Extreme Papercraft. (An installation that never was.)

SamBrugha · 20-09-2012 11:43am #1

A friend (Zhan) and I mess around with art and design and have a bit of a group, I'm not here to advertise it or get people to visit the blog or whatever. If people want more info, people can ask questions. I just want to stick this up here to show people that you can make crazy things out of paper and glue. A lot of the text below is taken from our blog updates.

We were presented with a great opportunity to make a piece of artwork for the Kings of Concrete festival, which was part of the tall ships in Dublin this year.

We had just over two weeks to come up with an idea of what to make and make it, so things were somewhat serious. We spent around three hours brain storming one evening drawing out what we wanted. Zhan wanted a big face emerging out of a wall, but didn’t know how to approach it, so I (Sam) said we could do it using pepakura.

I got the renders spent about three to five hours getting the render cut into pieces and ready for printing. Then i came home to Wexford and spent the guts of six hours getting it to print correctly on A1 paper. I guess this was phase one and i guess this is where the first problems showed up. As we were strapped for time when printing i didn’t have time or money to get the thick paper needed, so we ended up using 160gsm gloss (big mistake) and 80gsm papper with plans of re-enforcing it later as you can see up above with the green paper glued to the back of some pieces..
So arriving back to Dublin the cutting began, and there was a lot of cutting, a lot of coffee, and alot of stress.

At this point we are working nearly every evening and day that we have to try and get it glued together. In this time we end up working thirty hours straight to try and get as much glued together as we can and its not enough, and the only reason we stopped working at 30 hours were due crashing badly from drinking so much coffee leaving us feeling like our hearts would stop at any second.

Its the night before we move into the kings ware house to begin the resining and we need to get the head assemble. We have no choice of time and the stress levels are high. We work until 5 in the morning if not after and eventually get it done.

Its at this point we realise the original idea is f*cked. Zhan had built a big base for the head to rest on and we were going to make bricks out of foam coming up around the head to simulate this beast of a thing coming out of the ground. But the head is far too big and we dont know what to do.
Oh well, we have a huge head and a lot of work to do.

So its the morning we move into the ware house. We an idea to build the back of the head, neck and shoulders out of wooden beams. We get the head in its delicate state transported in a van. and we cycle there at speed.
Within 15 minutes of being there we have a stand made to hang the face on and then we begin to resin in the back of the warehouse. We spend days resining the outside and the inside.

The inside is where the problems began sadly. To resin the inside we had to pu t the head on the ground facing down, having its securely propped. I applied the first and second coat of resin and went off to help some people while it dried. While i was gone the ears sagged due to weight. I thought this was fine and created a bridge holding the ears back in place. What i didn’t notice was horrible and heart breaking. It was after fibreglassing the inside we proceeded to lift up the head and place it on the floor standing by itself. We didn’t notice that when the ears sagged it cause the mouth to buckle inwards. Turning the head, Mr. Christmas, into a an ugly duckling, the hunchback of Notre Dame. We were seriously running out of time and Zhan was Run off his feet doing stencils for the festival. I tried my best to rebuild the mouth with marine body filler yet i ran out of time and money.

We bit off more than we could chew, in a big big big way. Yet we are proud to say we even got that far in the time we had. We were going to fix it and finish it with other projects on show next year By building the shoulders and back of the head out of wood, yet sadly that wasn't meant to be either. Last week we were given some horrific news. The giant head we made for kings of concrete had been smashed. We have been given no information of why it happened, when it happened, or who did it.

jesse pinkman · 21-09-2012 7:58pm

Sam . . bit of a 'learning curve' for you that one . . Looked like many hours of hard graft were involved. I liked what you achieved, it had promise & potential (don't get big headed about it) but vandalism of ones work is always regrettably . . an unfortunate ending to a good story.

Are you gonna try making another one out of a tougher material than paper?

tracert · 24-09-2012 10:43pm

Thanks for posting this. Could you tell us a bit more about starting the project in the first place? Did ye get an open brief to make anything ye wanted for the festival and were ye going to be reimbursed for it afterwards? Or did you get funding beforehand and that was the money that ran out?

It's a really good effort for the time-frame you had with no time to prep anything beforehand since you only came up with the idea after the fact. I'm not familiar with Pepakura at all but it seems like a good idea. Is it generally aimed at smaller projects or have you made something of this scale before?

****ty thing to have happen to your piece, finished or not. Similar (but different circumstances) to what happened to a piece by Mick Minogue (who also made a giant head of a different sort at Kings of Concrete, I think) recently. Probably a silly question but would it be covere by any kind of insurance if it happened in the warehouse?

SamBrugha · 16-10-2012 12:32pm

jesse pinkman wrote: »

Sam . . bit of a 'learning curve' for you that one . . Looked like many hours of hard graft were involved. I liked what you achieved, it had promise & potential (don't get big headed about it) but vandalism of ones work is always regrettably . . an unfortunate ending to a good story.

Are you gonna try making another one out of a tougher material than paper?

It was a great learning experience and was well over 120 hours of work. We are working on expanding our design group at the moment and another big installation is in the mix of it all. At the moment I am currently working slowly on 6 replica game and movie helmets along with other stuff but I need money for materials so its going very slow.

The thing is once we put resin and fibre glass onto the paper, it was rock hard, at one point we had to cut a piece off, we used a dremil and broke it with in two minutes, then we had to get an angle grinder and the head stopped the blade, so strength isnt an issue its just people.

SamBrugha · 16-10-2012 12:43pm

tracert wrote: »

Thanks for posting this. Could you tell us a bit more about starting the project in the first place? Did ye get an open brief to make anything ye wanted for the festival and were ye going to be reimbursed for it afterwards? Or did you get funding beforehand and that was the money that ran out?

It's a really good effort for the time-frame you had with no time to prep anything beforehand since you only came up with the idea after the fact. I'm not familiar with Pepakura at all but it seems like a good idea. Is it generally aimed at smaller projects or have you made something of this scale before?

****ty thing to have happen to your piece, finished or not. Similar (but different circumstances) to what happened to a piece by Mick Minogue (who also made a giant head of a different sort at Kings of Concrete, I think) recently. Probably a silly question but would it be covered by any kind of insurance if it happened in the warehouse?

The other guy (Zhan) in the group does volunteer work for kings of concrete and was asked did he have any ideas for a an installation. Zhan wanted to do something with a face and after brain storming we came up with an idea and i told him how to build it. We got no apologies from the guys in the ware house, there was mention of being reimbursed but i think that was a sham, as some people who worked there are yet to be paid! All the funding came from my pocket, i worked a fulltime job during the days and on that head in the evenings.

I was extremely please with how well it turned out, i built helmets from games and movies before so i had a bit of practice at it.

I doubt that warehouse even has insurance. Either way i heard rumours that the owner let some young lads in to skate the ramps in the warehouse if they tidied up the place, and he went of and never checked on them and it was days after that when i got a call saying it was smashed! No apologies from anyone, no enquiries into it, no body cared. What annoys me though is that we were pretty much doing it for free for them and it would have looked amazing when it was done.

I'm angry now.

Extreme Papercraft. (An installation that never was.)

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