Been a bit wet this summer, hasnt it?

Well, been a while...  The summer-off from making models didn't really happen, as I ended up wading into a couple of big projects, more on which soon when they're finished.  Real life also got in the way of updates, having left one day job, restarted another and started new at something else, so verrrrry busy...  Anyway, in dubious celebration of what has been a very wet summer, lets have a project about flooding!

When I was but a younger nerd than I am now, and seriously getting into post-apocalyptic fiction (I blame being a depressed midlander, as do most of my friends and family who despair of the fact that I would apparently welcome the End of Days as a fantastic photographic opportunity rather than a calamity), I did a project at college focusing on sea-level rise.  I did a series of pictures of abandoned flooded cities, in a variety of media, and did a bit of photography using a home-made water tank with some toy buses and cardboard buildings in.  Naturally being something I’d made from recycled Perspex with a hot-glue gun in an afternoon at college whilst avoiding real work, it leaked like a sieve and ruined a table and the soaked the kitchen floor, and the project was abandoned.

When I was doing the model village project, I experimented with incorporating some of the flooded world imagery, imagining a bit of Britannia which had suffered from catastrophic sea level rise.  The attempt was a bit cobbled-together at the last minute, and used a plant bedding tray.  It wasn't very satisfactory though, and wasn't included in the final image selections.

Fast-forward to 2010 and I rediscovered the pictures, and now armed with a recently acquired underwater camera bag designed to take a compact digital, I thought I might find a use for the mothballed Britannia miniatures.  So what resulted was much mucking around with models, and annoying my in-laws by using their huuuuuge swimming-pool of a bath to shoot some pics, armed only with a box of old toys and models, a basic compact Fuji, the waterproof camera bag, some Christmas tree lights and a playlist of the Prodigy (for that suitably apocalyptic atmosphere), I set to work. 

Everything had to be glued down (good old hot glue gun), and then further weighted down in the bath.  Note the highly complex lighting rig, which was a set of blue LED Christmas tree lights.  Bubbling effects in the water used an old BBC Vis-FX trick, of dropping water-soluble aspirin into the water just before shooting.

 

Most of the pictures were based off the original sketches and drawings I'd done way back at college, showing the aftermath of the supposed collapse of society as the sea continued to rise- cliches and all (hospital trains, barricades, etc etc... yes, I know, so very Muse music video, and slightly cringe-worthy to me now).  Some of the experiments, such as the 'looking up at a submarine' above really didn't work.

 The biggest problem with the shoot (of which there were oh SO many) was that the final pictures really didn't look like they were shot underwater.  Maybe with a better underwater camera, it would be better.  The other major realisation was that I was beyond stupid, setting myself a hideously complex project of shooting underwater, and having everything underwater.  Back in the golden age of Thunderbirds and Stingray, all they did was put a fish tank between the set and the camera, and the models never got wet.  Quite why that never occurred to me I shall never know, but its an avenue to explore in the future... One idea I've had is to actually shoot something similar but actually out in a real environment, but that's another long-term project.



Holidays

Holiday Time, as illustrated by "On The Beach" from the Britannia Model Village shoot, for want of anything more suitable.

Bit of a hiatus with the blog at the moment- work and holidays interfering somewhat.  Still, model-making might occasionaly feel like I'm wasting the precious gift of life gluing bits of plastic and card together, however it is my form of stress relief (and Airfix kits are marginally cheaper than narcotics) so who cares.  As regards model making, some work has been ongoing in between housework, actual work, and freelance work, just nothing in quite an advanced enough state to post on here at the moment. 

Mainly because it might motivate me to finish them, here is a list of the projects I'm working on at the moment (all of which ought to appear on here over the next 6 months or so):

*Warhammer 40K scratchbuilt Thunderbolt and Marauder aircraft (for use in an experimental photography shoot, trying to do all movement effects and explosions etc in-shot without resorting to photoshop).  For this one I'm also building a couple of special camera rigs too, which is adding to the complications and the build time somewhat...

*Dalek Kevin (a few of my mates who look at this blog may remember this from waaaay back as concept art, the miniature is nearly done).  Name altered from the original Chav-Dalek to appease the sensitivities of my friend Beth, who along with surprising me somewhat for reading this blog, has -perhaps rightly- accused me of participating in the act of Demonising the Working Class Youth of Britain.  Having been on the recieving end of more than one casually thrown brick from a member of said person whilst living in Carlisle, I stand by my demonisation, but for the sake of not starting a riot, I shall accept the namechange :)

*Project: "S-H-E-D" (large ongoing build for a comic)

*Project: Provisionally entitled "Here the Forgotten", abandoned vehicles built to resemble animals.  Trust me, it will make more sense when I post the concept art.

*Project: "Sunken World" (a return to some underwater shoots I did a few years back, with some better kit)

*Project: "The Angel" (Something I'm working on for a competition brief, leading off from the angel imagery I was using for Britannia/Steampunk stuff).

*Project: "Space" (unimaginative title I know, but I'm experimenting with shooting miniatures of spacecraft, in the best Red Dwarf/Space 1999 tradition)

*Project: "The Century Survey" (I've odd bits and pieces of Steampunk designs still to be made, but the project is kind of on the back burner for the time being)

*On top of these, theres also a small model railway built to represent some of the stuff I did for the Britannia Model Village, as well as a couple of modifications of some CJ Ward 3D-Printed loco bodies, which I'm going to heavily hack around just to show what kind of levels of modifications can be carried out with these starter-kits.

So rather a lot there going on- most of the models are part-built, so hopefully now we've got the house sorted, I can find the odd hour here and there in which to finish models and actually do some productive photography with them...

Past Projects- Sleipnir

Been a little while... again.  Been busy with some projects which should be appearing on here in a bit, but had nothing particularly finished to condition that I wanted to post.  So, to avoid going another month without updates, another past project, and a concept piece which has found its way into half a dozen projects since.

Sleipnir

Back in the day, when I was on the Foundation Year at Stourbridge I really got into making miniatures for projects (unhindered access to a large workshop facility full of power tools helped somewhat).  For one of my projects I decided to explore various aspects of mythology and prediction.  By my terms the resulting sprawling project was an Exploratory Process, though my lecturers described it as an overambitious, rambling mess with no conclusions that almost got me thrown off the course, and which scraped about the bare minimum marks.  Cest la vie.

Anyway, part of the project involved looking at various statues, including this beauty:

Commisioned by Midland Metro, it stands above the tram depot in Wednesbury (which has Norse connections) and represents Odins 8-legged horse.  My Little Mythological War Horse, if you will.  Personally, I love this statue- its one of the very few bits of public art anywhere in the midlands borough that I dont despise.  In an area of high vandalism and metal theft, its astonishing something like this can be left there.  I've always treasured a hope that when I'm a rich, famous (alright stop laughing) succesful person, with a mansion somewhere, I could buy this statue and have it somewhere in my Grounds.

As part of the project, and with a couple of hours to kill in the workshops, I decided to make a model inspired by the statue, just so I could play with photographing miniatures a bit- the wings idea was so I could try some pegasus-type, flying shots.  The body is a piece of thick MDF cut and profiled with a jigsaw, and the wings are thick wire with layered card (cut with shaped-edged scissors) to give styalised representations of feathers.

The model was shot in a box with a photocopied backdrop of clouds, and cotton wool clouds.  This isnt the best shot from that project as you can see the edge of the sky, but it is the only surviving image (two laptop crashes, and a very early digital camera, saw to that).

The model ended up on a shelf at home, and was taken to University just because it was something I was attatched to.  It therefore snook into several other projects, including the Britannia Model Village where it appeared as a piece of sculpture on the roof of an art gallery.  No doubt Sleipnir will ride again, in whatever madcapped project appears next...   

Happy Up Here

Not a proper update today- still trying to recover from the stupid hard-drive fail of the laptop the other week.  So, something a bit silly instead- technically making stuff, in a loose sense though :)

At work, we had a load of wine glasses delivered.  And being the cheapskate that I am, I decided to use the cardboard for model projects (in best Blue-Peter fashion). 

 Whilst dismantling the cardboard, I noticed the shape that it folded down into.  And being a nerd, the first thought to occur was... SPACE INVADER!

Which, naturally enough, led to this large-scale Art Attack on the kitchen floor, partly out of nerdy love for Space Invaders, partly out of a desire to do something creative, mostly out of an attempt to avoid real work that night.

 Proper updates soon, with a bit of luck :)

Cheerio.

Steampunk- The Angel of Britannia

   Long time since the last post, largely due to Super Crazy Laptop Death, caused by a combination of a faulty piece of virus-scan software, a virus, and my foolish attempts to use the Isambard Kingdom Brunel Mk1 Steam-Driven Laptop I own.  So without much further rambling, an update!

The Angel

   This is something that started with the Britannia Model Village project, and ended up in the Steampunk project.  Being as the Steampunk stuff is set in an imagined 'past' of Britannia, it made sense to backdate some of the visual imagery.  That and the fact that I was too lazy to design a load of new iconography contributed to this piece of miniature sculpture.

   In the Model Village project, the titular Britannia was represented in Government/Propaganda by the winged angel design, below.  This appeared on posters, vehicles, everywhere an official logo needed to be seen.

   Taking inspiration from the Angel of the North statue, I decided to make a version of the Angel to appear in the pics; in particular a shot of a militarised border between Cumbria and Yorkshire.  The statue was a classic cobbled-together-the-day-before-the-shoot project, built around a barbie doll bought from a charity shop (believe me, not the most embaressing props-purchase at a charity shop I've made as a photographer), a flower pot, some modelling clay, and a bit of scrap card.  Detailing didnt need to be up to much as it was only going to be seen blurry in the background.

 The completed model as it appeared 'on-set', photographed at the seaside at Port Carlisle during one of the many shoots carried out there for the project (being as the other location availible was our cat-shit-filled back yard at the student house).  To the obvious and lasting delight of Amy who was assisting with the shoot, the model of the angel was so recently-completed that the paint was still wet, and managed to stain the back of the drivers seat in her car when we were driving back.

   Forward to the Steampunk project, and the need to recreate the statue.  This time more effort would go into it, for a rather more extravagent piece.  The original model was long-since destroyed when the majority of the model village props were cleared out before I moved house.  So the only option was another embarassing trip to the shops to purchase a donor-doll, and then to cobble together anything else from bits in the scrapbox.

   The idea is that in this 1901, Steampunk-version of Britannia, there are numerous statues like this, celebrating all thats best about the power, industry, militarism (all the jingoistic Victorian/Edwadian values really) of the country.  And thus the statue of the angel would sit atop a load of sculptural representations of factories, mills, trains, warships, etc etc.  There was a sketch done in readiness for this, but generally if it looked to scale and was spare, on it went.

Once again, the wings were cut from 3mil mountcard, the base this time is 5mil foamboard. sheeted with card and stone-printed paper.  As can be gauged from the above shots, the piece is pretty large, unwieldy, and difficult to store/move, to the ongoing delight of Amy who has to put up with me filling the house with this stuff.

What a difference a coat of paint makes, though its still a little too glossy, and needs weathering to remove the shine.  So far though the Angel has appeared as a background object in one of the test shots for the project, as well as this quick concept montage, seen below.  A few tweaks remain to be done on the piece before it can be properly called finished however.

I Like Trains :)

   A few years ago I ended up having a hilariously long and laborious bout of dental surgery done, removing wonky teeth, wisdom teeth, other teeth, and generally making my life a misery ("by the way, did we mention that if we nick this nerve here whilst we're operating, theres a small but very real chance you'll lose all control of your lower jaw for the rest of your life? Right, Jolly Good, lets get on with it then...").  Because the work was being done in the Birmingham Dental Hospital, it meant I was effectively house-bound for over a week at my parents house, without the ability to really go out and do much, eat, drink and so on.  So in an effort to relieve boredom and give myself something to do, I decided to build a model railway in a week from the various bits and pieces lying around in old boxes around my room from when I was younger.  I was very much into model railways when I was younger, but generally put it aside in my early teens to avoid giving the bullying bastards at school any more ammunition... though as a speccy spotty sci-fi nerd, I suspect they had plenty to be going on with anyway without needing to call me a trainspotter.

   At this point I should mention that despite an interest in railway photography, trains, and all things miniatures, I have a bit of a problem with finishing projects, which is why I have never in fact completed a model railway (the only stuff I ever seem to finish are models built for projects with actual deadlines).  The above shot is from the only railway I've ever managed to get to near-finished condition, something I built whilst at Uni so I could try miniatures photography with a new camera.  But, with little else to do on this week of dentistry hell, I set to work...

 The baseboards were offcuts from the scenic diaromas built for the Britannia Model Village exhibition in Birmingham (Jan 09).  Scenic bits came from the various boxes of junk that anyone making miniatures ends up collecting.  I dont think it was too bad for a weeks work really, and it kept me sane.

 At this point in my life however I was technically living in Yorkshire (staying with the family of my then-fiance, now-wife Amy), and after the dentistry was done and I could chew solid food again, I ended up going back to the north.  And obviously I couldnt carry these train layouts on a real train back to Yorkshire, so no doubt to my parents delight, my old bedroom ended up filled with yet more junk whilst I buggered off back up North.
   Nothing else was done with this layout, and indeed it stayed gathering dust until me and Amy finally won our battle against the UK Economy and the Treasury, and fooled Fate into letting us get a house of our own.  My parents were (naturally enough) sick of the fact my old room was filled to the rafters with half built model kits and old toys, rendering it unusable as a guest room, so they drove up one weekend with the car filled with this stuff.  Having filled our new spare room in Yorkshire with the resultant delivery of 20-odd years of my life, and having a desperate need to clear said room for guests, I then ended up taking the decision to dismantle this railway.  Not least because I also needed to canibilise parts for the Steampunk project I was by now getting into.  These snapshots then represent the only visual record of the model anyway- I shot these the day I broke the models up for parts, just quickly rushing outside to get a few pics inbetween the rain.

   In hindsight seems a bit of a shame, as with a little photoshop jiggery-pokery (tecnhical term) the model looks half decent.  Might build something a bit bigger and better for photography purposes soon, depending on how much I think Amys patience will hold up with me filling the house with yet more models...

Abandoned-ish Project: Dreadnought "Britannia"

You see Mister Prime minister? You see?! THIS is what happens when a nerd ends up Long-Term Unemployed... with access to foam board, card, and Battlestar Galactica DVD’s.

This was part of a speculative commission (in my limited and mediocre defence); an artist I knew wanted collaborators for a space-based comic, and after I mentioned that I did stuff with miniatures, she wanted to see some sort of evidence. So a plan to build and shoot a model space ship emerged, and I set to work with foamboard and scalpel.

The inspirations are equal parts Battlestar and the little-known, but fantastic 80’s Japanese kids TV puppet series “Starfleet X-Bomber” (I say kids tv show, but it had a fairly staggering amount of death, destruction, and violence). This gem was something I grew up watching, fondly remembered, and tracked down on DVD recently. Look it up on Youtube, look beyond the cheesy voiceovers, and marvel at the miniature effects instead, which is what I always tended to do.

The problem that started it all- the Hangar Pod with functional lighting and interior...

The original configuration, before the stepped-neck was added, which also contibuted to making the rest of the model that bit longer and more unwieldy...

As most of my projects do, this one suffered a degree of what our American friends call Mission-Creep (or the “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, Then He’ll Want…” effect). Being lazy, to avoid having to build a separate hangar-bay set, I decided to make an interior for each of the hangar pods. The size of these was dictated by the size of the interior lighting- all I could afford on a budget of about nothing was some poundworld LED push-lights, about the size of a coaster. I then ended up having to scale the body of the ship to match the hangar pods. Which meant that the nose had to be scaled to match the body. The mad plan then formed to have some degree of internal illuminations for the fuselage, nose, and engines- so poundland LED torches were bought, which dictated the size of the engine pods and other parts. By this time the decision was also taken to have the model constructed from parts which could slot together, allowing it to dismantle down into pieces that were easier to store (a rare nod towards practicality for one of my builds- given that I don’t have the massive shed/lockup/aircraft hanger that miniatures builds often require).

This led to the main problem- with the model being constructed in sections, without properly realising it until it was too late I ended up with a huge foamcard model that was about 3 and bit foot long when assembled, heavy, unwieldy, and which would have been next to impossible to hang up from wires and shoot, assuming I could have found anywhere to actually shoot it. By this time the artist I was wanting to work with announced she had abandoned the space comic anyway, making the whole excersie a collosal waste of time.

So the thing was relegated to the cellar, and abandoned as a cock-up. If anything I was embarrassed that I’d wasted a lot of time building something like this (despite the fact this was meant to be my “hour a day to calm myself down after job hunting” remedy, the Job Centre put much effort into making me feel incredibly guilty that I wasn’t spending every waking moment job hunting… and I only dared mention photography to them once, and was told “that’s just wasting time, photography will never get you a real job in an office or kitchen!”. Not that I’m still wound up about my time signing-on or anything…).

Back to the model- finally last year it was dismantled and stripped for parts, mainly because having moved out of their house a while after construction stopped, I suspected my In-Laws patience with bits of half built model kits cluttering their place up would seriously strain our family relationship.

Not the end of the saga though- being a massive Red Dwarf/UFO/Space 1999 fan, I still fancy having a go at doing spaceship pics, so am rebuilding the Dreadnought design to a much more manageable scale recycling some of the parts- I have a desire to actually do some miniatures photography with spaceships this autumn. However, all models will be built to a more suitable scale. Lesson learned. Hopefully.


Footnote.
Its quite sad that as I type this, I’ve learned of the death of Peter Wragg. An experienced Visual Effects… well genius to be frankly honest, his work with miniatures on shows like Thunderbirds and especially Red Dwarf got me hooked on this sort of miniatures build in the first place. RIP.