Final Project - Puppet - Young Narrator

With the puppet of the elderly narrator now complete, I had to use it as a basis for the younger narrator's puppet, the one that will represent his appearance in 1920, and at this point I had already made the child version of the narrator, at around 8 years old, and the narrator's father, so I had to combine these elements to create his 22 year old self.

The young narrator is basically an un-textured version of the old one, no wrinkles, facial hair ect. with a different hairstyle and colour, and a fuller face. Considering there's supposed to be a 56 year difference between the two, I think it's worked out quite well, if anything, the old narrator doesn't look old enough...

The body of the young narrator is in a leather jacket with a fur collar, a common style back then, and a casual scruffy shirt, at this time in the film, he isn't particularly wealthy and has just turned to a life of crime, so I gave him clothes that reflected this.
He also has one of the only two professional ball and socket armatures that I have, considering that he is the main character and this puppet will be in a lot of scenes, this seemed a logical choice.

The final puppet's head is a little too big for his body as a result of me sculpting it alongside the elderly narrator's head, who was specifically designed to be slightly larger than the other puppets. Oops.

Final Project - Puppet Body - Narrator

The body of the narrator is designed to be heavier than the others, it has no balsa wood in it, and the armature is just Fimo and wire, with a Milliput core in the head and a counter weight at the bottom. This is because of the BAA farmer puppet from the BAA sting, which had a lightweight balsa armature which caused the puppet to gradually shift in the bed as I was animating it, so hopefully giving this puppet a bit more weight should prevent this.
The clothes worn by the narrator were originally going to be pyjamas, but this just ended up looking too much like a dress shirt, so I changed them to a hospital gown.

The puppets hands are a bit excessively large, I underestimated how much bigger they would become when the plasticine was added to their armatures, I was planning to make the body larger to accommodate this, but my top priority was to make the puppet the right size for the bed, which I did, so the big hands will have to stay.

Final Project - Hand Armatures

Mk I

These were the first hand armatures I created for the narrator's old man puppet, as he is bedridden, most of his movements will be somewhat limited to his hands and face, and the hands I created for the bedridden farmer in the BAA sting did not have armatures, as a result, the fingers couldn't bend very well and broke off a lot.
These armatures were ridiculously awful, I don't know what the hell I was thinking, the wire poked through the plasticine, and there was no defined jointed bend in the fingers, so they just sort of smoothly curved inward, the fingers were also too small, basically, everything I could've done wrong, I did. I'm an idiot, blah blah blah, sod that, we're supposed to learn from our mistakes, so I just tried again...

Mk II

  These were bigger, better and with less stabby potential, but there were still some issues that I was at the time unable to fix, the wire began to untwist itself when bent, due to the capped fingers, which were necessary to prevent the wire poking through the plasticine. I knew that i could fix this problem by putting heat shrink around the fingers, but I couldn't do that before capping them, as the clay had to be baked, which would destroy the heat shrink, and I couldn't do it after, as the heat shrink wouldn't fit over the caps.
I also wanted to try segmenting the fingers, giving them defined joints, but I find Fimo too soft to do very small fiddly bits, so I decided to try Milliput...

Mk III

These definitely tick all the boxes, the Milliput did the job perfectly, as Milliput, unlike Fimo, air dries over the course of several hours, so no heat is required, and you can continue to shape it even as it begins to solidify. This allowed me to heat shrink the fingers, preventing the wire twist issue, cap the fingers, preventing the poking issue, and segment the fingers, preventing the joint issue. And it only took me three goes. However, despite these successes, this took waaaaaay too long and I can't afford to do it again, so these hand armatures will be the only ones used in the film.

Plasticine added, finished.

Final Project - Puppets - Narrator's head

The puppets will not necessarily be shown in the order I made them, but anyway here's the process of constructing the narrator's old puppet, i made a stop-motion film of it, but this was the only puppet head I did this with, because it was a pain in the arse and tripled the time it took to sculpt the head.

This was the first adult narrator head I made, and as a result, it became the basis for the other two, so I tried to give it a distinctive shape. At this time in the film, the character is around 78 years old, I could have added more wrinkles, but I don't want to add too much detail, as it will likely come off during filming and I will have to constantly re-apply it.

Final Project - Basic Story - PART 3

The Narrator is shown in the speakeasy with Henri, Dave and Mae, they are celebrating their defiance of Sal, foolishly ignoring the implications of pissing off the bootlegging kingpin of Chicago. There is a knock on the speakeasy door, Dave answers and is met with a hail of gunfire, the assailant is not directly shown, but is implied to be Vincenzo. Henri grabs a tommy gun, but is also killed, the narrator is shot, but manages to shoot and kill the hitman, but not before Mae is fatally wounded. As she dies in the narrator's arms, Sal is shown smiling in his office, and Frank is shown cowering as he is approached by Friel.
The narrator is then shown lying against the speakeasy bar, with Henri's corpse slumped over it. He is holding his arm, where he was shot, and has Mae's body lying across his lap. He laments his unfathomably poor choice to snub Sal as footsteps are heard, Friel has arrived, and the Narrator's number is up.
He is then shown in a prison cell, he explains he was blamed for all the murders, even Mae's, as Sal's influence corrupted his trial. The camera zooms in on his face, and crossfades back to him as an old man.
The old narrator deplores his past actions, claiming that even though he did not kill Mae, he feels directly responsible for her death, as he grows weary, he briefly contemplates what might have happened had he accepted Sal's offer. His eyes close slowly as he passes away, the shot fades to black, and the credits roll (which will basically be my name 27 times...)
FIN.
I am aware that this story does seem very long, and I may have to make alterations to certain scenes, or cut them altogether to save time, and many of the shots will have to be drawn out to accommodate the narration, so I will shoot all of the key scenes first, so should I run out of time, I can salvage the basic plot outline, hopefully I won't have to do this...

Final Project - Basic Story - PART 2.

Mae is introduced, she is a sultry female who frequents the speakeasy, and as a result becomes the subject of the Narrator's affections. The Narrator will explain that Giovanni forbade him from pursuing these affections as it would compromise him as a valuable employee. This leads the narrator to explain that Giovanni had become greedy and cruel, and was becoming obsessed with his foothold on the bootlegging rackets of Chicago, which ultimately lead to his downfall. His arrest is not shown, but the narrator explains that he killed several prohibition agents in his arrest, was declared insane, sent to an asylum and lobotomized. He is shown in a straight jacket in a padded cell, he looks at the camera and emits a disturbing scream. The next shot shows Friel smiling as he observes his mugshot board, Giovanni is crossed out.
The Narrator is shown looking dejected in the speakeasy, he explains that without Giovanni's sadistic stranglehold, the bootlegging rackets are now dominated by a man called Sal, who is not shown at this time. On the plus side, the narrator explains that he and Mae are now an item, and the ownership of the speakeasy has passed on to Paddy, business is down, but still going steady.
7 years pass, the gang violence has escalated, but the speakeasy is still going strong. The protagonist is now wearing a sharp suit, and admits that due to Giovanni's absence and his relationship with Mae, he has become arrogant and complacent, just as Giovanni said he would. he is then shown talking to Frank, who warns him that Friel is getting dangerously close to their operations, he pompously ignores these claims, and returns to the speakeasy to find Paddy being arrested by Friel and a policeman. The narrator is not arrested, but Friel stares him down with a look that tells him he's next. Paddy is then shown being executed in the electric chair, while Friel and a policeman look on.

The Narrator now owns the speakeasy, he, Dave and Mae are struggling to keep the business afloat, until they are approached by Vincenzo, an associate of the now legendary Sal, who informs them that Sal wishes to meet the narrator. Sal is introduced, he is basically Al Capone, and is shown sat at his desk in a decadently furnished office. He offers the narrator a large sum of money for his services and the acquisition of the speakeasy. In a foolish move, the narrator rejects the offer, his misplaced bravado convincing him that he can manage without Sal's influence. This, obviously, angers Sal, and signals the beginning of the end of the narrator's career as a bootlegger.

Final Project - Basic Story - PART 1

I am currently working on the screenplay for the film, but it is quite patchy at the moment with several random scenes that haven't been linked together yet. So I am going to write a basic synopsis of the story that is currently subject to change until the screenplay has been ironed out a bit. This film may sound long, but most of the story is told through a narration, with the key plot points being shown (not everything written will physically appear on screen.) The story is primarily set in 1920s Chicago, during the prohibition era and the rise of the bootlegger, and is framed with a 1970s setting, with the majority of the story told through flashbacks. The title of the film is 'Chicago Overcoats' which is 1920's slang for coffins, and as most of the cast end up dead, i thought this would be appropriate. Other titles i briefly considered were 'Chicago Lightning' which is 1920's slang for gunfire, (but this sounded too much like a flamboyant musical, with sparkly costumes and the like), and 'XVIII', representing the eighteenth amendment to the United States constitution, which banned alcohol in America for 13 years, (but this sounded way too pretentious, as I doubt a lot of people would get the reference.)

The story will begin with the narrator as an old man being admitted to hospital after a drunken brawl in 1976. He is moved to a bed for observation. Through a voice-over narration (implied to be his internal monologue) he will explain that he is an alcoholic waster who once had it all, got greedy and pissed it all away. He will reflect on his childhood, an unhappy one on the streets of early 1900s Chicago with a drunken, abusive Irish immigrant father and a downtrodden prostitute mother. In a drunken rage, the father kills the mother, beats the young narrator and kills himself. The child is left alone.
Back in the 'present day'(1976) the narrator will then be given the news that his X-rays have revealed multiple tumors and he will not be leaving the hospital for what little time he has left. He will cryptically reveal that he feels this is retribution for his past and then resume his internal musings and flashback to his early twenties in 1920s Chicago.
Now an adult, he is working for an Italian-American crime entrepreneur called Giovanni, who has taken him under his wing. He stares at a poster for Prohibition on an alley wall, smiling to himself. He explains that the Volstead Act has opened up limitless opportunities for the downtrodden willing to break the law. He then introduces Giovanni as his mentor and the owner of the speakeasy he is supplying with booze, along with his associates, who are then introduced in a tracking shot of the bar, sat next to each other. Paddy, an Irish immigrant, is shown drunkenly swaying, and Midnight Dave, a suave con-man, who is shown carefully examining a tommy gun. The barman, a stoical French immigrant named Henri will also be introduced, looking weary and disgruntled as he wipes down the bar.
This will be followed up with a shot of the narrator and his two friends wearing face bandanas and wielding guns as they stand over a body next to several barrels of booze. He will then explain how they don't get caught, by introducing Frank, a homeless civil war veteran who is the eyes and ears of the streets, and sells the narrator information on upcoming police raids and other bootleggers activities.
This will lead to the introduction of Agent Friel, a prohibition agent who has been tracking the gangs activities, the intro will be a short one, showing him in his office carefully observing a board of mug-shots of the various characters, some of whom have yet to be introduced. This scene is not narrated, as the narrator wouldn't have been aware of these events at this time.

Final Project - Cast List

OK, so I think i mentioned that this film was going to serve as a modelmaking portfolio, and would have a large cast, well it does. 16 characters, with 19 puppets total, some characters having more than one body and others sharing similar bodies. As of writing this, the cast list is pretty much set, with no changes planned, and all but 3 of the puppets are complete. The names are subject to change.
Cast
1) Narrator - Unnamed, he has 4 puppets, one as a child, two as an adult (one in standard scruffy 1920's clothes and one in a sharp suit) and one as an old man, dying in a hospital bed.

2) Narrator's mother - She will appear briefly at the beginning and is a prostitute.

3) Narrator's father - He will also appear briefly at the beginning and is an irish immigrant.

4) Nurse - The same puppet from the BAA sting, she will be in a few of the hospital scenes (and has new arm armatures, as the old ones were crap).

5) Doctor Rothstein - He will also appear in the hospital scenes, and is the one who informs the Narrator of his ill-health.

6) A dog.

7) Sal - A gangster whose appearance resembles Al Capone's, he will lend the Narrator money at some point. He is very untrustworthy.

8) Paddy - An Irish immigrant and bootlegger, befriends the Narrator.

9) Giovanni - An Italian-American criminal entrepreneur, speakeasy owner and mentor and employer to the Narrator (he has two puppet bodies, one normal and one in a straight jacket as he is institutionalized at some point.)

10) Frank - An eccentric, elderly, homeless civil war veteran, he serves as an informant to the Narrator.

11) Midnight Dave - Another bootlegger and friend of the Narrator.

12) Henri - A French immigrant and bartender at the speakeasy.

13) Vincenzo - A Sicilian immigrant, associate of Sal and frequent patron at the speakeasy. He introduces the Narrator to Sal

14) Mae, a frequent patron at the speakeasy, and the subject of the Narrator's affections.

15) Agent Friel - A prohibition enforcer who ruthlessly pursues the Narrator and his associates. He is the primary antagonist.

16) Policeman - basically just a random policeman who will be used to give context in certain scenes.

I know I haven't gone into any explicit detail on the individual characters, but that's on the way.

Final Project - Even more Research

A particular 1920s 'gangster' I have researched is Johnny Torrio and his 'mentor' relationship with Al Capone. Torrio was the man responsible for Capone's move from Brooklyn to Chicago, as Capone needed to dodge a murder investigation, and was also the man who hired Capone to a bar in Coney island that was owned by a renowned mobster.
Once in Chicago, Torrio put Capone to work as a bouncer at one of his brothels, and a year later when prohibition was implemented, he had his associate Giacomo 'Big Jim' Colosimo (who was against venturing into bootlegging and perfectly happy being a plain old pimp) killed (possibly by Capone, or some bloke called Frankie Yale, who was Capone's original boss in New York, and is the renowned mobster mentioned earlier), took over his criminal empire and began bootlegging himself, with Capone's help. Colosimo was, at one point, married to Torrio's Aunt, and was being blackmailed by a gang calling themselves 'The Black Hand', so at his Aunt's request, Torrio arranged to pay off the blackmailers, then murdered them all when they showed up to collect. Wonderful. However, shortly before his assassination, Colosimo unceremoniously dumped Torrio's Aunt in favor of a young actress, so Torrio probably had no real qualms with having the horny tubster whacked. There's a lot more, but it's relatively inconsequential and I'm not trying to write a Wikipedia article here.














I plan to use this relationship as inspiration for my protagonist's descent into crime.
I will start with my protagonist working a legitimate job for a certain 'Torrio-esq' individual at the start of the prohibition, who will be an entrepreneurial mobster and owner of a speakeasy, then the protagonist will be offered the chance to bootleg, which he accepts. I will not be basing my protagonist too much on Al Capone, definitely not in looks, as Capone was a fat ugly bastard, and i plan to make my character a lot less of a raging psychopath than Capone was, mostly because there wouldn't be enough people in the cast for him to kill, plus I intend for him to survive the events, as he is the narrator, and that would be very unlikely if he was a trigger happy nutter who shoots everyone in the face.
This relationship is also partly inspired by two characters from 'Boardwalk Empire' - Nucky Thompson and Jimmy Darmody, with a few differences, as in the show Nucky wants Jimmy to avoid a life of crime, whereas my protagonist will be encouraged to indulge himself in heinously illegal activities at others expense.

Final Project - More Research

One source I have been using for aesthetic research is the HBO series 'Boardwalk Empire', the show is set in 1920, centers around the prohibition, and the attempts made to capitalize on it. The first episode of the show is perhaps the most interesting, it begins on the night of prohibition being enforced, and tells a story of corrupt politicians and up and coming gangsters. It follows historical accuracy to a certain point, but obviously is a bit liberal with it in a lot of places as it is an American TV show.
In terms of aesthetic appeal, the show is a good way to see what sort of clothes were worn back then, my own research has already given me more or less what i need, but 'Boardwalk Empires' pilot episode was directed by Martin Scorsese and supposedly cost $18 million to make, so it couldn't hurt to take note.

One thing the series unfortunately lacks are speakeasies, as the scenes set in Chicago take place in a Bordello, and Atlantic City, where the show is primarily set, was infamously popular for largely ignoring  prohibition and getting everyone pissed out of their faces, (albeit expensively) earning it the nickname 'The World's Playground', which is lovely and all, but it doesn't really help me, as I plan to have a speakeasy as my primary set. I've found several (grainy) images of speakeasies from 1920, but i was hoping that this series would feature them extensively. Oh well, back to the research...

 Hang on, the DVD extras have a speakeasy tour on them. Cool.
And it's on Youtube. Awesome.

Final Project-Revised story, and more research

After researching the living crap out of 1920's America, and the effect the prohibition had on the development of organized crime, i have decided to set my film in Chicago, although I probably won't make any direct reference to this, just imply it. The main character of the film will begin as an old man, dying in a hospital bed (the same bed from the BAA film, just altered slightly to keep it fresh,) and the whole story will be told through flashbacks, that will be narrated by this old guy as he reflects upon his own past, eventually culminating in him dying in his sleep. The hospital scenes will basically be a framing device for the whole story, and the narration will allow me to avoid lip synching, as that would triple the production time and drive me insane.

The general way the story will be told is inspired by Adam Elliot's 2003 Oscar winning stop motion film Harvie Krumpet, which is narrated all the way through, with none of the characters actually saying anything (although they do make noises, usually just incoherent gibbering) . The amazing thing about this film is that the animation is relatively simplistic, the characters don't really move all that much, they spend most of the time fixed on one spot, and their actions are quirky and twitchy, which is very effective and gives the film a unique, almost childlike charm. I plan to use a similar method, but instead the characters movement will be more subtle and less cartoony. I also quite like the idea of following an individual through the course of his life, from beginning to end.
If you have the time you should watch Harvie Krumpet, it is 22 minutes long, but it's proper good like.

Final Project-Story Ideas and initial research

As I'm writing this, I have already decided exactly what my story is, so I'm going to have to start from the beginning with how i got to this point, and how my original idea was a big cliched bag of arse. (my current story is still a little cliched, but i don't think it's nearly as bad as it was) In the original story, my main character and plot focus was going to be the boss of a mafia that operated during the prohibition era, basically trying to take over as the 'kingpin' of organized crime through a series of delightful murder based japes.
But after a lot of research on the subject of prohibition, i realized that organized crime wasn't really all that organized back in 1920, as the Cosa Nostra (Sicilian Mafia) had only been active in the United States since the late 19th Century, was made out of poor Italian immigrants running away from Mussolini and made relatively little profit from protection rackets and robberies, it was the huge profit made from bootlegging that propelled many small time thuggish criminals into something resembling the modern day 'mafia' archetype. The closest thing to a Godfather style 'Don' would probably be Arnold Rothstein, who was basically the Steve Jobs of organized crime, and was supposedly the first of many individuals to look at prohibition as a business opportunity.

After all this research, i decided to shift focus to a younger character who begins with nothing, as many did in 1920, gain his riches through bootlegging and a light sprinkling of murder, only to lose it all through a combination of too much bravado and basically being a dick to those closest to him. He would then grow old filled with regret at how he destroyed his life, and die feeling bitter about his life choices.
I have kept that basic plot line, but it has been altered many, many times, with characters being invented, designed, scrapped and replaced several times a week. For SEVEN MONTHS...

Final Project

Right then, it's about time I started writing on this thing again, I have a lot of posts to do, (so this is all going to be in past tense for a while) as i have been working on this project for around 7 months now, and pretty much all of my notes, research, designs ect. are written on paper in mad chicken scratch writing that no-one but me can read, so I am finally copying it all up onto this blog before i lose it, or mistake it for rubbish and throw it away.
When thinking up ideas for what the film will be about, my first thought were the aesthetic considerations, I basically wanted to make a film with characters that i would enjoy making, and develop the rest around that, the films primary goal is to serve as a modelmaking portfolio, so it will have quite a large cast. So i came up with four different types of character genres I fancied having a go at making, they were Cowboys, Pirates, Victorians and Gangsters. I've already done Cowboys before, so that one was out, and Aardman seemed to have Pirates pretty much covered. So I had to choose between Victorians and Gangsters, initially i went with Victorians, and came up with a plot involving a sort of spoof Jack the Ripper and the policeman hunting him, but the more i thought about this idea, the less i actually wanted to do it, so... Gangsters.
Well bootleggers actually, i diverted my original concept of a mafia-esq group of characters to a 1920s setting, using the American prohibition as my initial starting point.

BAA - Finished

All done!, heres the final product. There are a few things about it i don't quite like, but had to compromise due to the 25 second specification, for example, i would like to have had the patient chart and the farmer's reaction shot held for longer, but this would have extended the length to over 25 seconds. The sound is also very quiet, but I care more about the animation than that. I used Mozart's Requiem for the music, or at least 25 seconds of it, no particular reason for that, but i think it works, particularly towards the end of the film.
The animation went better than expected, considering that i made the armatures myself, i wasn't sure quite how it would work out, it was a bit of an experiment really, but now i know that the armatures work well, i will make more in the future. They're not as good as the ball and socket ones, but i only have 2 of those and they cost a hell of a lot more.
I'm very happy with the lighting, at least for the first part, i think that the lighting change when the nurse comes in was a bit lurid, but it was necessary for the story.
Animating with glycerol was great, i animated it a bit too fast, but it's not really easy to control once it starts dripping, it did the trick though, and is now all over the set.
I also spent about 30 hours making that bloody nurse, and she's only in the film for the best part of 5 seconds, it was worth it though, and I'm definitely going to have to re-use her at some point in a future animation, along with the bed. (Oh, and i know that the Youtube video is 26 seconds long, the animation is actually 25 seconds long, the final shot of the logo got extended by about 0.2 seconds when i uploaded it for some reason.)

BAA - Logo

Incorporating the BAA logo into my film was a bit harder than i expected, originally, i was going to have the logo on the back of the nurse's clipboard, but her hand covered most of the back of it, so i decided to try a put it in one of the paintings on the wall, but i scrapped that idea because it was crap. I then had an idea that would have involved the logo sliding down the outside of the window, but this seemed pointless and had nothing to do with the story. So in the end i decided to replace the farmer's patient information on the clipboard with the logo, and basically just chuck it on the floor, implying that the nurse had thrown it in exasperation. I will end the animation with this shot.
I hand drew the logo because it suits the 'handmade' look of all my props, plus i don't have a printer...

BAA - Mid shoot clean up

Filmed a little over half of the film now, it's going quite well, apart from a few reshot scenes due to camera issues, and switching from shooting at 24 fps to 12 fps, as the animation was just far too fast. now that the nurse is about to enter the scene, i have a chance to clean up the set a bit. The farmer has slumped a bit too much, and one of his legs has fallen off, along with one of the sheep's heads (his eye came out too, due to the glycerol getting in his eye socket.) I also need to re-arrange the pillow and duvet, as they have both moved a bit too much to the right of the bed during filming. Also, there are eyelids and glycerol everywhere...

BAA - Research

Another film i watched for research is an odd little animation called 'Tomorrow' directed by Bob Lee. The film itself, in terms of story and characters, whilst interesting, wasn't really inspiring, the lighting in the film was fantastic, and very well conveyed the anguish of the main character. This is exactly the sort of lighting i wanted for my film, particularly using a blind to create a unique effect.

Heres the film - http://vimeo.com/33974752
And a screenshot of the lighting

BAA - Research

Meant to post this a while ago, my research for this project was, unsurprisingly, 'Wallace and Gromit' and 'Shaun the Sheep', particularly the latter, as the show has no dialogue and all the story is told through facial expressions and movement, a technique i will be utilizing extensively. I have avoided imitating Aardman's model-making style, and to be honest I'm not a huge fan of the look of their sheep, although using Glycerol to animate the sheep's tears was directly inspired by the crying sheep from 'A Close Shave'. Also my farmer and the farmer from 'Shaun the Sheep' do look somewhat similar, especially the hair, but that is unintentional, or i did it subconsciously. (i like my farmer more anyway, he has eyes.)

BAA - Cut Sheep

Unfortunately, due to the positioning of the camera, i have to cut one of the sheep, guess which one? yes it's the retarded one. I was originally going to have 2 on either side of the bed, but it didn't work out with the camera angle i wanted, so i put 3 on one side and 1 on the other, but i felt it would have been pointless to have a single sheep on one side, as it would be out of shot for the majority of the film, and then randomly appear at the end, so most people watching would be wondering where the hell this sheep came from, and might mistakenly believe it has significance to the story, which it doesn't, so he's gone.

BAA - Finished set and lighting

Here's what the finished set looks like, with all the props and characters in place and the lighting that will be used for the first 2/3rds of the film, the last part will be when the nurse enters and shows the farmer that he is being an over-dramatic div, so to change the setting a bit, when she enters, she will turn on the light and 'ruin the atmosphere'.

BAA - Farmer + Bed

Heres the farmer in the bed, as he will be filmed and without the duvet, so you can see his 'legs' (but you're not supposed to see that...)

BAA - Chair

Made a chair, it may not even appear in shot, but i am planning to reuse it at some point in my next film.
Going to test it's stability by glueing a small piece of metal to the base of one of the legs, and hold it to the set with a tiny magnet.

BAA - Props

Added some props to the hospital room set, mostly just pictures on the walls and some furniture, makes the room look less empty and helps it look more like a private room in a hospital, which is the look i was going for, mostly to avoid having to make multiple beds that you would find on a ward.

 Not sure why i decided to make a syringe triptych, but i like it nonetheless...

BAA - Bed

Making the bed for the farmer was a lot harder than any prop i've ever made before, it had to be sturdy enough to support the weight of the farmer and the sheep, and needed to have blankets, pillow, ect.

 Bed starts with the mattress, which is just a big bit of MDF cut to size and rounded at the corners

 Bed posts are 4 metal tubes, cut to size and smoothed at the tips so they're all the same level

 Mattress is painted and the 4 legs are stuck to pieces of balsa, which are stuck to the bed

 Material is stuck to the mattress to make it more mattressy, and side skirts are added to make it look like a bed instead of a table.

Backboard added, pillow and duvet added, (cheers to Angie for sewing the pillow together, i can't sew to save my life.) bed finished.

GLYCEROL!!!

I got me a bottle of glycerol to make the sheep's tears!, i've been looking for this stuff for bloody ages, i finally found it in Boots for 89p.