To Make A Mushroom

I've been wanting to dip my feet into some more hardcore physical prop and puppet making  (I've done a bit of model making and train layout type stuff before, but nothing really in depth, and certainly nothing that wasn't hard surface). So I have a project!

The idea emerged from a short film I wrote a while back. The film won't happen for a while but I liked the creature so it seems like a good project to dive in on. So first the design (Just a quick paintover of my pencil sketch, my painting skills are a bit rusty so look through the shittiness ):

(If it's too dark let me know. I can never tell these days between both my monitors slowly dying)

Basically, as you can see it's a mushroom...of sorts. (In-universe) The pods on top are filled with thousands of insects, the pods burst open, the insects fly away, seek hosts and plant their spores. (The puppet doesn't need to do all that, just looking like it's filled with bugs pushing flying around inside will suit me fine) Their natural target of course being humans. (Sort of a plant/animal hybrid type of thing). I'm not sure about the final colour scheme, right now its a little too Pandora for my tastes, I might try playing with something more red and orange. Or maybe push it a bit more towards a diseased green type. Anyways.

My plan as of right now (And I know we have a couple people round these parts that used to/still do a lot of this kind of stuff...so they might be able to correct me if I'm doing something horribly wrong):

1) Create a full size sculpt out of super sculpey, probably about 8 inches or so high (This thing is supposed to pretty massive, and I'm going to need the room for the mechanisms)

2) Create a negative mold, ideally out of something fairly flexible as thing thing is going to have a couple pretty heavy undercuts. I might have to do it as two separate pieces (The top and the stem), we'll cross that bridge when I get there though.

3)Cast molds out of something closely resembling skin. In my research platinum silicone seems to be the best bet, although I haven't been able to find any good resources for painting a silicone thing that isn't supposed to look like human skin. So I'm gonna need to figure that out. (This step also includes making the core so I have room for the mechanisms once the thing is cast.)

4) Create thin membranes for the pod surfaces and install them. Probably silicone again, or if I can find something better, that. (I have this as a separate step because I think it will be too hard to get the membranes to be thin and even enough if they are cast with the rest of the piece. Or I might have to make them out of a different material. Correct me if I'm wrong though.)

5) Inside I'm going to be installing some sort of mechanism to create the effect of the bugs constantly moving around inside and pushing up against the membranes. (Going for super creepy here). So far the best idea I've come up with is an air bladder system with 4-5 pockets per membrane, suspended just beneath the surface, and then putting a textured skin over top of the bladder so when they inflate they push against the membrane and create the effect of it sort of pulsating with things inside. Like I said, just based on my little bit of research and knowledge of the theory of these things that's what I came up with. Although I haven't found anything of how to actually make a custom air bladder set-up like that. So another thing for further research. And then obviously the tubing will just be run down through the stem and be buried in the soil and led out to the puppeteer.

7) Paint...uh yeah...this one is gonna take some work.

6) Slime. Nough said.

I'm going to try and keep this updated whenever I have something to show. So yeah, wish me luck!

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2012-07-22 05:25:49)