It's Tea O' Clock

For me it's always 'tea o' clock'. How fitting that I should be commissioned to create a mad tea party, straight out of Alice in Wonderland! You may have seen my previous posts on this project here and here (if you want to see initial designs and sketches then click over and have a look).

As promised - see the 'making of' photos (more will make their way into my book, but here's a sprinkling for you), and photos of the finished scene are below as well.

See the piece at exhibition at CTN eXpo, Center Stage Gallery, Burbank, California from 6th Nov - 10th Jan.

See more photos of the piece at my website here.

Prints will be available for purchase next week here.

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THE DESIGN

I tried to create this scene based on how I pictured the characters in the book by Lewis Carroll when read to me as a child. I did the Mad-hatter in yellow striped britches because yellow is my favourite colour, and I chose a red coat because it's symbolically English. The March Hare wears a boater with blue ribbon, inspired by the school uniform at Harrow and his blazer is from Haileybury - the private school my dad attended. The high tea foods are typically English - bakewell tarts, jam tarts, fairy cakes, tiny sandwiches and cake. The only un-English thing is the Charlotte Russe cake which is a French dessert, but not unusual in an English teatime setting.

It's made in 1:12 (one inch) scale miniature using clay, wood, wire and other mixed media. It will be available for sale, but I'm already speaking to one or two people interested in buying it, so if you're really keen please send me an email here.

Enjoy the photos!

The finished scene

alice in wonderland, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland concept art, Tim Burton stop-motion, stop-motion Alice in Wonderland

How you turn my World

Just recently I attended the Labyrinth of Jareth Masquerade Ball in Los Angeles, for the fifth time.

This year it was held at the stunning Biltmore Hotel - a place I've stayed at and love. It's in Downtown LA and was built in 1922 and even if you haven't been there, you'll likely recognise it from the number of films which have scenes shot there (list here).

But the ball itself... it was out-of-this-world as always, with everyone in attendance dressed in incredible outfits, attending as fairy kings, sprites, goblins and Georgian fops in powdered wigs. I have too much work on right now to have made a costume so I wore my old graduation ballgown from RHUL (last worn when I was 21) and was possibly the most simply dressed in attendance. It didn't matter once I added a mask and shawl.

The most exciting part of the event this year was the entertainment. Always incredible, this year it couldn't have appealed more to me. On stage, the dancers (dressed as all manner of magical characters) danced to Michael Jackson's Thriller perfectly, as a gigantic puppeteered dragon made its way centre stage and joined the dance. It was wild!

Previous post about this wonderful ball here.

In other news, I have mentioned in previous posts here and here that I am working on an Alice in Wonderland project. It will be finished this Friday, right before I flit off for a weekend in Vegas. I'll write a proper blog post sharing the making of it soon, and of course I'll show you the final result. This piece will also be published and exhibited at the CTN eXpo, Center Stage Gallery, Burbank, California. Find out more about upcoming events and exhibitions at my website homepage here.

Madness

I have been commissioned to create something on the Alice in Wonderland theme, and coming from Oxfordshire it's a real thrill. I had an idyllic 'Alice like' childhood. We punted on the Thames in the beautiful hot summers and had picnics on the riverbank. I had adventures in the fields behind my house, in my tiny village where all the houses were thatched and 500 odd years old. I hid treasures down rabbit holes and badger setts and drew maps to find them again. And of course I drank tea from Victorian china with the grown-ups just as soon as they let me.

So, yesterday I started sketching some ideas. It's going to be centered on the Madhatter's tea party. I sketched some ideas to decide how I want him to look. I am trying very hard to make him my own design, and not a copy of Tenniel or Disney, however, I also want him to be recognisable as the Madhatter. I felt happy with one of the sketches, so I scanned it and today I quickly added some colour. Disney has him in green and so I went with a very English red and striped yellow britches, since it's my favourite colour. 

Tomorrow I will start sculpting him in miniature (1:12 scale, polymer clay).

Also, to plan my scene I did some sketches and then roughly cut out cardboard shapes (in the general scale) to gauge how it will all work out. I've decided to share these working developments, but please remember they're very quick and dirty!

Speaking of madness, I added colour to my Madhatter image using Photoshop, but sans tablet I made do with a mouse. Took twice as long as it should have done and opting to do this was probably quite mad...

Creativity... on TV?

Watching TV back in Blighty, I used to feel that besides the odd BBC or Channel Four drama / documentary, the best thing about TV was the adverts (commercials).

Such creativity, imagination and often humour, goes into commercials. I'm not necessarily inspired to go out and buy the product advertised, but I am inspired by the concise and often magical little bit of storytelling that they are.

Today I decided to share a few favourites on this blog. The first few examples are British, followed by two American examples (I don't see enough US TV to have great American examples to hand - but if you can think of something fabulous that I've missed then leave a comment!)

As for what I've been doing lately... I have had to create a number of absolutely tiny fairy shoes for a commissioned project... snapshot of this below. ;)

Lloyds TSB bank commercial (UK). Made by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe Y&R (London).

Click the thumbnail to open the video in a new window.

John Lewis commercial (UK). Made by Adam & Eve /DDB and OMD Manning Gottlieb (London).

Click the thumbnail to open the video in a new window.

Watch the behind-the-scene making of here.

Bacardi Metz commercial (UK). Made by HHCL (London).

My personal favourite. Filmed in Budapest using a hand-cranked Arri camera and inspired by German Expressionist cinema and Grimm fairytales.

W H Samuel commercial (UK). Made by St. Lukes (London).

Click the thumbnail to open the video in a new window.

Marks & Spencer commercial (UK). Made by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe Y&R (London).

Click the thumbnail to open the video in a new window.

National Lottery commercial (UK). Made by Studio AKA (London).

Click the thumbnail to open the video in a new window.

Guinness commercial (UK). Made by AMVBBDO (London).

Click the thumbnail to open the video in a new window.

Cadbury's Dairy Milk commercial (UK). Made by Fallon (London).

Click the thumbnail to open the video in a new window.







And now a couple of American examples of beautiful, creative commercials. The first is one I love for the production design. It was filmed in a real forest in Washington state, and the fairytale characters are CG. The second example below is a behind-the-scenes image from a commercial made by New Deal Studios using miniatures and miniature model sets in 1:24 scale. Naturally this is going to appeal to me!

Fed Ex commercial (USA). Made by BBDO (New York).

Learn about the making-of here.

Click the thumbnail to open the video in a new window.

DirecTV commercial (USA). Made by New Deal Studios (California).

Click the thumbnail to zoom in on the image, or visit the New Deal Studios website to learn about this commercial.

As the Crow Flies

That last magazine feature is wrapped up and submitted, so now I have only to finish two others and start on some new commissions which came up whilst I was back in Blighty for my sister's stunning wedding. (I just got back on Monday). When that's died down I'll show some Myrtle artwork...

For those that saw my last post here about the scarecrow / crow king project, here's just a couple of photos from the final scene. I've included a scan of my initial sketch as well.
Everything in the scene was created by me in 1:12 scale. The scarecrow has a pumpkin head which is polymer clay, whilst his body is raffia, horsehair and craft straw over a wire armature. I dyed and stitched his clothing to him and used hairspray to set it. The crows are clay, wire and real feather. The field and hay ricks were made using raffia and twisted tree stumps from wire, paper clay and other mixed media.

On a less related note, some people have asked me the meaning of the title of the last post. A 'murder of crows' is simply the collective noun for a group of crows. Other examples are; a parliament of owls, a gaggle of geese, a flamboyance of flamingos, a colony of penguins and a clamour of rooks. Interesting isn't it? Stop and think before you next utter the words 'bunch of birds'...!

Don't forget to find updates by liking the Tall Tales Productions Facebook page.

As usual I'll update my 'publicity' section with the magazine feature when it's out.

A Murder of Crows

Recently I've been working on a commissioned feature for a magazine - a miniature scene in which the central focus is a scarecrow. A relatively quick job I thought, as I unpacked a tidy selection of materials including armature wire, raffia and air dry clay... of course it's 10 days later and I'm now wading through a mass of black feathers, gauze and superglue.

I managed to take a break from this project to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds perform live at the brilliant Ace Theater (an evening of Black Crow King didn't hurt in terms of inspiration), and ironically enough I just discovered a great bar in my area (Los Feliz / Silverlake) called 'The Thirsty Crow'...!

Here are some pictures of this project in progress. The un-finished scarecrow photos were just taken quickly today whilst glue was drying. You can see the final scene soon as I will blog about it here and upload images to my Tall Tales Facebook page here.