Toy Soldiers - Behind the Scenes at Stan Winston

"Go behind the scenes of Joe Dante’s Small Soldiers and see how Stan Winston Studio used real puppets and on-set performance to bring to life the militarized Action Figures."

From April 30, 2019, blog post at Stan Winston School of Character Arts (SWSCA).

The Studio took on this job soon after the magic of the Jurassic Park and Terminator jobs.

These are a few of the photos from the SWSCA blog which are taken from the truly excellent book The Winston Effect: The Art & History of Stan Winston Studio. It must have been a lot of fun.

Build an Amazing Tree with Luke Towan

Here is a great set of instructions on how to make a miniature tree from Luke Towan.

Here is Luke making the tree.



Here it is broken down into a series of steps



I used some of this technique a couple of years ago to make a miniature tree used in a film that also matched a full-scale fake tree used on set for the actors to interact with. The miniature tree was filmed against a blue screen.

Playing with Scale: How Designers Use Set Models

There is a fantastic exhibition at the National Theatre in London, UK on designing with set models for theatre.

It looks magical.

As reported in Design Week in an article written by Sarah Dawood November 20, 2018 5:23 pm.

"Playing with Scale: How Designers Use Set Models looks at how stage designers for the National Theatre have used model boxes to help inform entire sets, and will feature original model boxes used in the theatre's productions, archive materials, films, audio and photography.

..."

As described in an article on National Theatre

"This free exhibition explores how designers use set models for theatre-making. Playing with Scale unfolds the idea of a scale model and explains the importance of models as a design tool. The exhibition features examples of models from five productions designed for the Olivier stage between 1977-2018 and explores how these intricate models are used in the process of theatre-making. Production models include Exit the King, Antony and Cleopatra, The Life of Galileo, Antigone and The Comedy of Errors.

The exhibition includes archive materials, films, audio, images and set models. The exhibition is curated by Eleanor Margolies, who has been the Jocelyn Herbert Fellow of Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Graduate School, University of the Arts London, and is designed by Jemima Robinson. This exhibition is the outcome of the Jocelyn Herbert Fellowship (2016-18) and forms part of a collaboration between the National Theatre and Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon. The exhibition is funded in part by the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation."

David Neat - A Maker - A Teacher of Making

I came across David Neat a few years ago. He has a wonderful website that I found very useful for drawing and making model sets.

He is a real teacher. As described on his web site.

"I am, quite simply put, a maker and a teacher of making. That may neatly embrace a lot of what I do, but it doesn’t really touch the heart of my interests or intentions. Having struggled for a long time to find a better job description, the one that I think I’m most comfortable with at the moment is .. practical investigator!

My own ‘making’ encompasses sculpture, model-making, painting, graphic work and design. My ‘teaching’ involves undergraduate or post-graduate lecturing/tutoring both here (England) and abroad; running my own short courses, whether independently or hosted by institutions; writing instructional books and articles. I am, for example, author of the (fairly successful) book Model-making: Materials and Methods and this WordPress site is meant to be a continuation or an ‘update’ of it.

Here is a list of the places/courses where I either work regularly or have given workshops/masterclasses to date:

Wimbledon College of Art, BA (Hons) Set Design for Screen, BA (Hons) Technical Arts & Special Effects, MA Theatre Design; Rose Bruford College, BA (Hons) Theatre Design; Central Saint Martins, BA (Hons) Performance Design and Practice, MA Performance Design and Practice, Foundation Art and Design; Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, MA Theatre Design; Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, BA (Hons) Theatre and Performance Design; Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, MA Theatre Design; National Film and Television School, MA Production Design; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; National Gallery, London; Microsoft Mobile (formerly Nokia) London South Bank University, BA (Hons) Architecture; Aalto University School of Art and DesignHelsinki, BA Scenography; Royal Central School of Speech and Drama BA (Hons) Theatre Practice Design for Performance"

He also includes work from other model makers, suppliers, materials, tools.

Making a Static Grass Applicator

There is a great description of how to make a static grass applicator at the
www.bouldercreekrailroad.com web site. I need one of these in my toolbox.

One of these tools enables this sort of work to be done

The instructions a pretty clear with good diagrams, parts list etc.

And a great video.

This web site has a lot of very useful instructions on model making in general. Most of it revolves around how to make model railway scenery.

Architects Designing With Models

Architecture Van Brandenburg is a firm of Architects based in Dunedin, New Zealand. And they design with physical models first then go to CAD. The results - really beautiful buildings.

There are a pile more images at http://www.instagram.com/archvb/

They had an exhibition in Venice, Italy and also in San Francisco, USA.

I think good design needs to be done by drawing, sculpting, painting and making models. CAD is really great once that initial design process is completed to make the construction drawings.

I really like their design philosophy and creative process.

From their website:

"...Architecture Van Brandenburg place great emphasis on the ‘build-ability’ of its designs. The design process is similar to a sculptors process: beginning with rough physical model mock-ups and ending with highly detailed 3D computerised models.

This is achieved by continually building prototypes until the team is satisfied with their function, fit for their intended purpose. The advantage of this process, is that the clients and technicians know exactly what the buildings will look like, and how they can be constructed."

Great to see. They haven't been blinded by the current obsession with everything must be done digitally rather than using digital processes where it is really useful.

Working from an old dream

For many years I had this recurring idea about a TV programme to be called Bush Telly. I had some very clear dreams of what the film set would look like. It would be set in an ancient potting shed on the edge of some bush.

Finally in 2008 I got the chance to design and build this set for an entry into the 2009 Ellerslie International Flower Show. The idea was that Bush Telly would then film a series of programmes using the set while the show was open to the public.

By strange coincidence, Salma Abarro had applied for an internship with Bush Telly. Salma was a design graduate from Montreal University and was a Berber from Morocco.

Salma arrived and did the pencil drawings while I made a series of models. Each set of drawings and models getting closer to the images in my mind. The thick set of construction drawings were copied off and later used for finding sponsorship and farming out as much of the prebuilding work as was possible.

The whole design process took two months, and these are the pictures taken by Eric Ning-Yuan Shen from the final 1:20 scale model.

I think we all learned a lot from this experience. The set won the top awards at the flower show for that year.

Hamish's toes

This is "Hamish" a clay sculpture I got to make in 1998 of a liitle boy reading a book. It was commissioned by Creative Castings, a Christchurch firm that needed original sculptures in order to make hundreds of copies to sell. I was more interested in creating original work and so was quite happy for someone else to make the moulds, do the castings and sell the work.

Hamish lived next door, so he was the main model. I had worked with Sebastian's mum at the polytech, so Sebastian got to be the model for Hamish's toes.

The casting process that was used lost a lot of the detail but despite that, the sculpture was very popular and sold well across NZ in garden and decorator shops.

Hamish and Sebastian are now young men and both tower above me and their mums yet it only seems like yesterday that that this sculpture was being made.

The inspiring set design's of Tony Geddes

About 13 years ago, I came across an exhibition in the Christchurch Arts Centre of the stage set designs of Tony Geddes. Here are some photos I took at the time.

Tony, the genius set designer at the Court Theatre  was to become a great inspiration to me some years later, when I finally meet the man.

The exhibition contained dozens of models and drawings of Tony's work. I was completely taken by the rich imagination and fantastic worlds created for stage plays on display.

Some years later, I ended up working at the Court Theatre workshop building these marvelous designs. There were other set designers as well but Tony was my favourite. Each of his set's had a life of it's own and had a richness that added to each play.

During each production week, Tony would rapidly finish off each set with fantastic paint effects. He had excellent instincts based on natural ability and honed by the impressive experience of 200+ productions. It was pretty amazing to be there and watch.

As the set workshop engineer, I often got to meet Tony in his design office to help figure out the underlying metal structures required to bring his ideas to fruition. All around the walls were these models which are a national treasure just like Tony. One day it would be great if they could go on permanent display somewhere to inspire future generations.