Foam, fabrics and fun

The new storyboard has just been printed from the new animatic, tiny hands scatter the table-tops, and Ivor has a hunch. James Hadrill has joined us and is busy making the costme for the puppet. We sourced various fabrics with small weaves from calico to cashmere. Ivor's clothes are quite dull in tone to help convey his faded spirit in the film and to contrast the scenery as it changes around him.
Next up the hands are to be painted with latex, the shoes are to be made (out of some old tights!) and I'm working on Ivor's head which will be made out of various materials including papier mache.

Emma-Rose in the studio putting the new storyboard together and James Hadrill in the workshop trying out costume tests on the puppet

Story

The past couple of months has been spent developing and refining the story along with research, various visualisation tests and making full-designs. What is perhaps the sixth version of the animatic has just been finished and model making is under way. The puppet, standing at around 24 centimetres, is made from brass tubing, aluminium wire, foam and fabric.

Kit Wilson, the film's composer, has sketched out some brilliant music over the animatic which acts as dialogue throughout the film, tying the various visual elements together and drawing the audience through the emotions of Ivor, the film's protagonist.

James Hadrill, a fashion designer from London, is coming over soon to make the costume for the puppet as myself as model maker Emma-Rose create tiny picture frames, paper trees, cardboard plant pots and more to populate the world of the film.

Visulisation

Three-dimensional painting: pre-vis of the world

A great deal of time has been spent testing out various techniques, approaches and methodologies in order to bring the story to life. The challenges I set myself with making this film were to tell a cinematic story and engage an audience on an emotional level through very humble materials such as cardboard, fabric and paper. These concerns follow on from a film I worked on last year, We Weren't The First Ones Here, where this idea was pushed to a potential limit in terms of using paper to tell the story and utilising the white sheet as a blank canvas.