Leaf-Olympics: Day 10--Full Can-o-Peas!

Everyday during the Leaf-Olympics, Paul would come home from work and we'd laugh because I had been adding leaves to the tree ALL DAY and it didn't look any different than when he'd left. Ah, but now it's done and the work does show when compared and contrasted with the beginning stages. I'm very happy with the result and feel it strikes the right tone of real and hand-made for this film and its world.

It was awkward getting the placement right the last few days. Putting a few sprouts on was easy peasy at first and then became a whole nuther challenge as the branches got full. I resorted today to marking the spots where leaves should grow with blue tape while stepping back away from the tree and then using those as guides when I climbed up close with the glue gun. I actually had to rearrange a few of the leaves placed early on as my choices got more natural looking.

Now, at this point, anymore leaves would be too much, I'm happy to say. ALL leaves are "placed" with hot glue. I forgot in my hurry to move on that I still have to cement the joins of each stem to *finish* the tree. I can't rightly tell how time intensive or easy that step will go until I start at it next week. Hoping it will be quicker than I'm thinking it might be.

In the meantime, I turn my attention to finishing the cottage walls, inside and out, laying down the hardwood plank flooring, and maybe a little roughing in of cardboard set pieces for the surrounding landscape. Speaking of which...

For a preview/pre-viz of what I'd like the distant view to be through the cottage windows, we need look no further than the illustration on my dinner of canned beef stew last night... The view art seen above was taken from a photo of the actual stew label. I love it for the distant view--it's perfect. I'll be looking to recreate this effect precisely.


Before and after, see how it happened! For a slideshow of the Answer Tree growing up take a look here (Please let slideshow images load a minute before viewing.)