5/25/09 Update--"Burial" Scene Construction

This last weekend I started on the "burial" scene of the movie where Aronnax and Conseil get their first glimpse at Captain Nemo and his crew. The perspective of this scene will be nearly identical to the first shot of them in the movie:

This will be a dry-for-wet scene, meaning that the scene is dry while giving the illusion of being underwater, or wet. For this scene I will employ the dry-for-wet effect I used for my Submarine Voyage show where "bubble boxes" were used to give the look of being underwater. Ironically, the 20,000 Leagues under the sea attraction at Tokyo Disney Sea uses this technique. The lighting effect that I didn't have when I made my Submarine Voyage (I wish I did!) of the underwater ripples will need to be figured out. Probably some Christmas lights that have a wave sequence might work. I'll have to make some prototypes (the goal is not to use real water!)

With technical and special effects aside, I worked on the scene it's self. I took the cardboard base and blocked out the scene like the shot above. I began making coral forms out of Aluminum foil. These forms are covered in Celluclay, to give it strength and texture. Here are the forms with Celluclay starting to go in:


And the rest of the forms covered:



It looks like a big goopy mess, but in reality, all of the forms are in rows and layers, much like real coral

Since I didn't want to make armatures and bodies for the divers, I went the action figure route. I found a keychain G.I. Joe that seemed to work, since he was the right size, has flexible joints (this is important since I'm doing more than one diver and I want a variation in the poses) and he is a diver! Now the only thing is that I need about 5 of them, but that's were eBay comes in handy. This scene won't be totally finished soon, since I have to collect each diver one at a time, but it's worth the wait. Once each diver comes in the mail, I'll give him some boots, a new helmet with collar (I might make one and mold it for easy duplicates), air tanks, and some other accessories.

"The Discovery"--Scene Construction

This last week I worked on the "Discovery" scene, the point in the movie where Professor Aronnax and Conseil find the "monster" that destroyed their ship, the Nautilus. The perspective of this scene will be really low like the last scene, to get an angle like the first shot you see of the Nautilus in the movie:



In addition to building a model of the front half of the Nautilus, I'm also going to make Aronnax  and Conseil in the foreground in the water hanging on to some wreckage while looking on as they do in the movie. 

Building the Nautilus was something that I wasn't looking forward to, considering it has a very distinctive look and there isn't one straight line on the whole vessel--which makes it an uneasy model to build from scratch. Luckily for me, the Disney Experience  website has a paper model version of the Nautilus which is available for download and print. I will use this as a template, since all the difficult angles and curvatures are already figured out and broken down. I printed out all the parts of this paper model and I determined which parts I would need (I wasn't going to build the entire model, since I'm only going to make what you're going to see). The parts I chose were blown up in the computer, printed out, and spray adhesive-d onto some card-stock. This will be my Nautilus template, since I need to make two of theme (I might even use the actual template parts for the second Nautilus)




I cut out the template parts and crudely taped them together to make sure they all fit together and I wasn't missing anything. Shown in the foreground is the first paper model that I used to determine which parts I needed to enlarge and print.



I traced all the templates onto sheets of .010" styrene. I went for the extra step of embossing every panel with rivets, using a pounce wheel. Since this is thin styrene, when one piece was made, I backed it with card-stock for strength. Part of the model shown below was given a coat of primer so any imperfections could be seen and sanded out. This shot was taken just before the first coat of paint went on:



The model was given a coat of primer...



and a coat of dark brown (you can really see the rivets here!)



I gave the model several dark washes and a couple of rust spot runs with some powder paint. Silver Rub-N-Buff was applied to the rakers. Here is the model with the washes drying in the sub:



Here is the finished model, with a penny in the front for a sense of scale:



Onto the floating characters. Since I only needed to sculpt the back of Aronnax and Conseil, and only the top half of them, this job was relatively easy, considering sculpting someone's face with a likeness is perhaps the hardest task an artist can do. I didn't need to worry about faces (though I'll need to in a month when I get to the dinner scene ) but even sculpting the back of Peter Lorre's fat little head took some patience in getting the right shape. If you look at the front of heads, there isn't even a face, they're completely blank! But that doesn't matter, since you won't even see them from that angle. Here are the figures, ready to baking:



Once the characters were baked, I painted them up and placed them in the scene with the cardboard sea and sky. There isn't much to the background since it's all foggy, so a gray spray-painted backdrop was created. Unfortunately, I made a mistake in building my Nautilus--I built too much of it. It turns out I made the waterline too low, and I had to cut down the model in order to be accurate. Here is the cut down Nautilus and the figures, awaiting a coat of Mod Podge "water":



This is what the scene will look like when viewed at the right angle.



The "water" of Mod Podge applied. When this stuff dries, it will be completely clear and the scene will be finished

"The Monster Attacks"--Scene Construction

This weekend I focused on the very first scene that the guests will see in the show; the scene showcasing the attack on the S.S. Abraham Lincoln by the "monster"--the Nautilus. This scene will be from the perspective of the ship looking out to sea at the monster, as if the viewer were on the deck of ship. The monster Nautilus would be charging at the vessel towards the viewer, illuminated like the scene in the movie:



Construction on the scene started with creating the backdrop, the sea surface (with the edges and corners coved to give the illusion of a higher horizon) and an elongated pyramid representing the Nautilus. There wasn't much to do on the Nautilus when it comes to detail, considering the whole thing is covered with rushing water. I rigged the pyramid Nautilus with 12 volt lights with yellow and green gels for the eerie monster look.



Next, the Nautilus was covered in strips of clear plastic and coated with 'Mod Podge' (a thick gloss medium that dries clear; I'll be using A LOT of it on this project!)



I added a facade of the ships railing, complete with rigging and a boat ready to be deployed (as demonstrated by Ned Land in the movie). I still might add a sailor with a scared face pointing at the monster while hanging onto some rigging to give the scene a little more "life"



Then, the entire "sea" was given a thick coat of 'Mod Podge'



In addition to the Nautilus lights, a dim blue gelled floodlight illuminates the ship facade and the sea as in this photo showing the finished scene (at this point)

Construction--Day 1

Today is the official 1st day of construction. In these photos, the empty "show building" has the path marked out, ready for the scenes. 

Planning

After several drawings, modifications and revisions, I've finally come up with a layout plan that I'm satisfied with. The key in designing these attractions, especially this one, is that I want the guest path to have an interesting shape with scenes in the position where someone will naturally look. But at the same time, have the scenes arranged in such a way, that they can be viewed in sequence without getting confused.  In other words, not have scenes directly across for each other that "compete" with each other for the viewers attention. The scenes will be staggered to avoid this issue, a blank space opposite of each scene. 

Here is my current plan, showing the layout of the scenes and the guest path:

So far, the scenes that I have locked in are:

• The Monster Attacks

• Discovering the Nautilus

• The Burial

• Dinner with Nemo

• Divers/shark attack

• Nemo plays his Organ

• Squid fight

• Vulcania invasion (this one will be a painting)

• Nautilus sinking/Vucania exploding 

A bit of back-story...

The "crawl-through" origin came about years and years ago when I was making mazes out of cardboard for my brother and his friend. I would theme the mazes mildly, mostly kind of a Halloween theme with pumpkin stickers, cheesy music, and blacklight bulbs. In 2004 when I was 14 at the time, I wanted to try doing something in l blacklight paint, and I chose to make a Haunted Mansion Holiday themed mazed after being inspired by Disneyland's Haunted Mansion attraction with the seasonal Nightmare Before Christmas overlay. The only thing was I needed a dark place for it to work, so under my 30" high 4 X 5' model railroad table seemed to work. But this blacklight Nightmare Before Christmas themed maze evetually turned into an attraction showcasing the blacklight painted figures and flats rather than a freak-out maze with blacklight props. The cousins, whom I made the blacklight show for, enjoyed going through it and the parents found out about it and they too squeezed through the tight path (this was before I set path envelope standards). It was such a hit that I did more of them, with a bigger table, and with each one getting better and better. Up until now, I've done Haunted Mansion Holiday, Pirates of the Caribbean, Submarine Voyage, the Enchanted Tiki Room, and Haunted Mansion.

Now in 2009, what was once the old cardboard maze idea is now a massive collection of shoebox dioramas on steroids (and this time with an even BIGGER table!). I've kept the "crawl-through" format all these years because that's part of the fun, and it won't take up that much space unlike a "walk-through".

In a nut shell, a "crawl-through" is a series of dioramas set under a table with a height low enough in which the guests are required to crawl through them in order to view the scenes. The dioramas are set under the table because of the available space and controllable atmosphere.