May 19, 2016
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300 words on my piece
For the Design & Make unit I wanted to create a miniature, using the context of a scale stage piece for a play. The theme of the unit being ‘Surrealism’, I reached my conclusion by thinking about the surrealism of inconsistent scale in a piece - the components of the piece have different scales including 1:50 and 1:125, to create different uses of space as the stage piece rotates for different scenes creating altered perspectives.
My story concept stems from ‘Mortal Engines’ and ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’; surreal stories in which there are clusters of buildings which roam the land. My piece is a combination of different fantasy styled buildings, with aspects like the pirate ship front where the inhabitants would control the movement, a turret for observation, and a water mill to generate energy if the building were to stop by a flowing river.
The piece is situated on a turning platform representing the stage, showing how the actors would use the space, able to interact with some of the pieces which would be to actual size, and how they would use other sides of the piece as backgrounds to give an exaggerated or surreal sense of scale.
A last minute addition was this turret. I had been considering it, but hadn’t really had time, so this piece isn’t finished unfortunately. I will add it for now as i feel it’s important for the balance of the piece, and will finish it off after the project ends as it has the potential to look really interesting. This would be used as a sort of watchtower or vantage point on the moving buildings.
The addition of a water mill would be a nice touch in the sense of purposes of the building. To give the context, it would be used to generate power or grind flour for example, when the building came to rest by a river in this story. This then leads to the logic that the building would roam around always looking for a river to support the life of those inside, as people have always done when making settlements. I feel it’s a nice touch that gives some practical depth.
I’m very pleased with the roof tiles on this, and would use this method again as I think it’s very effective. I painted the building to suggest some water damage around the wheel area as a story-lead detail.
As my concept comes from Howl’s Moving Castle in part, I looked into Ghibli movies and the style of buildings in those. One that stood out to me was a scale model I found of the hotel in Spirited Away, and thought some tiny buildings like those would look interesting on the side, as they cluster well and look very busy and cute.These buildings might be for living in or sleeping in as they have that feel to them, and are in 1:125 scale to match the central piece for perspective.
A style I wanted to incorporate was Art Nouveau, as I find it fascinating and feel it would have a good impact as a decorative part of the piece.
The idea for this piece is that it will sit slightly away from the main building, and would be to the actors’ scale so they could use it as an entrance and exit point, suggesting its purpose as access into the cluster of buildings, while making more dynamic use of the stage space. I will also add some details to this piece when the whole is more finished to make it a more interesting free-standing part, possibly with a sense of being partly built/ broken to suggest its removal from the main body of the building is for the purpose of stage layout.
This small building off the side looks a bit like a garage or little store of some kind. I learned and used a lot of surface work techniques in making this small piece, and am especially happy with how i used tiny shavings of bolsa to look like exposed plywood structure, and the scored stencil card door shutter.