Stop-Motion Animation Set - The Bridge of the Ship

I've been pretty busy and posting here has suffered. Here's one of the things I was busy with. I have built the set of the ship. It will be used for some stop-motion segments and for help in layout. It's rather large and takes up a good portion of my dining room. It took several weeks to build when I could find spare time from work, family and friends. Here are some pictures from the building process.

Step one build your base.

Here are the materials used on the base.

Here's Cooper wondering what I'm doing and why I'm not taking him for a walk on such a nice day.

Then set up where the wall will be. Materials used here were foam core, the little triangle things that are intended to keep those cheap blinds anchored at the bottom but no one ever uses. I actually save those kind of things for just such creative occasions.

I tried to set this up so certain sections could be removed to allow for the camera to get better shots. Materials are 3/4 inch Styrofoam, duct tape and "Foamies" - beige color. Oh yes, and spray glue.

From there I went on to make the ceiling. It's removable also and made of pretty much the same materials as the rest of the structure. The elements such as the back rails, the trim on the door and the girders in the ceiling were drawn and colored in Adobe Flash. Yes I said Flash - not Illustrator. I like the tools in Flash. Then I export them as jpegs and bring them out. From there I glue them to foam core or poster board and shape them into the parts I need. The short posts are printouts wrapped around small tubes that I saved from somewhere and the red things on top are the lids to hotel shampoo bottles painted red. Okay, I'll stop listing all the weird things I save, but if you rummaged through my garage you wouldn't believe what you would find. 

This is it in front of our couch to give you and idea of how large it is. 

This is it with the rest of the elements in it. As I get into the stop-motion segments I'll show you more of what cool things these elements do.

Oh and I have a great wife! Not once did she complain about the mess I was making in the dining room, living room, kitchen, garage or back yard. In fact she even bragged to others about it all... the animation set, that is, not the mess.