Shape Island

Art Dept Manager | Model-Maker

Bix Pix Entertainment | Apple

2021-2022

Project Synopsis

Based on the beloved series of children’s books by Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett, “Shape Island” takes us to the whimsical land of three shapes: Triangle, Circle, and Square, as they explore their home and learn more about each other.

As a fan of Klassen & Barnett’s work, I was extremely excited to come on to this project. As a model-maker, I got to create beautiful props for the titular shapes. I wore many other hats throughout the production: set builder, terrain expert, prop master, and set dresser, to name a few.

Halfway through the show I became the Art Dept Manager, keeping track of the upcoming shots and communicating to the Art, Puppet, Animation and Rigging departments, staying ahead of our production timeline.

Terrain

“GROUNDS” MASTER

At the start of this production, I was put in charge of testing various methods to create the natural terrains of the entire show. This was a fun time of experimentation. There are a lot of tried and true ways that we use in stop motion to achieve certain looks, but they can sometimes start to look rote. We wanted to challenge ourselves to try something new, and make the “normal” things to be made in a totally new way.

For example, we experimented with using dyed wood chips and sawdust for our grass textures. I was in charge of the early tests to determine the proper look and scale of this important terrain texture. In the end we ended up using a combination of both, dyed green and yellow, to achieve the grass at various different scales.

Very fine dyed sawdust test

Fine to medium dyed sawdust test

Dyed sawdust & wood chips test

It helped to dress our test swatches with environmental pieces to get a better preview of the final look

Using watered-down white glue to adhere dirt & grass to the sets

EARLY SAND TESTS

The shapes spend a lot of time on the beach and other sandy environments. The perks of living on an island! It was important to nail down the specific look of the sand early on, because it was going to be used throughout the show. I did a lot of experimentation dying sand various colors to see if we wanted to go for an impressionistic look. We even experimented with a very painterly look, trying to blend different colored sands together to create gradients on the ground.

Early color sand tests

Gradient experiments

Dry-mixing dyed sand and white sand to see what happens!

Letting the wet dyed sand dry

Thin layers in sheets dried faster

THE GROUND

In the end, we usually covered the ground in natural sand and painted over it. But those tests were a proving ground and we ended up using a lot of the lessons learned in other aspects of the production!

I ended up gluing and coating most of the sets with sand due to my familiarity with the material. We opted for a very light coating, which meant I had to be careful in applying it to not get any area with a very obvious seem. This usually meant rotating entire foam set sculptures to let gravity do most of the work while the white glue and water mixture harden. Most of this was done outside in the middle of summer, so I didn’t have to wait long for the glue to set up!

An early mock-up of our first sand set

Experimenting with sand, rock, and other textures

ADDING DIRT AND GRASS

We had a lot of sets that required integrating dirt & grass onto the side of a mountain. The foam-carved set would get coated and painted with a rock texture, and then come to me for the terrain treatment. The process was fun because it had to be done in stages: applying the dirt, aging the dirt, adding and feathering out the grass, and finally adding any wood chips to fill in the corners of the set, imitating overgrowth in the forgotten corners of this nature path. The set dressing team did an incredible job adding the paper-cut carstock grass and fern elements. All of these pieces brought the environment of Shape Island to life.

The naked (only paint) mountain path set

Adding the fine dirt

Feathering in the grass and adding ferns

The Mountain Path

All the little details coalesced on sets like these to create a natural environment that really felt lived-in, while adding a feel of a natural world that had been there long before our characters existed.

The tree in this shot had to have roots sculpted out of clay, and painted to integrate with the tree trunks. This was particularly challenging because there was a big time crunch to get the set launched. Half of the job in art department is working against the clock!

I’m very happy with the final result. We always challenged ourselves to get our sets to look both beautiful and natural, in that same way that nature itself is often chaotic and harmonious all at once.

There was always something shot-specific we’d have to add after the fact. I built, molded and cast this rock-pile banister for a shot when Circle is running up the hill. We worked hard for the set dressing on Shape Island to look like they all came from the same world of natural, found objects.

The rock pile banister, seamed together with clay and small pebbles

We didn’t install the entire banner – the camera was never going to see everything!

Set Builds

THE WATERFALL

The Waterfall was the first set on Shape Island that I took all the way from start to finish. Starting with the initial foam carving, to coating the surface with our dense expending foam, and continuing on into a round of plastic coating and terrain texturing, this one truly felt like i out my signature on it.

I also spent a decent amount of time figuring out how to do the water in the pond, and rolling down the mountainside. The waterfall itself is number of delicately poured, built-up layers of clear resin, combined with some lighting and VFX magic to make it appear in motion. The pond was a large piece of clear acrylic sheet, cut to fit exactly in a deep divot of the carved foam. We then painted to underside of the acrylic, to give it the illusion of surface depth.

My initial EPS (bead foam) carving

Coated with a hard layer of Polyurethane foam

Final covering: a coat of self-leveling plastic resin

The Set Dressing Team

On top of the incredible builders we had in the set shop, our on the floor we had the incredibly talented dynamic duo of Alexandra Steele and Bismak Fernandes putting the final, incredibly important details onto the set. The set dressing team is responsible for adding the finishing touches, and making sure everything looks super good in camera. These two worked tirelesly and with great dedication to install foliage, vegetation, tree, blocks, and everything else to breath life into this make-believe island.

The Dream Team: Alex & Bismark

A dense forest with set dressing galore!

The forest bridge

THE WINDING WOODS

Circle gets lost in the Winding Woods trying to chase down a rogue gopher. We had to come up with an ingenious solution for a set that would sell the idea of a densely-packed forest where you could feasibly lose your way, while also keeping the build parameters to a minimum. Our Art Director Jeff White’s solution was to create a kind of “Infinity Path” – a large elliptical path that wound back on itself. A berm on the inner part of the set made it so you’d never be able to see the other side of the path. This made it so we could film from a lot of different angles, and no part of the path would ever look exactly the same as another.

I was tasked with mocking up and building the infinity path. Another clever modification on this set: the top of the berm was designed with a puck in the middle, so it could come out and have extra trees planted inside of it (for the shots where the forest needed to appear even more dense than normal). There is also a separation point in the middle of the set, so it could be taken apart after shooting out our wide shots. This meant it could be used on two separate stages to shoot out our close ups and insert shots, doubling the amount of footage we could animate in a week.

Mock-up created from packing tubes, foamcore and cheesecloth

Testing a camera angle down the winding path

Coated with dirt and grass tests

The Shapes navigate their way down the path

The set split in half to get more coverage!

BEACH HANGOUT

The Beach Hangout is a special part of the island, and an important set for the show. The Shapes share hot chocolate there, watch sunsets and sunrises there, picnic and cavort there. The challenge with this was to make it iconic, by keeping it very simple, but just decorated enough to breath life into the relaxing beach setting.

The lightly undulating sand is coated with a salmon pink and then coated with a brilliant white coat of sand, giving the beach a shimmering quality. Combine that with a few well-placed, elegant palm trees and some massive rocks to break up the background composition, and you’ve got the makings of an iconic setting where anything can happen.

The animation table top with diving board

Salmon pink undercoat with bright white sand

Foamcore and cheesecloth boulder mock-ups help us make sure our compositions come out balanced

Lighting adds so much to the finished shot

TREE TRUNKS

Most of our trees were skinny enough to be constructed out of a packing tube base or even a simple dowel rod, but some had to be massive to sell the scale of an old-growth forest. I carved these large tree trunks by cutting a MDF (medium-density fiberboard) templates, covering it with aluminum tape on the edges, and using them as a guide to cutting the shape out of 12″ diameter foam cylinders with a hot wire.

Props & Models

FOUNTAIN IN CIRCLE’S HOME

The fountain in the center of Circle’s home beneath a waterfall was a great centerpiece to fabricate. As a centerpiece to the whole house, it was important to make it feel cozy and secore.

After the mock-up phase, I created the fountain’s outer wall by building up layers of MDF and covering up the cracks with bondo. Inside the center is a mirror that we sprayed with dullcote and added a 1/2″ piece of plexiglass on top of. The tree is constructed from dowel rods and armature wire, with bondo filling in the cracks.

The mock-up is always important, as it helps make sure the prop’s size works in the set before you invest time building the real thing

BOARD GAME

Throughout the production, I was relied upon for my exactness on paper craft projects. Taking art created by Joseph Berryhill, I meticulously folded, glued and cut the pieces to the space-themed board game that is a central part of this episode. I also prepped the 3D-printed board game pieces with spray paint. The box itself has a top that can open, and is rigged so characters can handle it without ruining the box. It took a lot of trial and error to get the paper just right, but it was well worth it. I sometimes wish this was a real game so I could play it!

Beauty shot of the Board Game Box

Set Dressing

SQUARELAND

Square’s part of the island was one of my favorites. It was a unique challenge to make a bunch of cubes look unique and interesting, but Production Designer Paul Harrod found the way to do it. I was lucky enough to help dress the set a number of times for Squareland, which involved a lot of intricate planning. We worked hard to make sure everything looked like it was embedded in the sand, like every cube had been on the beach for a long time, like ancient ruins.

A side view of Squareland

Some rocks in the BG are simple foamcore cutouts!

It takes a lot of little cubes to make an island!

CIRCLE’S GARDEN

The garden outside Circle’s cave was one of the most beautifull we got to create. By the time it was first seen on camera, so many of our artists had contributed to it. It was a truly collaborative project, requiring everyone’s skills to bring to life. Carpenters, sculptors, mold-makers, prop-fabricators, painters, and set-dressers all had something important to bring to this unique set.

I contributed to the garden’s grass and dirt mounds, working diligently and with a steady hand to create the well-manicured oasis.

Vegetables in the garden

The set dressing team hard at work (as usual)

I also helped create the gopher hole

Everything has its place

NICE HILL PARTY

This introduction to the episode “Triangle Day” was a cute little prop-fabrication assignment for me. Even small scenes like this one have lots of planning put into them! I was in charge of dressing the table, creating the flag banner above the table, and creating the transition from beach sand to grass. Yet another example of the care and attention we put into every single set.