We built this City

Here is a miniature city we built in cardboard.

Some pics and text explaining the process:

For building the houses we just used different cardboard that we could find and gluegun. 

The houses has only three walls - we won't see the fourth 

and it is also easier to light them from inside then.

The houses where built in differnt sizes to create 

an illusion of perspective/fake perspective.

Some of the houses where covered in putty and lightly sandpapered.

Then painted in different grayish desaturated colours.

 

( Sometimes we also clean up)

Here is the houses putted up for shooting. 

The background is the same as in the train exterior shots, 

but without the orange light behind (since its still night here).

The mountains is made by styrofoam.

This is how the set looks from behind.
We covered some of the windows and then had lamps behind every row of houses.
The aluminium foil is to cover cracks where the light slipped through.

 

For this shot we made a miniature animatable version of the character. Challenging and fun to animate!

And some photos with the finished lighting.

Nature and Train Set!

So this is our expensive train-in-the-nature shot. Many days of work for only 3 seconds! To not waste that much work for only 3 seconds, we figured to use the same set from another angle in another scene. Here is some pictures and text about making the set and the train:

We started by shaping the landscape in foam, and covered it with towels and other textiles:

Then we painted it with acrylic colours:
(photos by Julija)

The small trees is plastic trees coated in wooden glue and spices (oregano, chili and seafood mix, yum yum)
We were originally planning to use greenscreen background, but since the set is green we made another solution: we painted a fabric as a sky and then later lighted it from behind with a yellow/orange ligt (sunrise), since its "real" background it also affected the set and the resloult looks really atmospheric!

 The train was made in wood, the roof of architecture paper, the pipes sculpted from super sculpey and then we coated the train in putty :

We also lighted it with lamos inside and led lights for the front:

 The scene is now animated but will stay unpulished until we release the teaser!

More fanart!

Fanart by Andreas, thank you little lad! Hugs from directors

Fanart!

Thank you Martin little lad! Hugs from directors.

Making armatures part 2!

Most of the puppets are allready done and some are only missing some few stuff, like hair.. 

So some pics here is kinda old but whatever. As earlier written we tried to go for allot of replacement parts and we're both really happy for making that choice because things have broken allready! 

Heres some steps on the replacement process.

 By using a dremel connected to a stand thingy its a higher chance of the drillbit not to break because of an unsteady hand..

Then we pulled wire through and bent it so it stays locked. 

It works quite well but we experienced that the joints sometimes still got a little loose. To fix this we just applied a tiny amount of super glue . It stays in place and if its necessary to remove the joint its no stress.

It didnt take long into the animation before the man had an accident..

                                     

The poor man is clearly shocked for breaking his foot. But dont worry manio!

                                     

Earlier we had just two wires for one leg. This was not enough because his head became much more heavy than expected.
So after allot of drilling, cutting, twisting, milliput and epoxy glue both versions of the man got new legs.
We increased the wires to 5 per leg, so this is hardcore! The area where it bends is small aswell which is not good for the wires since all the pressure gets forced to one spot. This is something we just gotta live with since we wanted it so small.. :P But if they break we've made it even easier to switch them out! The wire now has two ends with K&S (not fully pictured) one slides into the shoe and the other up on the leg. Hopefully this works :)

Cheers

Emergency in the basement!!

The other day we had a not so happy surprice in the basement: After spending almost a day on lighting and camera settings we were finally ready to animate the scene (friday evening) when we suddenly discovered a stain of water in the middle of the set! It was waterdrops that came from the ceiling, dripping down on the set. And after a moment it was dropping from two spots in the roof.. We where terrifyed that we have to remove everything and do the lighting all over again, but problemsolvers as we are, we found a meanwhile solution: tape and toiletpaper, sticked on the roof with a broom:

Evidence

of the waterstain.

Plastic cups to save
the set from water.

Genius solution.

And then we could animate the scene
witout any water dripping from the roof!