This is a giant remote control snail that I recently made for The Fool Factory for their promotion of National Science Week 2011. It’s about a metre long, fitted onto the chassis of a remote control car, and has eyes that move from side to side. It’s made to look somewhat like Australia’s largest land snail, the Giant Panda Snail, which inhabits sub-tropical forests in Queensland.

I’ve posted photos of the making process. The shell is shaped polystyrene layered with  paper mache, and then painted. The body is made from thin PE foam sheeting covered by a strange irregular and stretchy netted fabric which I used for the skin texture, then painted. Inside the snail there is a cage that separates and protects the body from remote control chassis, and a small aluminium structure that holds the servo motors that rotate the eyes.

I’m also like the following picture of the snail in my studio, although it reminds me of when we first moved into our house and there was a small crack by the back door where leopard slugs used to come in during the night to eat the cat food in the laundry! Worse was when they used venture further into the house and we could accidentally tread on them barefoot if we were up in the night tending babies – eew!

The windmill prop I mentioned previously was made for the National Museum of Australia‘s July school holiday program Little BIG Things. It ran in conjunction with the museum’s new Landmarks exhibition, which explores a broad history of Australia through stories of places and their peoples.. The kids visiting the Discovery Centre drop-in activity area could make small sculptures of a big thing from where they came from, and then write a story about it to place on the blades of the windmill.

Against the huge windows in the foyer of the museum the windmill looks quite small despite being 3 metres tall. At home when I did a trial assembly of the windmill outside my studio window, it looked enormous! There are some more photos of the windmill in my Flickr photoset.

I’m working on a windmill prop at the moment. I made the base structure a month or so ago, but am now back to making the blades. The windmill itself is very simple, but it’s size – it will stand 3 metres high – makes it logistically tricky to work on in my studio. It’s coming together nicely, though, and I’m enjoying it.

I made this giant garden fork prop for  The Fool Factory recently. There are some making photos in my portfolio at Flickr. Before I handed it over we had fun posing with it like the farmer couple in Grant Wood’s American Gothic painting and various other silly things. It definitely invites comic scenarios.

This suggestion of a seagull skeleton is a prop for a new play I’m working on, but I rather like it as an object for itself. It’s given me some ideas for making some stranger ones when I get some time later.

By coincidence, today I happened across Chris Jordan’s photographic collection Midway: Message form the Gyre, a photographic documentation how albatross chicks on Midway Atoll ban in the middle of the Pacific Ocean often die because they end up being fed heaps of plastic junk. It’s shocking – only look if you are feeling strong.

This is the big dead manta ray prop that I made for the Street Theatre’s production of Jacques Brel is alive and well and living in Paris.  Sadly Desirée – my name for her  – was cut from the final production, but I loved making her.  Manta rays are such awesome creatures!

Because she had a wingspan of over 2 metres, I decided chalk on the floor was a good way to start drawing up a pattern. I also bought myself a little plastic model of a manta to refer to, which turned out to be useful.

From this I traced a pattern onto butcher’s paper and from there onto sheets of polystyrene which were then built up and glued into a block.

I also decided to insert a strip of thin plywood into the underside right across the width of the wingspan, so that the wings would be protected from breaking, especially at the tips. I also did that with the fins that I added.

Then much shaping with a really sharp knife, a narrow power belt  sander, and sandpaper. I decided to keep the surface a bit rough, which often makes it easier for an audience to read.

When I use polystyrene that will just have a painted finish I skin it with muslin first. Here you can just see some of the muslin draped over the spray adhesive can on the right.

I usually add a little bit of latex to the first coat of paint to help make everything stick to the styrene.

Then it’s on to colouring; for the final shading I used spray paint so that the colours merged softly. It was tricky to seat in the eyes (painted and glossed wooden door knobs) and get the shape of the upper eyelid right.

There are a few more in-between photos in my photoset at Flickr.