For Project (and Advanced Project for second years) this year, our staff team set the brief of the artwork by Mike Mignola. We started by showing them this amazing clip from Hellboy II, jammed packed full of fantastic creature effects, weapons and fabricated props to get their creativity flowing.
Students then got to work on planning what they want to make and we saw some incredible ideas taking shape from all of them.
This module is the first of many where they get to take their ideas from design and planning stages, all the way through to creation, with very little restrictions on them on what they can make. As long as they stick to the artistic brief, they have free reign! We show them how to create a budget (and stick to it!), to ins-and-outs of project management, concept design and orthographic drawings, and most importantly of all, lots of cool processes and techniques to use to create their final pieces.
We had such a huge range of ideas coming form our first years this year, from oddities in jars, daggers and knives, little creatures and weird curiosities. As staff, it's great to see the students really pushing their skills, learning new things and also, figuring out what part of our industry really appeals to them. A fun turn of events meant that first year students could combine their Project module piece with another module we had running, Fabrication! The fabrication module is focused on building hard surface skills, and this year we set them the task to create a box or display case to go along with their asset for Project!
Josh decided to use this project to focus on foam fabrication, and created this awesome creature, complete with spines, eyes, teeth and hair! Carved from upholstery foam, this creature is the perfect size to sit on your arm, and we definitely can't wait to take him to events and shows this year. The amazing cage was his final piece for the Fabrication module! Next up, Maria chose to create this beautifully gory skull and stained glass display case! This project incorporated lots of techniques including sculpting, fabrication, mould making and casting and we love the final gory details Maria added to finish it off.
We loved watching what the students came up with and can't wait till next year to see what the pull out for the next theme! Well done to all our first year students, Covid might have changed the way we ran this year, but you all managed to do some incredible work and it was a pleasure to watch you take your first steps into Special Effects.
Here's to an awesome second year starting in September!!