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Project Statement

Brief: Story

For this brief I chose to do my project on a book called The Key to Rondo by Emily Rodda. This was one of my favourite books as a child.

For the first half of this semester I was working on character design and background design. To do this I reread the book and picked out specific paragraphs that described the characters or places in the book. Then I tried to draw these characters as they were described in the book. It was a very enjoyable task and I really had a lot of fun reading back through the book to try and get every detail of how the characters where supposed to look.

For the second half of this semester when we were placed in our selected discipline our tutor paul gave us another brief to go along with the story brief. He wanted us to make a diorama. I chose to make a cutout lightbox diorama of Flitter Wood which is a location in the book. The wood is described as being bathed in green light as the sun shines through the leaves of the trees and the ground is covered by ferns. I thought this would be the perfect scene to make into a diorama. I made the diorama out of cardboard ,straws and tissue paper. I'm very pleased with how it turned out but I would do a few thing differently if I had to make it again.

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In these last two pictures I whent up to the attic where there are no windows and I put a strong torch behind the light box and then put my black hoodie over the back of the light box and the torch to stop any lights comming out. Kind of like those old cameras with the cloth at the back. The effect was great and I really like how this diorama came out. If I had to do it again I would use thicker cardboard to make the layers to provide more stability and to help make the layers darker.

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I took some pictures of the diorama with the rest of the leaves cutout and it look way better. I took this picture using an LED desk lamp.

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I took some pictures of the diorama using diffrent types of lights.

The top right and the bottom right pictures are using sun light with only traceing paper behind.

All the other pictures are using the light of a phone in a room with the curtains drawn. The problem with these photos is that the curtains were red and they give the pictures a red hue which takes away from the light box itself. I'll have to wait until it gets dark and try again.

Notice in these pictures that only the leaves in the front 2 layers are cut out but the ones at the back aren't, this is because I was tired and didn't want to have to cut out all the leaves in the picture. So I decided to see how the diorama looked without the leaves cut out. However I decided that it took away from the overall appearance of the diorama and I cut out all the other leaves.

This was my first idea on how to cut out the leaves and I used this method on the first 2 layers of the diorama but this method took to long and let's face it it doesn't look that good. So I decided to change the method to a quicker and simpler design.

This method of cutting out leaves was quicker, easier, and looked better and I'm embarrassed I didn't think of it at the start.

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The next part of the process was to make the layers sit separately from each other. I didn't want them touching because that makes the end result look less 3D and I doesn't allow as much light through to the diffrent layers. I used straws to make a rectangular mount to go between each layer of the diorama. Each rectangle used 5 straws. I split the end of each straw so that I could fit them all together then I used tape to secure the joints. Each rectangle took about 5 mins to make and in total I made 14 rectangles, each rectangle had to be the exact same size. If they were to big they wouldn't fit in the box, if they were to small they would be seen in the diorama. It was a gruelling process making all the straw rectangles.

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To make the box for the cutouts I took the glass and the back from a normal A4 sized frame and an old cardboard box. I then measured the box and cut it so that it was the exact size of the glass and backing of the picture frame. This took so trial and error but it worked out in the end. At one point I was sure I'd made the box to small and that I'd have to star all over again.

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This is a photo of all the cut out layers played on top of each other. There are 12 layers in all and at this point I'm sick and tired of cutting paper. Each layer took approximately half an hour to cut out. I made the mistake of drawing my design in pen on the first layer so you can still se the out line. Hopefully when the light is shined through at the back the lines wont be as noticeable.

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These are the stages of making each layer of the cutout box.

I start out by tracing the parts that you can see on the initial design. Then I fill in the blank parts.

Then I finalise the design and begin cutting.

Then you layer the cutout papers on top of each other to create the illusion of layers and depth.

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In order to make sure all of the layers line up perfectly I drew the design on a piece of tracing paper. Then I traced out all the diffrent layers onto diffrent sheets of paper, I have 12 layers in total but depending on how it looks I might have to add more layers. I'm using card to make the layers I'm hoping its strong enough to support its self.

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This is my design for my light box diorama based it on the description of Flitter wood in the book. The wood is described as being bathed in green light as the sun shines through the leaves of the trees, shadows like tigers stripes flicker through the woods and it's full of ferns.

My plan is to put a piece of green tissue paper at the back to give off the illusion of green light. I still haven't figured out how to make the tigers stripe shadows.

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Artist Research

This artwork is made by artists Deepti Nair and Harikrishnan Panicker (collectively known as Hari and Deepti). Each diorama is made of layers of cut watercolour paper placed inside a shadow box and lit from behind with flexible LED light strips. Hari and Deepti are originally from India but now live and work in Denver.

I thought Hari and Deeptis work was so amazing and beautiful that I wanted to try and make my diorama like their light box cut outs.

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I spent most of last week trying to figure out what I wanted my diorama to be. I have made a diorama before and I didn't want to make another one that was in anyway similar to that one. In my last diorama I made the windows of the houses out of baking paper so that the light could shine through them. I really liked this effect and wanted to make my diorama very light based. I decided to make a paper cut out light box diorama. Like this one.

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This is a description of Leo's first look at Flitter wood. I tried to paint this how I imagined Flitter wood however the picture didn't really pick up the colour very well. I also drew Mimi in glitter wood sitting in the ferns.

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Bertha isn't described I'm much detail in the book she is really just a big wearing a hat with flowers on it.

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This is the description of Leo's new out fit in Rondo. Again I dont really like the way Leo turned out in this drawing, I'm definitely going to have to redraw him. His jacket looks more like a blazer than a leather jacket.

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When Mimiand Leo arrive in Rondo they have to change their appearance to avoid detection. This is the description of how Mimi looks in her new clothes. I tried do this description justice when I drew it but it just doesn't look right I think I'm going to trya again to see if I can make it look better. I think Mimmi still looks to thin and shy in the drawing whereas in the book she becomes more confident.

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This is the description given for Freda the duck. She is always described as looking like she is wearing a mask.

I tried to get that detail of the mask in, hopefully it will be more noticeable when I colour in the design.