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Alice in Wonderland

Newstead Abbey LIVE Project

NTU Year 1
2nd Project

Harry Griffin, Victoria Clayton, Jacob Louro-Lopez, Millie Gray, Will Russell

Mood boards

  • We each started a different moodboard using imagery and inspiration from the abbey and Alice in Wonderland

  • (above) I focused on the bright colours and various versions of Alice, taking inspiration from quotes from the book as well as Lord Byron

Ideas 

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  • We came up with a lot of ideas and we loved them all

  • Too many ideas! Group discussions and tutorials = combine all into one solid idea

  • Came up with a 'stack of books/light box' design

  • Everyone would have a box and or an element to work on

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Final idea

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  • Our final design is a stack of four boxes, the largest at the bottom, smallest at the top

  • Each box would have either a set of different colour lights or coloured astatate to mimic different colours 

  • Pages from the Alice in Wonderland story are scattered around the boxes and in-between them

  • We eventually decided to remove the idea of the teapot and sheet, we needed to simplify it. Too much may distract from the light boxes

  • Cheshire cat's tale hanging from the back of Millie's box, went with a paper design to match the paper scenes in the boxes

3D elements

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  • Millie worked on testing how to Cheshire cat tail would work whilst I worked on how to create the 3D book effect along the side of the boxes 

  • Cheshire cat tail: Looked various films on how the cat disappeared for inspiration, seperate peices of paper developed to a spring 'slinky' effect

  • Books: I worked on printing out various book spines and sticking them onto card to make them struckturly sound, then worked on bending them and attaching them to strips of card etc

  • As the books take a long time to create, it was decided that rather than do the book facade on both sides of the boxes, we'll stick to just one side per box and use illustrations on the other side. 

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Lightbox Scenes

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  • The key element of our design are the light boxes and the scenes within

  • We each incorporated elements of part of the Alice story into the boxes

  • Harry: Alice falling down the rabbit hole

  • Millie: The Cheshire Cat

  • Victoria: The griffin and the Mocking Turtle

  • Using our designs, we traced over these in illustrator, both Harry and Millie took the lead in this to save time

  • Using our illustrator images, they were sent to the lazer cutter and cut out of black mount board for our light box scenes 

Construction

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  • Two bottom boxes are bolted together for stability and will stay together to make it easier for construction on site and for transit, top box will be placed on top in location with a stencil as to where to place it drawn into the box below

  • The scenes were placed together with pieces of foam board between each layer to create depth, then stuck into the boxes 

  • Brown paint was added onto the book stacks to create further depth

  • Pages from a copy of Alice in wonderland were stuck to the other side of the boxes with illustrations drawn by myself stuck along with them

  • Lighting was experimented with alongside construction. One was a singular light at the back, which we added too as this did not bring out the depth of the scenes as we wanted

  • We combined the singular light at the back with strip lights placed between the layers which enabled all the details to come through

  • Colour was brought into the scenes by placing coloured gel at the back, using complimentary colours for them all to work as one.

Final Piece

Reflection

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Whilst working in a team, I found it difficult to try and rely on others toto finish their own part of the project. However, it was nice to find each person's strengths and utilise them well within the project. I enjoyed being able to share my work with others and spilt the workload, being able to rely on those stronger than me on certain aspects such as maths and measurements whilst constructing our boxes.

In future projects, I hope to be able to allow my voice to be heard more, to enable more time to experiment and check if our ideas work before fully putting them into practice. 

Thank
         you!

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