Many Native Indian camps have animal hide stretched and tied to tree branches - providing a type of wind brake in and around their camp. I have used this idea to add to the feel of the camp setting being produce and to also give the audience some visual aspect in relation to the plot. This additional scenic element is to reflect the authority and sense of ownership of the scene towards the Lion.
A tribal flag showing a Lion's silhouette imprinted onto lion skin is hung on a tree branch stand tied with ropes. The material to use for stage would have to be some thick calico, that's then painted to achieve correct finish.
For the stage this scenic element (actually all of my scenery) would be based upon a truck. This would allow the nature of this production to follow better (hence all the transitions from forest, to castle, to behind the castle) as the set pieces would be easily moved into position by stage hands or the actors themselves. The basic truck size I have decided to be 125mm high, therefore 5mm high in the model to allow for casters to be safely mounted underneath the truck for the production.
The photograph below shows the truck construction for the 'Flag Stand'. A piece of foam board was cut to size and neatened with a black outer edge of card, this would later be covered for decoration purposes to match the set dressing.
The making of the flag stand for the model
After stretching out my trusty tape measure again and carrying out some careful calculations - I set to making this part of the model.
The flag stand was to consist of 3 tree branches supporting the tribal flag.
First a wire frame was constructed, later bulked out with masking tape to provide the branch type texture.
The wire was pressed between a pair of pliers as after playing around I found this technique imprinted just the right scale pattern into the masking tape to suggest the surface of a tree branch.
After carefully selecting the colours : a mixture of raw sienna and burnt umber with a light touch of 'opaque oxide of chromium' (basically sap green!) my branches were complete.
For the model the flag was to be a small scale suggestion of animal hide - I thought of just painting a piece of calico to achieve this effect or sticking a printed texture of lion's fur onto it. But to go one step more I decided to try my hand at texturing with actual tiny bits of twine to produce the desired effect.
I started with a base of calico cut to size then cut the piece of twine into small pieces - after gluing this to the calico (first with doubled sized sticky tape then a layer of PVA over the top) I realised the scale of the tiny pieces of twine was too large! So I attempted the same process again this time making sure even smaller bits were cut.
A scaled down template of a lion wearing a crown was produced on Adobe Photoshop, which was then printed and cut out with a scalpel and later stuck on with layers of PVA!
Once dried I could attach the 'flag' to the stand - this was done with miniature scaled rope to fit! (A very fiddly process).
Final 1:25 scale model
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