Playing With My Food

Today I food propped a little. The potatoes, onions and garlic were already made. I'm happy with they way they look. Everything in Halfland will be at this level of detail and realism or lack of detail and realism, the same rustic folk style.

I painted real, dried flower seed pods with acrylic and gloss medium to make green peas. I painted glued clusters of tiny glass (no hole) beads with tinted medium to finish off the raspberries. I took deep garnet seed beads and packed them with glue into dried, round seed pods to make pomegranates. They will be displayed in Rana's kitchen on a platter, some closed, some cracked open. (Full disclosure: pomegranates are my favorite food.) I was going to hand-place each seed bead in the right direction but I think this quicker result fools the eye sufficiently.

I painted the insides of the faux glass bottles with ink colors and it really looks interesting, just like liquid inside glass. I sketched up the Writing Mouse with a hand puppet to show the scale his final puppet will be.

Mouse Hand Puppet Test on VimeoHimself kindly loaned one of his outstanding rat hand puppets for a little quick clip, so I could see whether the Writing Mouse character could be a live action/stop-motion puppet hybrid. He would still have a wire armature for the stop motion movements at his desk, but could also move from my hand inside if I wanted to say... shoot outdoors! Matter of fact, this is what I'll be doing at the start of the film with the black mermaid, Kyra, at the shore too! Halfland now has two rod/hand/armature puppet hybrids.

Programming Note: There's a lot I'd like to say about my experience at the ASIFA-Hollywood Expo last Saturday, it's been revealing and galvanizing for several reasons. Tomorrow I'll have more time to write up what I learned.

Comments

  1. Writing Mouse seems a little camera shy, cute vid.

    The food fab'n looks very real - nice job!

    mf

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  2. Yes, thanks Mark, I think if designed properly, making him a hand puppet will work beautifully for this character. Thanks!

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  3. Oh, Mark, did you find the puppet featured in the "Today's Cool Find" at right by Robyn Alice Yannoukos at the expo? What did you think when you saw it?

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  4. Hey cool post!

    that puppet mouse is really alive.

    and cool stuff with the veggies.

    jriggity

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  5. No by the time I got back in there it was gone

    :-(

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  6. I love the Veggies, If I lived in Halfland i'd sure be a Veggie by now!

    Cute Mousey as well :-)

    -Ben

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  7. Thanks Jriggity!

    Bummer, Mark, you know--I bet Ms.Yannoukos took her brilliant pupp and left! I Googled last night and found that not only was she there! But her film Africa Parting was screened sometime between 6 and 8! Argh, That was a real miss not to see. My only regret so far for splitting after the expo.

    Hey, did you see it having stayed later?

    Thanks Ben, What kind of veggie would you be? Like a cabbage? or like you'd only eat veggies? hee.

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  8. No sadly I just missed Africa Partings.

    I left right after Raging Rudolph which was funny, but it was the Judas Priest video and Pixelation shorts like "Stop, Look, Listen" that started putting me to sleep.

    I should have stayed 10 minutes longer. I would have seen it.

    Overall It was a strange selection of films for a stop motion animation show I thought.

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  9. I LOVE the mouse! but did you really glue together little beads to make a raspberry? How patient are you?

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  10. Oh, yes I did use no hole beads to make little raspberries! But it was more of a smoosh of the gooey cluster rather tan a placing of each rasp! Hee.

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  11. Anonymous5:08 PM

    Thanks for the full disclosure. Do you get kickbacks from the Pomegranate Produce Marketing Board?

    Seriously - looking good here!

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  12. Welcome, Robert! I SHOULD get something for my pom love! Paul, my converted husband, and I go mow through about 30 poms during peak of season!

    It's a ravishing experience eating all those lovely sweet garnet colored kernels and leaving a plate filled with empty white pith and rind afterward.

    TRY IT!

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