WST: Bakery Props Continued

Tiny polymer clay foods! Making me think of MENDL'S in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel.

It's difficult to photograph the food inside the bakery when I can't open the front of the shops (maybe I could hinge them?) so this photo above was taken through the windows. I quite like the blurry passers-by perspective of this.

Think these donuts need a bit of a glaze to make them look sticky and iced rather than the matte finish.

Making little boxes and trays to display the foods within. Need more hot cross buns here, 3 looks a bit pathetic! Come on Betty, bake some more.

Lighting Experiments

Following a discussion with Rachel, I'm trying to experiment with lighting and how I can create tone in scenes. Using tissue paper and coloured acetate to make 'gels' to filter the lights inside the bakery. The atmosphere changes dramatically just by changing the colour of the gel!

1:1 Tutorial with Rachel

Gregory Crewdson
Sets and building atmosphere with lighting and staging
Photography and coloured gels

Take lots of photos with different lighting/ atmospheres and let the photos tell the stories. Build stories from a collection of photographs.
My photos have been cropped to try and cut out unfinished parts/mess in my studio, but I could EMBRACE this - like Smallfilms- show the seams, celebrate the handmade. OR use cropping to manipulate the audience's experience - are they so small that they are inside the world? Same with camera angles.

More natural lighting outside and electric lighting inside the buildings, make it a believable world. Out/inside.

Bramble Bakery

Today has been a MAKING DAY! I made the 3D model of Betty and then she jumped onto my shoulder and told me to get busy making more pies, clay food and to refurb her bakery. She's quite demanding but she's right.

I made a big batch of clay food for the bakery, though I need to make more storage/display space for this inside the shop (boxes, trays, shelves). 

I added awnings to the front of the shop (I've always wondered what they were called!) but it looks very shabby as I painted over the second floor windows behind them that I didn't want anymore. I might need to remake the whole bakery as it is all a bit shabby but is that the handmade feel I want?
The paint is also uneven and just generally messy! Hike up the refinement, maybe time for Bramble Bakery take two?

The grass I was using underneath has got messy from the paint on the building so I'll need to touch that up before I get any better photos... also need to start drawing and planning how Whistle-Stop Thistle will look as a street/town. Will there be pavements? Cobbled streets? Grass everywhere?

Testing some lighting - look into buying some small lights/dollshouse lights for better photos. The mini studio lights I used here were too bright and big, I'd need some really small lights to work with the scale of the room. Also some street lights too?

Betty Doll

• Colours don't match the sketch - the top is way too blue and needs more of a grey tint
• colour of the trousers are too close to that of the bakery's outside paint so she blends in - needs to be a darker shade
• the body isn't quite round enough! Not the distinctive Thistlefolk shape.

It's great to see this character start to come to life! Whistle-stop Thistle is beginning to take shape.

WST: Character Design - Betty Bramble

Third of the Bramble folk! She's the adult of the family, but I'm not sure that she looks like an adult. They're all around the same size so would adults be much taller? I need to figure out how to distinguish between adult and child Thistle-folk.

I am pleased with this format for the Character Designs.... I usually hate the process of formatting Design boards and find that I squeeze too much information onto slides and overcomplicate things but because I've been making the pages suitable for the child audience, this has helped me to make the slides concise and simple but still exciting to look at (I'm not a minimalism person).

WST: Character Design - Benji Bramble

Second of the Bramble family characters done. I don't know if I've kept Benji's shape/facial structure the same in all the illustrations here, they probably look like they are three different characters. I think I need to draw him over and over until I know exactly how his face goes/his body looks and then do a refined character sheet again.