Character Development

By Special Request from Sven over at Scarlet Star Studios (http://scarletstarstudios.com/blog/), Here's a little more on the Pink Snail's construction. It's in two separate parts; the snail and the shell. The snail part is currently a fired (hardened) ceramic master sculpt that will be cast in a soft silicone, lined with wire along the outer edges to make those slow undulating ribbons of movement that snails do as they travel over uneven ground. The finish will be flesh pink color and will glisten. The shell is nearly finished as you see it above, it's fully furnished too with age-crackled tiny floral patterned wallpaper and a portrait of "mom" inside. I wasn't kidding about the porch light being wired, I've got a teensy model train lantern light rigged in there which will be connected to a small transformer hidden inside the shell house when shooting the outside.

The shell started out as a softball-sized frame of chicken wire which was papier mached and finished with layers white paint and of ochre/brown glazes. Its front door, window box, and window frame were made of cut, textured and tinted balsa wood. The brass door knob and decoration on window box were the tops of pins with the points cut off. The lantern was constructed out of thin pieces of cardboard, taped and painted to look like iron. The roof was a spiral of hand-cut balsa crammed with moss. Curtains by Dior. Kidding, but I did dip the bottoms of them in dirty paint water to stain them.

Cheers, Thanks for asking!