Zero

Fabrication: String, Hair & Accessories

Once our characters were cast in silicone, the next step in the process was to add the final finishes to the puppets, a process more commonly referred to as fabrication. There were 3 main areas to contend with: Wrapping, Hair creation and Accessories – numbers, eyes and eyebrows.

Continue reading...

Behind the Scenes Video

Go behind the scenes and check out the making of Zero. From concept illustrations through to principal photography, this video covers two years of production. Music by Massive Attack, 'Teardrop'. Purchase the song on iTunes.

Continue reading...

Casting Your Puppets

Allow me to introduce you to the glorious world of Silicone. The material we used to surround the wire armatures and give our puppets body. So where do I start? Shore strength? Viscosity? Cure time? Ratios? It's a whole other world you'll need to learn from scratch.

Continue reading...

Building Wire Armatures

When brainstorming how best to build our characters, I drew inspiration from one of my favourite childhood toys... the Pink Panther. Many of you may be familiar with this type of bendy rubber toy which allows you to pose the character into any position and it retains its shape. This was due to what lay at its core, a wire armature.

Continue reading...

Making Molds for Zero

With the prototypes set in stone, or rather, clay... we had to make molds of each character which would allow us to produce multiple casts of each body shape. We learnt a lot during this process and evolved our technique over time.

Continue reading...

Sculpting Prototypes

With the character illustrations locked down and a clear direction set, it was time to get our hands dirty. David Cox was tasked with the job of turning what he drew on paper into clay sculptures.

Continue reading...

Illustrating Zero

Before writing Zero, I work shopped character concepts with Brett Bimson our production designer. We discussed the varying physical attributes of our characters and the look and feel of the environment they inhabit. Once the story was locked down, we had the fun task of bringing the words to life with Illustration...

Continue reading...