OUAN406 - Constructing Sets

Once the set had been cut out using the CNC the next part of constructing the actual set was fitting all the pieces together and correcting any mistakes with the measurements if there were any. The way the walls and the base of the set were designed was so that a trench, outlining the walls of the set ran along the 12mm thick sheet of MDF with the trench around 6mm deep. This was so making the cut was deep enough to hold the walls in place without them bending or feeling too loose. Furthermore it was important that the cut didn't affect the sturdiness of the base by going to deep, and risking it collapsing or breaking. I also made sure that when the pieces were all cut out to run over the edges with some sandpaper, just to take off any of the excess splinters of wood or protruding pieces that could actually have effected the way the walls slotted together since they were measured to be exact within a mm or so. Overall I was quite anxious about this stage in the project, because in a sense it was make or break. The designs that took so long to plan and execute on AutoCAD as well as the complex method of cutting and thinking about how the entire set would fit together was going to be determined when I tried to piece it all together. If it hadn't worked the way it was intended to, it would have required more work and reworking the mistakes that had been made. At this point in the project, time was becoming a more pressing matter because despite this being the most time intensive section of the project I still had to furnish it and create footage that I could take forward and make the final piece. So everything had to work as it was intended to.



To create a professional looking set with a good amount of versatility when shooting the footage I wanted to be able to have any number of walls as part of the set at one time. This meant I could shoot at a variety of angles and produce some overall interesting footage for the final title sequence. So everything slotted together comfortably at the corners, the individual walls had to be rebated. This meant taking the edge of the piece of wood and running it past the saw, set at the appropriate angle. The majority of the walls met perpendicular at 45 degrees, which was easy. However, there were several pieces of the set which met at angles such as 53 or 54 degrees. To get these figures for cutting I had to look back at my AutoCAD designs and make sure the angles were correct so they fitted together well. There were several instances whilst rebating that the wrong side of the wood was cut the wrong way. For example, there are walls in the set that have to be rebated one direction on one side and then the opposite direction on the other side because of the way the walls fit together. The first time this occurred when the wood was being rebated I didn't realise and consequently I had to re-do a piece.



Below shows the progression of placing the various pieces of the set into the base. Furthermore, it shows the way the space that the set occupies looks when different walls are removed, and also when looking through the window or door space for example. At this point I'm already getting a huge range of ideas of different shots that could be achieved, I just have to remember that the title sequence is only 30 seconds long, so I don't actually need that much footage overall. The bottom images show the size of the set and the floor space in comparison to some of the furnishings such as the book case and the staircase, which at this point are nearly finished but just need to be painted and some of the set pieces I bought placed on them. Overall, the construction of the set was a success in that it comfortably fit together and looked like it was designed to.

OUAN406 - Laser Cutter / CNC Router

Throughout this project I have had to learn a range of new things due to the processes involved in the making of the set. Aside from the software, learning to use new tools and machinery has been an integral part of the crafting process in creating the physical components of the set. Using the software package AutoCAD I was able to design and cut various details including; gothic style windows, a book case, stairs and other parts of furniture. This process allowed me to make authentic looking pieces and details without having to buy them or cut them by hand, it also meant that I could have unique designs that I could create myself. The only draw back with the laser cutter is the time it takes to cut the designs, especially on the more intricate ones. For example, something that I tried and decided not to pursue was using the laser cutter to raster on images of rust to the walls of the set in order to give the illusion that there was decay or corrosion on them. However, it took around an hour to raster the image on to one of the smaller walls meaning it would have taken upwards of ten hours to complete all of the walls, this ultimately was not a viable option. Below are the finished laser cut pieces which include the assembled book case, gothic windows, and buildings for the scenes representing the city. The laser cutter gives them quite an elegant burnt effect around the edges which works quite well and fits the aesthetic of the story and its themes.



The machine I used to cut out the walls and base of the set was the CNC router. A CNC is a computer controlled cutting machine used to cut pieces of material to a high quality, and is incredibly precise when it comes to the measurements of the final cut it can be used to cut thing such as A CNC router can be used in the production of many different items, such as door carvings, interior and exterior decorations, wood panels, sign boards, wooden frames, musical instruments, furniture, and so on. So it is an incredibly versatile piece of machinery. I used a 6mm cutting piece when I cut the walls out meaning I had to expand the walls by 3mm either side of the centre line which is used as a guide for the CNC to cut so that it remained the correct size when it was complete. In order to prepare the files for cutting, after the adjustments were made to the drawings they were imported into AlphaCam. AlphaCAM is an example of CAM software which makes the CAD drawing into a code called g-code. This is a code that the CNC machine can understand. Whilst in AlphaCam a set of instructions were embedded into the drawings to that the CNC knew which lines to cut and how deep to cut them, for example when cutting the base which was made of 12mm MDF wood, the CNC was told to only cut through 6mm to form the trench where the walls could sit in. Another consideration that had to be made before the CNC could cut the wood was how many passes it should do over the wood so as not to damage either the material or the cutter by cutting through 12mm of material at once. Once the file is opened in the CNC's virtual environment there are some simple adjustments that have to made in regards to the axis, specifically the Z axis, which has to be adjusted to fit the thickness of the material used.

The photographs below show the CNC's interface and virtual environment where the instructions are read and executed as lines of code. It is helpful to know where the procedure is up to by checking how many lines of code have been completed, in the close up image below it says line 61 of 99.



The images below show the finished base of the set, as an example of how the CNC can cut very cleanly. The only thing about using the CNC to cut angles like shown is that they leave a rounded edge at the corners, these can easily be removed using a chisel and pressing it down on spot where the wood joins at the corner to remove the excess wood. The base is now ready to be painted and prepared for the walls of the set.

OUAN406 - Purchasing Miniature Pieces

When I started thinking about how I was going to build the miniature sets, it became clear I wouldn't be able to build every individual piece myself because of time constraints and the technicality of putting together pieces of furniture in the 1/12 scale. I've attempted to create things like windows and a book case so that I can save money when it comes to buying miniature pieces, but the book case for example is quite straight forward, whereas as chair or decorative table would prove much more difficult to hand make with my current lack of knowledge on the production of furniture and wood working in general, despite how much I enjoy it.

To save myself some time, and to raise the overall realism and detail in the set I set myself the task of buying some pieces of miniature furniture online. I looked at some online stores that sold the pieces I was looking for but some of them were incredibly intricate and well put together, costing around £200 a piece. Which was out of budget, so I looked on a few other sites before resorting to eBay to see what I could find there. There was a huge amount of choice for things like miniature chairs, tables, rugs and other house-hold objects of varying price and detail. Of course the overall quality of the cheaper pieces dropped, it was still sufficient for what I needed it for. I set aside a list of some pieces that could come in useful to help me bring the set to life, and based on my original design, so looking at a chair, table, bottles and jars etc. After some careful browsing through eBay I came across various items that I thought would be appropriate to use and bought them. The total cost of all of my purchases was around £40, which wasn't bad as I was expecting to pay a little more than that. In total I bought; a 1/12th scale table and chair, two 1/12th scale decorative rugs, 15 miniature bottles of varying shapes, some Steampunk themed charms that I could use for decoration, and some cotton that I can use for clothing or even to cover pieces of the set if I need to, as a table cloth for example. Below are the items I purchased;