Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The Selfish Giant


I had a really fun project recently that required making a 3-D set. I've never played much with clay or sculpey since I was about 12, so this was a really fun discovery exercise. I chose to create a scene from The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde.
In this scene, the selfish giant has come home from a 7 year vacation when he finds children playing in his beautiful garden. He gets really angry because he doesn't like sharing his garden with others, so he scares them away.

I had no idea what I was doing, and so I found out from some classmates that if you use sculpey, you have to start with a wire structure. Then you wrap the wire in aluminum foil to give it volume and then finally put on a thin layer of sculpey. This ensures that the sculpey bakes evenly, and does not burn.

This gives you an idea of the scale of the models. I had to work pretty small because there was a size limit on the project. I don't own any clay modeling tools, so all I had were an exacto knife and a little metal pick for picking lobster meat out of its shell.


The shot above gives you a good look at the giant's face. He was my favourite.




This is my favourite photo of the scene.