Production Design

After finishing the script and breaking down all the scenes, we set about figuring out how each scene would work and look. I (Emily) then jotted down the different “props” needed in each scene, and all materials that would be required to make them. Despite this planning, we still managed to take multiple trips to Spotlight, two dollar shops, art & craft stores and Kmart throughout the production.

Colours and textures are really important, especially since the general look of the animation is quite basic. I wanted materials that were interesting on their own – even before they were shaped and introduced into the animation. The lovely fabrics we found at Spotlight, scraps of origami paper, sheets of felt in almost every colour, and brown paper were among my favourite materials we used.

The sugar cane was made using balsa wood dowel; carefully painted with nine tissue paper leaves painstakingly glued to one end. Time-consuming, but produced a nice result.

We used crushed coffee beans for soil after we realised that actual granulated coffee, although it looks nice at first, quickly reacts to moisture in the air, turning black and sticky. The irregularity of the hand-crushed beans was a good effect though.

Another issue we quickly noticed was that the reflections of props would show up in the layers of glass. We largely solved this by sticking each item to black card or colouring it in with black marker.