Zoe Huddleston
Stop Motion Fabricator
Expend forest set
As a sophomore at SCAD I had the amazing opportunity to be a set fabricator for my friend Bismark Fernandes' Thesis film Expend. The film takes place in a post-apocalyptic future and follows a man on the hunt for energy through a junk-filled forest. Bismark not only is a close friend of mine, but he was the biggest influence on me as a growing fabricator. He has taught me so much of what I know, and I am grateful to him for everything.
After the mock-up trees where figured out in camera with scrap cardboard, they were constructed with scored cardboard. A round piece of plywood is inside the bottom of each tree to reinforce and allow for tie-downs. The surface texture is made from a paste-like material called cellu-clay.
The "roots" of the trees are pipes, so to manufacture them systematically, we made sculpts of the joints and molds of them in silicone so we could cast them in plastic on the ends of wooden dowels.
The finished pipes where textured with sawdust and spray glue and I dry-brushed them to appear as though they had rusted and developed a teal patina.
I also created a number of small sett-dressing element and props for the film, as well as doing the finished paint job for the machine.