SHIPS week 4 - Flea Ship

Shel here with Flea Ship progress:

made some big jumps this week and am super excited.

THIS IS A PRETTY TECHNICAL POST so just scroll thru the pic if you're not interested in what kind of glue i used!

and TAKE NOTE: i've been at this for 4 weeks and Set Master Jeff has been around alot less the past two weeks as other work calls him, so i'm BY NO MEANS an expert at this......none the less here's my process this week.

BASE STRUCTURE

For Flea Ship I started last week with a 1/2" PLYWOOD base structure for foundation. I used ELMERS GLUE with HOT GLUE reinforcement to put together the base box and then glued (Elmers again) 1" BLUE FOAM to the box and shaped the main engine compartment which will support the rest of the ship

and then i made a smaller 1/4" wood frame for the top of the fusilage, and glued 2" BLUE FOAM onto it for shaping (shown drying above). [warning: i made my box a bit too tall though and am now having to sand through wood to get the curved shape i want--not ideal.]

then i shaped the top of the fusilage into general roundness and built a 1/2 " WOOD frame for the ships "jaw" and started attaching 2" FOAM for the bottom of the fusilage.


SHAPING

after my first pass of shaping i wasn't so happy with how "boxy" the ship was looking so i started rounding more agressively......blue foam is very much fun to sculpt cuz it's so flexible in it's response to the SCRAPER.......i scrape and it seems to say "did you mean sort of like this?" it doesn't matter that there's not much room for going back, because it takes it's form so gently, it's pretty intuitive. until i get impatient and start in with the BOX CUTTER (razor blade) and even the JIG SAW......then i have to be careful! but as long as i peel little tiny bits at a time (not much my style i must admit) it goes great.

below, left side still boxy, right side getting rounder.....

CANNED FORCED AIR is very useful for getting the blue foam dust off my face, mask and glasses (when i forget to wear the glasses, the foam dust irritates my eyes)
Starting to work on the ship's Brow......and using my beloved DREMEL (a rotary tool with tons of attachments for carving, sanding, sawing, buffing, and many things i don't know about yet.....very useful for miniature work!). here i'm using it to carve out an indent in the foam for my box structure (takes a steady hand cuz it carves through foam like a hot knife on butter).
making the 1/4" PLY box for the Brow (the wood extends further back than the foam so i can HOT GLUE it to the top of the fusilage frame). jeff continues to stress the point that in STOP MO you want EVERYTHING SECURELY ATTACHED to the main frame and the main frame able to be securely attachable to the ground. (so a foam brow without a wood frame attachment would not be secure enough....and i need the ships to be extra strong because justin is not a light handed animator! he works the puppets and sets HARD for all that beautiful squash and stretch!)

GLUE

this time i used LIQUID NAILS instead of ELMERS GLUE to attach the box because the foam surface is so uneven and the Elmers is too thin to connect, whereas the thick pasty Liquid Nails substance can fill in the holes......it' not so good for attaching foam to foam if you want to sand though (as it turns out) cuz Liquid Nails dries rubbery and doesn't sand well.

eventually we will glue/with hot glue the top of the fusilage to the foundation wood structure--but for now we are keeping them seperate for ease of shaping.

ATTACHING THE WINGS

it was pretty scarey carving into my fusilage (it's been fun, but i'm SO not interested in making a new one!)......Jeff keeps saying it's the Z axis that gets you!! but with his encouragement i dug in bit by bit and was really pleased with how well it worked out.

ATTACHING THE AFTER BURNER THINGYS (these are made from 2"BLUE FOAM glued together and shaped down)

imaging the cut......taking the plunge..... it fits!!!