Foreground & Medium shot house prop

James Martin Buckman

Hi, I'm currently working on a prop house for a short. The house will be shot in the foreground as well as in the distance-middle position/placement of a scene. I guess you could say, second tier positioning. I had attended on making the house detailed with actual clay bricks, but now I'm thinking I should paint the house a certain color and apply bricks here and there instead of bricking the entire house. I feel it might take away from the animation, with the attention being diverted away from the characters. Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated. Simpler set? Lighter on the details? House model and reference photo images.

Chris Ellerby

How detailed you go with your model depends a lot of the artistic style and goals of the project.  If you are going for photo-realism, you should make everything as detailed as possible. 

For brick work I usually carve them out, or use vacuum formed plastic sheets that have brick patterns on them from model railroad/hobby shops.

If you are trying to match the brick work of a specific building, you will likely need to carve them yourself to match the scale/style of brick.

You can make the surface out of MDF board and carve them out using a rotary tool or router, or use a rigid foam like renshape or blue/pink insulation foam from a hardware store.

/Chris