What's Happening in the Shop Today?!

 

Glad you asked! Here are some of what is actively being worked on in the shop these days (click to embiggin):

(Starting upper left) Sufficient recycled packaging material has been collected on the main set, like a hoarder's house, ready to be cut down and installed as support for torn packaging paper panels for planting. Can't wait to get chocolate-colored paint and coffee grounds onto these! Patience hurts.

Great success in making not one, but two, ocean/beach sets. This one is so stunning when illuminated and set to dawn with blush tulle that it warrants its own post soon.

Not Halfland, but in my art department (meaning me), we (meaning me) want to paint giant faceted crystals onto a blackboard effect I added to second-hand canvases. Got everything collected to execute these: printed gem references, opaque projector, pearl underpaint, white fineliners, but Halfland is going so well, these'll have to wait.

The larger ocean/beach set is canted to the mirror's table in the set room to be finished.  It's the second iteration, built with its wave rollers still visible, before they are overlaid with liquid organza fabric layers in beautiful deep-sea colors. The painted foam beach will be finished with a light layer of real sand.

(Next row) The overscale set is nearly done. Next up is to hot glue the oversized grass seed heads I've collected from the neighborhood to the tips of grasses on the winter end of the set. (I'll have to keep the set covered after I do that as certain felines may try to eat the grass heads even though they are sprayed down

with coats of adhesive hairspray to fix them.)

I discovered this cache of fabric botanical puffs while organizing my materials closet. I had previously decided to forgo using them, but a fresh look showed me how well they added to the bug party set as delightful party decorations surrounding everyone. Then I found an amazing glow-in-the-dark power pigment in a rare pale yellow-orange color. I bought it with zero idea how I could ever make use of it, but had to have it anyway. It wasn't until I got home and saw the orange lanterns sitting out on a table that I realized how cool it'd be to use this new item to highlight the puffs with a glow effect in the scene! The next step is to stuff the poofs with filling, seal the edges, and apply paint effects before hanging them on the party's lantern vines.

The Queen Bee puppet and her two attendants have been cast and have begun the finishing (illegally fun, of course). I have preserved giant leaves in glycerine, making them soft and as durable as fabric to fashion into her botanical gown and a small dandelion poof as her royal ruff.

Also working out the Pink Snail's shiny trail on the ground of the overscale set. Was trying painted liquid organza strips (seen above fourth from left), but have gotten closer with a duochrome pigment powder in the exact pink on a translucent base paint instead. Matching ground strip glued onto a flexible wire will have a skipping shimmer trail that keeps pace with the puppet's tie-downs as they travel along the span of the set.

I realized the fourth title card for the first Akt "Dawn" should appear as water caustics (here are digitally animated caustic samples). (Although my practical build of it is shown in progress above) I have hope that I can get it looking more there and less there at the same time.

The main set of forest trees is still in the middle of the shop, waiting patiently for me to get onto them and their charming bark faces.

(Last row) Finishing the colorful moth a volunteer made for the film many years ago, along with several other butterflies. The image of the moth verso, with the same moth's wings open and closed near it, is the inspiration for the miniature theater pop-up card design in progress (in the third image in that row), in yellow. The wings pop open like curtains when the card is pulled. I had designed this many years ago as a fun way to announce Halfland film screenings. That was before the internet, so they may be moot for that purpose. Or maybe not... Gotta do it anyway.

Ongoing floor flowers to keep up with new quotes and images in my journals and 1/2L documents. My house is clean, I'm fed, my cats are fed, all is well at the moment.

I'm re-rigging a Mermaid's stunt tail, using a wire mechanism to move it rather than just gravity for frame-by-frame control, rather than live action as previously thought. I plan to get the shots in a large fish tank that is currently sitting in a bag on the back porch, so the silk fins will wave slowly underwater. Still not clear on how to composite those live-action frames into a background. But I plan to figure that out as I do everything else; doing it however I can manage. And then loving it.

(Please ignore this dupe of the floor flower, third from right)

Google helps with so much. It gave me suggestions on how I could control the earlier-mentioned butterfly puppet's wings, opening and closing from a distance out of frame. I stumbled upon a few delicate rods and tubes on a recent outing (I know!) to experiment with. 

(Lastly, bottom right) This vintage collage image of the sea, framed with a Victorian-style motif, struck me as a potential way to begin the entire film. The wooden frame you saw above (top row, second from left) in the long shot of the sea and beach can be skinned with a "lens" of scuffed clear plastic with a similar design painted on it, essentially as an opening orientation/title for the series "Halfland". I would like these main titles to evoke the old scrawled lettering on early negatives. That look is like pure catnip to me. It's evocative of early cinema in its experimental infancy that the series' whole visual style will strive to recreate for the piece.

There's still even more underway, but this is enough to give you the idea of my recent day's work here. I'm having a great time, very inspired, and smashing these elements out as I go.