We are at the BLUE SKY stage of a new project. We have a firm commitment and budget for a wonderful design and are at the very beginnings of a job where we first set pencil to paper. Anything is possible at this stage. The realities of tight budgets, space limitations, engineering and timetables are still down the road. This is the time to explore ideas. It's a wonderful time of dreaming and drawing a boatload of concepts as we pull a theme together and work up a presentation to show the client. It's a fun and exciting time. Peter and I toss ideas back and forth until we settle on a theme and story. Then we sketch out vignettes for each area and slowly it all comes together. Along the way there will be many, many changes, some ideas will be tossed and others added. Hundreds of quick scribbles will gel down to about forty finished concept drawings for this project. The first scribbles are quickly filling a sketchbook. Here's just one page from my book as a hint. This is going to take a while...
Last name plates for workshops
As always there were a flurry of changes and last minute sign-ups for the Sculpture Magic Workshops. The first one is sold out but there may yet be another name or two to make for the second if someone else fills the remaining seats. But today I created the last two name plaques of those currently signed up to come. Becke is doing an awesome job of painting and gilding the plaques and I'll be posting pictures of them in the next few days. Stay tuned...
Don't sweat the little stuff (until last)
With the super large features we are currently building for Motiongate in Dubai we start with the heavy duty frame. Then we start mounting the larger elements which we did yesterday. Now Peter is quickly blocking in the middle elements using quarter inch pencil rod to create the outlines. These are hard to see in the photograph but we can easily visualize the finished results by looking at them. Jack follows by welding in the structural steel inside these to make everything sturdy. Then the crew will fire up more welders to fill in the pencil rod frame to make a tight grid. Peter will follow behind and add in any last minute bits to make it all work together. Then we'll disassemble and send it off for galvanizing.
