So, the past couple weeks has seen a return to set building, once again.  It’s been a while.

I had to build a scaled-up version of the copper pot, so that I could animate what’s inside of it in an overhead closeup.  I found a white plastic container at a local favourite junk store — Active Surplus — and modified it by lopping off the bottom (to make it the right proportion to the original pot), attaching a new, clear, plexy bottom (so that I can underlight it), sanding off a decal on the top, adding handles, etc.   (Thanks to Phil and Alli for their help with the copper paint and the vegetable modeling…)  The “3.2” written in the above pic was my formula for scaling the elements — I measured all the dimensions of the miniatures and multiplied by this magic number.

I think it turned out to be a relatively convincing version of the smaller stovetop and pot.  I added a few embellishments, just because it looked sorta plain without them:  black handles, and a more detailed, 70s-ish pot lid, also with a black handle.  (The plastic pail happened to come with this very lid — isn’t it a perfect pot lid??)

I wish I had taken “before” pictures, but I’m very happy with the transformation.

The miniature stove on the left; the larger scale one on the right.

Testing out the size of the font — will this cabbage leaf be legible?  🙂

OK, it’s not really spooky.  At least I hope not.  But here is the kitchen set for the film…  with all freshly installed lights.  (N.B. the set isn’t properly lit yet; I’m just using the practical lights within the set, and in most of these images, the main light overhead lights of the studio.  In the images where the lights are off, the effect is similar to that of a face being lit from beneath with a flashlight, Blair Witch style.  Or maybe it just feels that way because it’s almost Hallowe’en.  Anyhoo…)

Happy All Hallows’ Eve!

The set I’m building has three main designs.  It’s a theatre, containing 3 miniature sets on its stage:  one where it’s more or less empty, one where there’s the 1970s kitchen, and one with a dining room.  Here’s the dining room, in progress, but almost finished.

Again, I’m using a minimal palette for this room.  The colours are pale yellow, pale green, a warm brown, a deep brown, and a deep teal.  Earth and Water colours.  The palette is also partly inspired by memories of my grandparents’ living room, accentuated with fragments of Galician and Ukrainian cultures.

First I made a wall out of 3/8″ plywood, and covered it with some textured fabric, acrylic paint, and a strip of miniature molding.  The fabric started out as a pale teal blue, which I dyed with acrylic paints to get it to this colour.  The fabric (and colour) is reminiscent of the couch cover my grandparents had.  The couch is where we used to sit on our visits when I was a kid, so I had a lot of time to examine that fabric, and elements of the room, when I was bored.

They also had a lot of dark wood, and a plate rail in the dining room.  I devised a similar plate rail here, but rather than making mail-order Norman Rockwell plates like they had, I painted the plates with patterns inspired by the Sargadelos ceramics from Galicia.  I had to give up the trademark colours of the Galician ceramics, though — the beautiful blues and whites — to fit in with my colour palette.  There is no white in the set really, and the royal blue wouldn’t work, so I improvised.  I also didn’t want the images to be too high-contrast, as they would stand out too much against the pale wall.  I really just wanted some subtle detail there.  There is not a lot going on in this dining room, so I didn’t want the subtleties of the drawings to overwhelm this part of the set.  (The plates are made from buttons taken from my other grandmother’s old button collection…  I never met her, but she used to sew a lot, so these buttons are pretty special.  She saved them in an old Black Magic chocolates box.  Note the old girl guide button above — be prepared!)

I had just seen Ishu Patel giving a talk and presentation of his work last weekend at the NFB, in which he spoke about his Paul Klee influences, and showed some Paul Klee slides… I think those images sank in as I was reminded how great he was.  I’ve always liked Paul Klee’s drawings.  So you can see that influence here as well.

Erín sent me this awesome pamphlet straight from Sargadelos, which outlines the meanings behind their mysterious amulets…  some of which are quite bizarre and fascinating…  (Plus some info about horns and witches!)

The chairs were inspired by my favourite architect and furniture designer, Roy McMakin.  They were built by Miriam, who has proven herself to be the chair-making queen.

More quick notes:  the tabletop is made from a small bamboo cutting board; the plates on the table are also buttons; the bowls are those rubber things you put on the bottom of metal chair legs to protect your floors; the clear “glass” cups are rubber thimbles; the copper pot and platter (which will soon hold an empanada!) are made from copper pipes and pipe fittings; the lid of the copper pot is a metal button shank coated with copper foil; the candles are fimo but are wired to tiny bulbs which will be on dimmers to create a flickery candlight; and there will eventually be a landscape painting in that folding room divider / screen-thingy.   I plucked a few interesting-looking grasses from the garden to make the dried flower arrangement… and the little bundle of grasses on the floor is a nod to Ukrainian traditions, a tiny didukh.

One of the sets I’ve made for the film is a 70s kitchen.  Part of the fun in building miniature sets is trying to think of objects in terms of their shapes rather than their names or functions.  It helps the construction process along if you can link shapes you’ll need for your set to shapes in the real world.  Because their scales are so different, this requires a little shift in thinking, or some creative brainstorming.  If the shape already exists as something else, then there’s no point making it from scratch.  Especially fun is rescuing things that were going to be thrown out.  There’s a certain thrill in the alchemy of turning garbage into something pretty.

For example: this kitchen sink above.  The sink is actually a single-serving yoghurt container.  OK, I bought the yoghurt just for this purpose, but it was still pretty cool to find JUST the right shape already sitting there on a shelf in the grocery store.  I had to chop it in half to make it more shallow, but it worked out pretty well.

The drain of the sink is made from a random plastic thing that I noticed on the sidewalk.  I wasn’t sure what to use, and I guess that sink drain was in the back of my mind while going for a walk in the neighbourhood…  because I just happened to see it, this tiny piece of black plastic by my feet, and think Wow, that would make the perfect drain!  (Isn’t my life exciting!)

The faucet and handles were taken from toys:  I had a kid’s firetruck from a junk store that I tore apart for its plastic parts, some of which I used for these handles.  I used some armature wire for the neck of the faucet, and a decapitated toy pylon for the base.  All plastic parts were assembled with 5-minute epoxy, then spraypainted silver.

Oh, and the countertop is made of someone’s discarded linoleum tiles…