It'sa Tree!!

I was going to post about the making of the hands but since I've started work on a tree I thought I'd post up some pics of that first. The film will be set in a park in Dublin on a bright afternoon in the Autumn so I need a big Autumnal tree to set the scene.
I began to create the tree by wrapping wire around a piece of dowel which was glued to a base.

I continued building wire up along the dowel and out to form the branches of the tree. After a lengthy process and a couple of nearly poked out eye incidents the tree looked like this.

I built up the thickness of the trunk by hot gluing balsa wood to the dowel. I then needed to flesh out the tree. For this I cut strips of fabric and wrapped them around the trunk and up to the tips of the branches. I hot glued these in certain places to stop them from unravelling. Here is a picture showing the tree completely covered with fabric.

Once covered I wanted to make the fabric stiff as the wire wasn't stiff enough and would wobble for ages if I was to knock off a branch during animation. To stiffen the tree I mixed up a batch of epoxy resin and painted it onto the tree, drenching the fabric. I left this to dry overnight and by the morning the tree had gone rock solid and was ready to be painted.

I haven't finalized the paint job but I will post up a picture of the finished tree soon.

I'll finish this post with a picture of the leaves for the tree which my lovely girlfriend Lorraine has been busy painting and punching, they really turned out amzing. I cant wait to get these stuck onto the tree and see it in all its glory!!

That's all for now, thanks again for reading!!

Paul