Giant Polystyrene / Styrofoam Mushrooms by Sculpture Studios

Welcome to Sculpture Studios. Creating a project here of some oversized props for Richard Hopper, the owner of Tropical Birdland in Leicester. I'm going to be stepping out from behind the microphone to work on this one just to prove that I'm not just a pretty voice and we'll get the project started. Making some shrooms didn't we? So the client's given us a brief of around six foot tall and the specifications are that it needs to fit into the back of a transit van doors but just to make sure that there's there's no snugness depending on what plan they use and instead of 53 which would be about here we're coming down to about 50 inches wide total. In this case this is the sketch we've been given. It's going to be a large cap and two smaller ones coming off. A little bit of a cart launch where we can kind of just make something visually interesting to look at and he sends a couple of other images that we're going to follow and kind of have a mean average of the three designs to work from. In this case this needs to be hollow at the end of the day so that the client can put some electrics through to light up the top of the mushrooms and a couple of points around here with possibly a shelf in which case a fairy's going to sit. A couple of 10 inch by six inch holes that the client's requested so they can have some animatronic fairies so that when the children are walking up to Santa's grotto or through the fairy land there's going to be a few instances where things are going to be moving around everyone. So that's where we are so far we're going to start with these large blocks of polystyrene work from a rough concept shape and use our hot wires and get cutting. The job's going to involve carving the giant mushrooms from polystyrene going over with our sticky back tin foil as a protective barrier and giving the whole shape a blanket coat of glass fibre. We'll then add fillers and a gel coat layer to get rid of fiberglass texture and we'll work the piece up to a good finish before we artwork and lacquer. We're using a standard bead polystyrene to begin with, cutting down our large blocks into pieces of very rough dimensions using a long hot wire. To take the large bulk of the material off I'm using a handheld hot wire and I'll then work down to nail and wire brushes to start carving the shape. The good thing about polystyrene is that it's relatively easy to make changes and amendments and for this job in particular we can simply carve away to our heart's content as we don't need to worry too much about an exact design and we can just go with what feels right. Normally Aidan would do the carving himself as it's the most enjoyable part of the work for him but with so many projects on the go in the studio at the moment we're all taking on a different project each and the different tasks to handle. The last couple of projects chronologically on our YouTube channel involve 3D scanning and 5-axis polystyrene cutting. Though very accurate all done by machine and a perfect method for geometric shapes in particular and something like the HMV dog where it needs to be absolutely identical to the model, our preferred method is to carve by hand. Can you believe it we actually had complaints from people saying oh no you're letting us down by not doing any carving as though we're simply going off the process but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do and do what's best for the job. Have a little faith people this is our preferred way of working. Right camera was needed on the site yesterday but this is yesterday's progress. All the underside of the mushrooms have been carved using a stone mason riffler. All the yellow you can see is our squirty PU expanding foam and you apply it on make sure you don't get any over your hands and clothes. This takes about an hour to dry and go off and then you can trim it off using a knife. Approximate height complies to be about six foot tall I'm about five ten so a couple of inches taller than me and it's about 50-51 inches wide which should fit in a normal transit door. These two doorways these little alcoves have now been carved out and this is for the animatronic fairies to sit on too. Let's grab one of the doors they've got little platforms so that whoever's installing the fairies a nice little balcony for the fairy to sit on hang their legs over and then all the way through the job you can have a hole cut out so that uh so that electrics and wires can be put through and the fairies can be lit up from behind and the animatronics can be powered from behind the job. What we're going to do is cut a section out from the back because this is only presumably going to be seen from the front section cut out from the back and then a channel can include all the wires and this will run through the entire job. We've been sending photographs to the client now and see what he says see if he likes everything any changes not too bad at the polystyrene stage at the moment but we're sending photographs now so they can make changes before any foiling and glass fiber goes ahead because it's a lot tougher to make changes later on and so we're sending the photographs now and if all goes well we'll get on with the foiling. The client says yes so what we're going to do now is on the inside of each of these alcoves we've got a tiny little hole which is going to allow the person installing the lights to feed a wire up through the back of the sculpture and here you can see a channel that we've all the way to each alcove and what we're going to do now is use our PU foam fill this in before going over with foil and fiberglass and resin and this way it's all pre-installed prior to the fiberglass going on top and everything should work just lovely as it's fed up through the pipe. Here we have Aidan adding a few finishing touches why because he's a fun guy oh careful Aidan you haven't got mushroom there nearly stalled myself. All of the detail has been accentuated in the carving so that everything's retained after laminating. We're going over with a blanket coat of glass fiber as opposed to creating a mold and a cast and this will soften the detail slightly so we need to make sure that everything's deep enough so that it's still there after it's been fiberglassed. Once we're happy with the carving we go over with our usual sticky back tin foil and this creates a protective barrier from the resin that's going on top. It's all a lengthy process particularly on shapes like this with all the ins and outs and sometimes when you're working on your own for long periods of time you just need to remember to keep yourself sane even talking to yourself on occasions can sometimes help. These mushrooms are all going to be situated outside so a more expensive fire rated class o resin isn't needed. We're using a general purpose and we're building up in several layers of glass fiber starting with a light layer to get into all the detail and a stronger layer over the top on the platforms where the little fairies are going to sit. We're not quite sure at this stage whether these need to be drilled or bolted into by the client so we're giving these a few extra layers of glass fiber as well just in case. Once the resin is set we're giving everything a sand down and what we call a denib to get rid of any sharp points or any strands of glass fiber sticking out. We've created a resin flow coat and powder mix that we can apply onto the job and the powder bulks up the material and allows us to be able to sand it back. Metal brackets have been installed on the bottom of the job and this way the client can fix the mushrooms into the ground outside and simply cover with grass or foliage to dress the base. Once the mushrooms have been sanded down several times to a suitable finish we go over with a 2k primer and proceed to 2k paints. These car body paints are suitable for outside use and generally more hard wearing than normal emulsions. We mask up areas like the tops which will refine and clean up the lines on later. This is another aspect of the job where we've got a bit of free reign and it allows us to create some beautiful artwork and hopefully give the client more than they're expecting. We go over with some airbrushing detail to finish the piece off before sealing everything with a 2k lacquer. So now because the client was so happy with the first mushroom sculpture we've been commissioned to create four more. These are going to be smaller to go alongside the large one and these are going to be placed alongside the path to light up the fairy walkway. This time we're making sure the top has a really deep recess on the inside lip as we're going to be installing an added pipe for some extra lighting around the inside of the cap. These mushrooms are created and finished in exactly the same way and they're all sent up to tropical birdland to be installed. The client sent us a couple of clips from someone walking around the route and a few finished photographs of the mushrooms on site. We'd like to thank Richard Hopper for coming to us with the work and we'd love to create more for tropical birdland in the future. Please feel free to leave any comments below as they're always appreciated and hit the subscribe button for our latest videos. You can like Sculpture Studios on Facebook and follow at Aidan Hines on Twitter and for more of our work visit sculpturestudios.co.uk. Thank you very much for watching.