This boat will never float!

Work continues on the structural framework for the Viking ships for the Motiongate Park in Dubai. With every piece of structural steel we weld into place the ship gets heavier and more massive. This boat will never float! The lower section of the frame which will sit on the bottom of the pool is nearing completion at last.

We have about ten more uprights and a little more bracing to complete before we begin work on the pencil rod frame of the lower hull. We also began the installation of the screen along the bottom and the lower keel today. By week's end we will be making good progress on the upper sections of the ship.

A place to hang their hats

Fairies, dwarfs, trolls and other creatures of the garden will of course all need a place to hang their hats. These dwellings will be largely built with materials found in the garden. The troll's home is under the bridge of course so he's handy to extract the toll he always gets from those who wish to cross.

A question of scale

As we continue to work on the preliminary concepts of our next large project one of our primary concerns is establishing the scale. We are proposing a garden scape where fairies are living. To properly involve our guests we want to shrink them down to this same scale. The question is 'What is that scale?'  We've settled on one sixth normal size, meaning a six foot tall person would be one foot tall in this world. To properly tell this story we then have to stick to this measure. Human objects will be much larger than normal. Things built by the fairies and other creatures living here will be their scale. That left us deciding a list of features to incorporate into the landscape. Building and transportation realities will determine the final list. With this information at hand I did two more fun concept drawings today.