Welcome to The Rock

I started laying the snow on today - a mixture of water, glue and baking soda.
Here is one of the rocks from the opening scene with a sky comped in for fun.
I wanted to show the potential of this set (bear in mind this is under VERY flat lighting).

The Tension is Mountain

Well, the clay is all on - just needs a bit of smoothing - and I am now experimenting with different snow pastes to use for a final covering.

Below is the mountain almost finished - the brown paths are the routes that the characters will take, and therefore more clay will be put there to add stabilization and create footprints.



I performed a couple of quick snow tests - the top one is stevia (sugar substitute) and the bottom is salt - neither will work as there is a dissolving issue at hand. I have decided to go with either marble dust or ground glass.



Despite my lack of tripod (I'll take a better picture soon) I just wanted to get a sense of the shadows that are possible - this looks pretty dynamic I think.



Finally, here is the fully coated mountain shot under a blue gel. Interesting effect eh? I'm looking forward to doing some lighting tests once the sparkly snow is in place.



Onwards and upwards!

Mountain Men

We are making steady progress on the first mountain set.
Here is a selection of images from the first week's building. It included another layer of paper, rock painting and application of white clay.
Once the mountain is covered, it will be smoothed (hairdrier on clay) and then the texture will be added (salt, stevia).

Some concept art for the Cabin

Here are some ideas sketches for the Louse's cabin.

Here are some photos of Neil, Jon and I putting on a second layer of paper over the mountain, now named, "Nevercrest".

Reference clips from the program 'Let it Snow'

Some useful stuff in here.

A tangled web of metal and glue

Neil, Jon and I got to work building Mt. *INSERT NAME HERE* today. Apart from a few head-scratching situations (getting a massive set through a tiny door, using goopy paper mache on a set that's supposed to be in the motion-rig cage, etc) things went pretty well. The framework is there, and we'll continue to add mache layers and definition to different portions to the set in the coming days. As it sits now, there is wood framework, chicken wire for bulk, and paper mache over that (still drying).

Sample some cell-phone pictographs of our radical handiwork.