Vivilama
Member
Hello folks,
Not sure if a complete noob (I myself), am welcome to start a thread like this on here.
My name is Vito (41). Italien born in Germany now living in Japan. I am a CG animator and compositing tutor on YouTube. With the birth of my daughter somehow I felt the urge to do something more meaningful with my life. That’s why I have started delving into many topics which had either scared me or which I found to hard ( too technical) to understand.
One of those Endeavors is to teach on YouTube but in a way that is absolutely me. I had decided to give my channel a new spin by teaching using a pirate theme. But that means i needed a proper set. A pirateship’s quarters.
If I am allowed I would like to share my progress here and hopefully by the point I set out to light this thing, your experience will proof invaluable, I have no doubt. Speaking of lighting, I have recently read the book “Set Lighting Technician’s Handbook. It is such a profound book but proofs that experience in most cases is everything. Experience which I don’t have in this area.
But hopefully I can learn enough to bring my vision to life. So a few months ago I started to build my set. I live in a rental place so that makes things a bit more complicated.
Here a few photos:
A typical Japanese room.
Unfortunately I am not allowed to drill holes into the walls. Walls which are really thin and would need soundproofing. For a reason I don’t know I skipped that part and I know I will regret it later. Writing this while listening to the sound of the Japanese cicada
The gaps in the floor panels were supposed to give access to cables underneath. I was gonna align them perpendicular to the camera which due to the angle wouldn’t be visible. Good thought but not well thought through ( slap in my face) design-wise I decided to align them pointing towards the camera which was a big time failure. So later I closed the gaps again.
The basic frame with the original Japanese windows ( Shoji).
Pirate ship windows at the rear of the ship are angled. So I was looking for a way to take the original windows ( without damaging them) and angle them. It wasn’t that hard to do, but soon I realized they just don’t look medieval.
Cardboard to get a feeling of how arcs would look.
yap, definitely arcs. But wait! Isn’t that gonna be a hell of a lot of work? I had no experience in wood work etc.but I knew bending woods isn’t gonna be easy and involves something like a pressure chamber. Yeah right! After doing a lot of research and looking at my budget I decided to go with a simple and cheesy solution. Hey I am courageous but I ain’t crazy!
Proprietary wood press
I used the same stencil I cut the arc front with to actually press wet thin plywood. Worked like a charm. Did I say wet? Yes I did. My fiancé wasn’t happy to share the bathtub with the plywoods. Me thought it surly had a nice scent.
clamp madness.
I mean sometimes more has got to be better!
One finished window frame.
You know that feeling when you look at it and you are super happy, although you have no clue how you did, but you actually did it. And then you realize, there are 3 more to go.
A carpenter can just laugh at this I know. But I am surprised what one, without experience, can achieve if he/she puts the mind into something ( best with exit door locked or welded shut)
For me, if there is a lesson to learn from all this, then it is that.
To be continued....
Not sure if a complete noob (I myself), am welcome to start a thread like this on here.
My name is Vito (41). Italien born in Germany now living in Japan. I am a CG animator and compositing tutor on YouTube. With the birth of my daughter somehow I felt the urge to do something more meaningful with my life. That’s why I have started delving into many topics which had either scared me or which I found to hard ( too technical) to understand.
One of those Endeavors is to teach on YouTube but in a way that is absolutely me. I had decided to give my channel a new spin by teaching using a pirate theme. But that means i needed a proper set. A pirateship’s quarters.
If I am allowed I would like to share my progress here and hopefully by the point I set out to light this thing, your experience will proof invaluable, I have no doubt. Speaking of lighting, I have recently read the book “Set Lighting Technician’s Handbook. It is such a profound book but proofs that experience in most cases is everything. Experience which I don’t have in this area.
But hopefully I can learn enough to bring my vision to life. So a few months ago I started to build my set. I live in a rental place so that makes things a bit more complicated.
Here a few photos:
A typical Japanese room.
Unfortunately I am not allowed to drill holes into the walls. Walls which are really thin and would need soundproofing. For a reason I don’t know I skipped that part and I know I will regret it later. Writing this while listening to the sound of the Japanese cicada
The gaps in the floor panels were supposed to give access to cables underneath. I was gonna align them perpendicular to the camera which due to the angle wouldn’t be visible. Good thought but not well thought through ( slap in my face) design-wise I decided to align them pointing towards the camera which was a big time failure. So later I closed the gaps again.
The basic frame with the original Japanese windows ( Shoji).
Pirate ship windows at the rear of the ship are angled. So I was looking for a way to take the original windows ( without damaging them) and angle them. It wasn’t that hard to do, but soon I realized they just don’t look medieval.
yap, definitely arcs. But wait! Isn’t that gonna be a hell of a lot of work? I had no experience in wood work etc.but I knew bending woods isn’t gonna be easy and involves something like a pressure chamber. Yeah right! After doing a lot of research and looking at my budget I decided to go with a simple and cheesy solution. Hey I am courageous but I ain’t crazy!
Proprietary wood press
I used the same stencil I cut the arc front with to actually press wet thin plywood. Worked like a charm. Did I say wet? Yes I did. My fiancé wasn’t happy to share the bathtub with the plywoods. Me thought it surly had a nice scent.
clamp madness.
I mean sometimes more has got to be better!
One finished window frame.
You know that feeling when you look at it and you are super happy, although you have no clue how you did, but you actually did it. And then you realize, there are 3 more to go.
A carpenter can just laugh at this I know. But I am surprised what one, without experience, can achieve if he/she puts the mind into something ( best with exit door locked or welded shut)
For me, if there is a lesson to learn from all this, then it is that.
To be continued....