action will be interior shots of the cabin as the captain and the deck hand interact.  The airship will be about 12 inches long and will look like something Leonardo Da Vinci would have invented.

I started with a piece of styrofoam and cut it to rough shape using the bandsaw and a file.

I used a paper cutter to cut some strips of paper that would look like long boards.

I applied the paper strips to the form.

Add some balsa wood parts like the keel and some fins.

Add a hot air balloon on top.

This flying air ship will have plenty more details.

a new flying rig

Well for the stopmotionmagic.com october challenge I needed to turn my puppet 180 degrees, and for that I needed a super great wonderfully terrific flying rig, so I built one. (Note: in the photos you will see a black track, ignore this because that is my track lighting, has nothing to do with this rig)

Here is how:

Start with a long piece of wood, cut a dovetail slot in it with a router bit or table saw, cut a small scrap with a dovetail to slide in the slot. So now you have a 4 foot long piece of wood with a scrap that slides in a dovetail joint along the length. This will allow your flying rig to slide across the set left and right.

Now for the main piece. I wanted three connection points to keep the puppet better balanced. Take two pieces of scrap and make a Tee.  Glue these together. Drill holes in the ends for round dowels (pencils work great). Attach string to the dowels, and attach tiny wire hooks to the ends of the string. To raise or lower the hook heights just turn the dowels. If your holes in the wood scrap tee is not exact fit for the dowels you can cut a slot, and then put a nut and bolt on it to make it a tighter fit.  I drilled holes in the pencils and put a thin diameter dowel to make turning the pencils a little easier.  The whole tee assembly gets a bolt drilled through the center and is bolted to the scrap that has the sliding dovetail cut on it. Using this system allows the tee to swivel around. A wing nut on the bottom loosens or tightens the tee against the dovetail block and makes it easier or hard to twist around.

My latest animation exercise “turn your puppet 180″ uses this flying rig and no tiedowns at all.

here is the link to video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyeySfCVdKc

you can see the strings in the video.  I will remove them later.  The rig works great. Hope you enjoy. Let me know if you have any questions about how to build this.

Go ahead, make a mess, have some fun.