Group Planning for Construction

Today we made a group outing to the 'Work and Play' scrap store to collect a whole inventory of materials to use back in our workspace. Once back at uni, we reorganised everything, caterogrizing materials, clearing our desks and rearranging the reference work up on the walls. It's from here that we had a group chat to finalise who would be working on what. Although we had discussed it plenty before, we wanted to create a proper list with each item having at least 1 person in charge and, depending on the task, a 2nd person as an assistant.

Below you can see the main things that need to be made and who's working on them.

Set Building:

Exterior of Apartment Block - [Lead] Emine, [Assistant] Finn.

Frederick's Bedroom - [Lead] Gray, [Assistant] Amara.

Apartment Kitchen - [Lead] Amara, [Assistant] Jane.

Apartment Hallway - [Lead] Jane, [Assistant] Finnan.

Apartment Block Staircase - [Lead] Emine

Flooring throughout Apartment - [Lead] Finnan, [Assistant] Amara.

Puppet Making:

Frederick - [Lead] Gray, [Assistant] Elena.

Doctor - [Lead] Emine, [Assistant] Elena.

Tray - [Lead] Finnan, [Assistant] Jasmine.

Moving Bird - [Lead] Jasmine.

Neighbours - [Lead] Elena, [Assistant] Jasmine.

Above: Some concept art for the moving bird [by Jasmine].

Significant Props/Sculptures:

Dead Frederick - [Lead] Elena.

Disected Bird - [Lead] Finnan.

Fly - [Lead] Jasmine.

Above: Concept art for Fred during the Doctor's visit and 'dead Fred' [by Elena].

Other Props:

All of the other props will be made and contributed by everyone in the team. We've created a list, seen below, which will be ticked off through a shared Google Doc as things are completed.

Before creating the sets and puppets, we discussed our plans and techniques, and also some ground rules to make sure there was a consistency across the board.

For example, ratio! Exterior = 1:10, Interior 1:7.

Wall heights must all be 34.5cm. Door dimensions must all be 28cm x 13.5cm.

The modular construction of the sets was also discussed to allow the camera to create every shot required. This involves 2 removable walls for the kitchen and 1 removable wall for the hallway.

We all plan to make the walls out of either 6mm thick MDF wood or a dense, strong card.

When it comes to the puppets, we will be using what we learnt in the workshops. Twisting metal wire together and creating the required joints for the centre part. We hope to use the sculpting foam for the heads with supersculpy for the coating of the head and the hands. The clothing will simply be worn straight on top of the armature to achieve the thin design, this will make animating a lot easier.

Frederick and Tray will require removable arms/legs in case of breakages, however the Doctor can be one solid piece as he is only required for 2 shots.

Below are 3 quick diagrams drawn by Gray as a rough plan for each of the characters.