SWED Bank animated commercials

This was a particularly beautiful series of commercials i worked on at Aardman, for a Swedish bank. As a model maker on the job i had the opportunity to do some sculpting, for one of the wolves (young male), many many shoes and other detailed pieces. I did a vast amount of armature building for the puppets, which were all steel ball and sockets, with the exception of a few wire stand ins). I made many of the moulds for each sculpt with alley fast cast, then proceeded to cast each piece in foam latex with the armature set inside. These puppets we then flocked and airbrushed to give a really nice stylised finish and i did my first bit of flocking on some of the limbs.
I did a lot of work also on the tiny clothes which also had to be made in real fabric, you can see some of the outfits i made on the hedgehog and wolf boy. There were also a few small hats i made for the squirrel.



That one went so well we were asked to make a few more!:





and here's a little making of video of the first advert too:

Mattes and Miniatures Visual Effects

I came across Mattes and Miniatures new website recently, there are some great photos on there now of some of the projects i worked on.... i have borrowed some of the images for my post below.

IMAGINARIUM OF DR. PARNASSUS:

Some of the miniature sets for the film including the Piano Cave, Warfare and the Monestary.








THE WOLFMAN:


1:3 scale miniature set of one face of Chatsworth House, standing a massive 24ft in height, constructed in fireproof materials for a big burn scene at Pinewood Studios.




ANGELS AND DEMONS:

1:3 scale miniature ceiling set extension, (about 7ft deep) replica of the Santa Maria della Vittoria Roman Catholic church in Rome.

Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, behind the scenes footage

Here are a couple of videos that have been kindly uploaded showing the team at Mattes and Miniatures where i was working on the film, Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.

...Enjoy!

Parnassus - Miniatures Unit, including sets that were cut from the cinema release!

I have finally got around to sitting down and uploading photographs of some of the fantastic miniature sets that were produced at Mattes and Miniatures back in 2008. There was quite a big team of us working for Leigh Took, (model supervisor) and Dave Warren, (art director) on miniature scaled sets for the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. I think the rest of the names are as follows:

ModelMakers: Myself, Gary Losh, Wesley Hardland, Christopher Michael Walker, Neil Damann, Bob Ballan, James Ballan, Simon Ford, Gary Morton, Fiona Barty, Joe White, Alex Walklate, Thomas Power, Samantha Cole, Katherine Pearl, Amanda Ward, Holly, Rebecca Timons, Steve Scott, Andy Rolfe, Jason Chalmers, Peter Seymour-Howell, Melanie Thorpe, Sarah Clamp.

The biggest part of the project i worked on, with Gary Losh was the sculpting, molding and casting of the elephant carvings that were to form the foundations of the monastery set. Below you can see a beautiful drawing provided by Dave Warren of the concept of the set.

Here are some photographs of the model that was produced by myself and the others at Mattes and Miniatures:

The photograph above is courtesy of Chris Walker. This is pretty much what you see in the film, and then a close-up pan upwards of the whole set. It was great to see it get such a good shot, so much work went into the whole set and it looked outstanding.

If you want to see a more detailed write up of the whole process of making all the models then check out Chris' blog on the link above, he has some great photos on there too. Unfortunately due to the untimely demise of my hardrive i lost most of my photographs, but i've tried to show as much as i can here.
Above is the upper half of the set photographed during the shoot. The main structure is a combination of MDF and poly/styrofoam, and was mostly build by Neil Damann, with the help of many of the crew, including Chris, Alex, James and Jo (i can't possibly remember every detail that everyone did individually and i'm really sorry if i make any mistakes, just correct me!) . The huge Buddha style statue (which i think was actually a Parnassus Monk) was sculpted by Wesley, and the stylised lotus flower on his lap by myself. So much work went into the whole thing and everyone worked really well alongside each other to bring the whole piece together. It's really hard to see just how much detail there is, all the tiny doors and windows and even intricate brickwork and complex scaffolding. The photo below might give you an idea of this...

And here are our lovely elephants and a few shots of the clay sculpt and the messy process of a silicone jacket and fibreglass mold...


Here is the 'Warfare' which unfortunately got cut from the cinema release of the film. I only played a small part in the construction of this set, mainly my job was to sculpt, mold and cast the two fists that hold the flags framing the entrance to the scene. Chris and James did a lot of work on the fine detailing of this set, including a tank which actually drove around the roads that wound around and through the set. The head sculpts of the soldiers carved from the rock face where sculpted by Wesley.

Another model i worked on was the 'Piano Cave', which again was sadly cut from the finished film. But here i can show you a few images of some of the work that was done by the crew at Mattes and Miniatures. It was quite hard to get a shot of the whole cave, but you can see some of the work i did on the set. I sculpted a turtle to begin with, then molded and cast four out in fast cast onto which the elephant i sculpted stood. The turtles were sculpted in plasteline, and the elephant in clay. These made up part of the ornate columns which repeated twice down each side of the cave, supporting its roof.

Well that's about as far as my pictures go sadly. There was so much more made at Mattes and Miniatures across the 3 month build, including Babushka's Cottage, Mr. Nicks Bar, Giant Parnassus head wearing a policeman's hat, Graveyard, some surreal desert ruins and many many GIANT mountain ranges, and many many many many more trees!

The job was soooo much fun and i'd happily do it all over again....so Terry Gilliam, make another film please!!!

Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus GO AND SEE IT!!!

It has been a long wait indeed but i was most excited yesterday to sit down in the local cinema and watch Gilliam's imagination unfold...

The film opens up on the night streets of a dreamless London town. A ramshackle gypsy cart pulls up, immediately unfolding into a stage like a giant pop up book, where its performers persistently fail to engage their audience. Parnassus can't help but reflect Gilliam himself, one of the last true story tellers, who's wild and dreamy imagination is often sadly lost to modern society.

It is apparent that the budget was sadly lacking, however with Gilliam's imagination i think no budget would ever be big enough! and i think he achieves far more than others would.

Each world through the mirror is a different dream scape and the use of CGI works well on this level. It is very stylised and gives good contrast to the mundane real world. I really loved the ladder scene with its idyllic painting-like landscapes and clouds and the comic way Tony escapes pursuit.

I can't help but be drawn to the real sets though, (although i am probably slightly bias because i want a job!) i feel they have much more character and depth, reflecting on his older work on Baron Munchausen and Time Bandits which has a much more wholesome, theatrical appeal and of course Monty Python too. Particularly for this film with its old Victorian theatre style i think matte paintings and sets would have worked well but there was good contrast between the rustic , magical theatre set, the grim and grey real world of London and the collection of totally unique CGI fantasy worlds that were each quite disjointed and dream like.

Tom Waits was perfect as the dapper devil Mr. Nick and i love the way he keeps popping up unexpected like a bad conscience. Your perceptions are cleverly played with when a welcoming giant farm woman who seemed so creepily endearing turns out to be a trap secretly puppeteered by the devil.

There is lots of Pythonesque humor throughout the film as you would expect and i particularly loved police scene, that was hilarious! "join the fuzz....we like violence!"

Initially the support Gilliam had from colleagues and friends saved the film after Heaths death and Gilliam has done a seamless job of altering the original film to make it fit each new actor and script change. If it wasn't for all the press i think you could believe this was how it was meant to be, each new face adds a funny twist to a new imagination, maybe it even works better.

The film left me with a warm glow of inspiration and a kind of melancholic reminiscence for the forgotten ways of old story tellers and travelling shows.

It is a real shame to see a lot of the work we did has been cut from the film like the miniature set for the Warfare scene that the boy on his console was originally supposed to walk into. The Piano Cave was also cut which was to have hundreds of students inside playing music on hundreds of rows of pianos towering up in stair formation. For those who are interested keep an eye on my blog as i will now be able to post photographs of the work i did on the film and the scenes that were deleted.

Postman Pat ... he should have gone to Specsavers

Another job at Scary Cat Studios, this time working on an advert for Specsavers featuring Postman Pat. The story goes pat breaks his glasses and runs rampage through the village with poor Jess plastered to the windscreen at one point! The funniest thing about working on this job was the fact that the BBC actually objected to the scene were Jess lands in the washing line as it was to 'suggestive', when Jess was supposed to land in Mrs Goggins' bra! .... I must agree that would be far too rude!... lol.


I mostly worked on the puppet for Jess the cat, making a series of maquettes followed by the final puppet. He ended up with a plastazote skull and a basic wire armature tail, ears and legs. His body was made up of a milliput chest and bum section with a large double ball and socket joint in the middle (although I have to admit the silver soldering was not my own work). I then had the joyous job of skinning him with fake fur which had to be shaven to a shorter length with clippers, which left me looking like I had about a weeks growth of stubble all over my face and a scarily hairy chest! Although the fur did get absolutely everywhere I was chuffed that it all came together so well as this was the first time I have ever had to skin a cat or any puppet for that matter. It was nice to put to use the sewing skills my mum taught me so well when I was younger.


I made a few other bits and bobs for the other characters too like sculpting Miss Hubbards head and sewing Mrs. Goggins' slippers and PC Selby’s hat.


The commercial is on TV now and you can also see a clip of me working on the puppet in this 'making of' video (the commercial is also featured at the end of the clip).

Violent Veg

Well i must admit I'm pretty slack at this blogging thing.... hopefully i will get better!

Now that the website is live for Carte Blanche's Violent Veg e-cards i can post a few pictures of the work i did on them. You can take a look at the series of animations here, there is a whole three pages of them to get through. I think they have worked really well, even if some of the jokes are a little corny.


I did this job for Scary Cat Studios in Feb/March earlier this year, it was my first job with them and quite a fun one to work on too. I just found every day more amusing, after sculpting and molding arms and shoes for the vegetable characters i went onto prop making and set dressing, tiling a bathroom and making a teeny rubber duck for a leek, then office furniture for conference pears!

The arms and legs you can see were sculpted using plasteline then molded using ally fast-cast and finally cast in a pigmented silicone housing a wire armature. There were four varying sizes depending on the size of the vegetable character of which i sculpted the smaller two sets.
Each limb ended with a short length of k&s which slotted into the body and was fixed in place by a tiny grub screw.


Here are a few of the props i made, the rest you can see in the animations. (accordion, rubber duck, angle poise lamp, picture frames, filing cabinet, water cooler) I also helped with some set dressing, painting and miniature tiling in the bathroom.