Fly little penguin, fly!

I’ve been working on a penguin layout for several weeks now and finally got a good scene combined with the right lighting.

March of the Penguins was the obvious inspiration.

Here’s the layout as it looks on the table:

I originally started out with a styrofoam base and put a plaster and paper towel mix down to make hills and glacier bits but the final result looked too much like cake icing.

So I tried adding some clay to the surface knowing that I’d be able to carve the clay to get the look I wanted.

Unfortunately as the clay dried it seperated from the base in interesting flakes. I’ll probably use it in a different scene but it was totally wrong for Mr. Penguin.

I eventually just created two slabs of clay, one for the base and one for the back and molded them until I had what I wanted. Once they were dry I glued them to the styrofoam for support and painted the whole thing gray.

After trying various lighting angles and methods of diffusing the light I decided I liked the look supplied with a couple of halogen light covers. Nice even illumination with just enough texture to help strengthen the suggestion of ice and snow.

I then added some model railroad snow to the ground and after various tests and tweaks got something I was happy with this weekend.

Let the penguin fly!

The master is PFG-01 film laminated to glass with Kapco, exposed for 20 seconds HeNe with two object beams and object light passing through halogen light covers for diffusion. Developed with JD2 developer and EDTA bleach with a short post treatment of ascorbic acid.

The copy is on PFG-01 film treated with 6% TEA and developed the same as the master with a longer ascorbic acid treatment and backed with black Oracal.

Published by

Michael Harrison

Husband, Programmer, Irish dancer, tinkerer, astronomer, layabout (as much as possible)

One thought on “Fly little penguin, fly!”

  1. Very nice! What type of laser do you use? Please include power specs, etc.

    I use the 5mW included with the Shoebox Holgraphy kit with the lens removed. I do reflection holgrams with PFG-01 plates with a 20 second beam exposure, but mine are not as bright as yours.

    Thanks,

    Mike

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