Spoiled Illusions 6: The Rude Disused Go-Kart Park Pallet

Are you one of those who, upon watching a DVD check out the extras, which often include a Making Of clip. I used to; but I don’t anymore: I don’t like to see the illusion spoiled. But just in case you are, here’s a little Earplug Adventures illusion spoiler.

There were many pallets and sheets of chipboard in use at my old place of work. Here is an example of a stack of them…

Now you might think this is a random selection, which, by chance, I had elected to elevate to a place of posterity upon the Internet. But no, look closely at that top pallet. It’s a strange example of the breed because it was made of a mysterious substance that looked and felt like concrete, and was impossible to lift without the aid of a fork-lift truck. It was also a perminent set for the Earplug Adventures. The subterranean go-kart park in the Museum of Future Technology, to be exact – a set that was used over and over throughout the earlier tales. That’s why you can see some tiny coloured objects in front of it, and a red sticker attached. Oh look, this it in action…

…in Museum of Terror. That’s Dan Down’n’out with his two slovenly wives. He was so poor that he lived in the go-kart park – along with some pigeon shit apparently. And it was still appearing (years after its demise) in later tales – namely in this shot from Haunted Mars…

 

…where it had been placed upon a sheet of rockwall/plasterboard/pladur. Yes, it was a library shot – originally a bunch of earplugs waiting for a hover-train in an earlier story – minus the guano. It also existed in literary alternate realities, such as this one…

…featuring a nasty bunch of enforcers known as the Black Hatters in Evil Empire.

“But,” I hear you say, “what has this concrete pallet got to do with the word ‘rude’ in the title of this post?”

Well I’ll tell you…in a moment. First let me continue this tale. One day I arrived at work – to discover that the go-kart park had disappeared. In horror I went looking for it. After several panic-stricken minutes in the main warehouse I found it loaded with office equipment. Some bunch of dozy office workers had risked hernias lifting the concrete pallet down – where they could easily have used any number of lighter, more accessible wooden ones. Anyway I repacked their office equipment and stole my pallet away, where I kept it hidden in plain sight beneath the bottom strut of a racking system…

It did sterling work work there. And because it was so sodding heavy, no one ever bothered it. So, with it safely enconced, I was able to decorate it further. If you’re eagle-eyed enough, you might notice something written on the central ‘column’. Can’t quite read it? Here it is in close-up…

Yes, it’s earplug graffiti. And here it is in a story…

“Ugh?” you could be forgiven for uttering. “I don’t recall ever seeing ‘I Suck Dick’ in a lovely Earplug Adventure!”

Well, in the beginning, the earplug adventure books were rude. Very. But following some complaints I decided to re-write them as child-friendly. It was a good move: they were much improved. So, obviously this graffiti needed to be erased from every shot it appeared in. And, equally obviously, in shots where the erasing process looked odd, instead I substituted one of the words…

…and added a beam of sunlight. Much later I used the picture again as a night security camera shot…

Sadly, when the company re-located, the pallet had to remain behind in the old factory. But I snapped a few shots before I departed, and (chances are) they’ll appear as backgrounds in future shots from the Museum of Future Technology.

In fact one has already, as recently as A Tale of Three Museums...

Pretty convincing window, I think you’ll agree. Clever bastard, aren’t I?

Earplug Adventures © Paul Trevor Nolan

Spoiled Illusions 5: Every Day I Use Everyday Items

Are you one of those who, upon watching a DVD check out the extras, which often include a Making Of clip. I used to; but I don’t anymore: I don’t like to see the illusion spoiled. But just in case you are, here’s a little Earplug Adventures illusion spoiler.

What I particularly enjoy about shooting the Earplug Adventure photos is the using of everyday items to create the illusion of the earplug universe. When (in Haunted Mars) Folie visited  Deck One of the Gravity Whelk…

…he was quite impressed by it’s soft pastel colours and sensuous curves. He was less enamoured with the soft-top roof…

Well the story never called for that scene. It took it nowhere. But it was a quite amusing cameo for this everyday item…

Yup, a regular fabric conditioner bottle. Can’t remember which brand. But it doesn’t matter: they’re all excellent. Here’s an example of another one…

It’s the engine core of a Scroton Five from A Tale of Three Museums. It just needed some strange lighting to make it convincingly NOT a Comfort bottle – and some software jiggery-pokery to create the God of Stalled Motors. Same goes for bleach bottles too…

And the great thing about bleach bottles is – they come in so many different colours…

No doubt this rather exotic turquoise version will find itself included in a future adventure: I’ve got two of them in the shed. And a yellow one under the sink!

P.S I’ve already told the tale of how I use Lavatory Santisers and Canderel and Hermesetas coffee sweeteners to create convincing scenes for the earplugs to gallavant through. Check them out if you haven’t read them already. You might be amazed!

Spoiled Illusions 4: Cardboard is My Chum

Are you one of those who, upon watching a DVD check out the extras, which often include a Making Of clip. I used to; but I don’t anymore: I don’t like to see the illusion spoiled. But just in case you are, here’s a little Earplug Adventures illusion spoiler.

If you’re an Earplug Adventures photographer, one of your best friends is the humble material known as cardboard. With a little imagination and a bit of jiggery-pokery, it can become anything you bloody well want it to. Take, for example this empty insulation pile reel…

Hmmm, lots of potential there. Now let me see; what can I turn THAT into? Well there’s this very nice dungeon/kitchen…

…which appeared in Return of the Prodigal Earplug. It looks like a dungeon – especially with those flaming torches (burning matches) set into the wall. But the story said it was a kitchen: so I guess it must have been a medieval themed kitchen. It appeared again in Return to the Museum of Future Technology as Wilton Carpetti and Vinkie Vinkleton’s test facility – only dressed more futuristically…

And again as Ballington Cork’s temple in Return of the Prodigal Earplug…

Oh look, it’s those flaming torches again. In fact these reels have appeared in so many stories that I’m spoiled for choice. But I’ll make the last example this one…

Yes, it even featured as the K T Woo’s engine room in Stepladder to the Stars. Very versatile, cardboard reels.

But cardboard comes in many guises. Like these strips – wot I cut…

These utilise that old perspective trick that was taught to us in school art lessons, all those millions of years ago. This is how this particular duo of strips looked in the story, Cometh the Earplug…

Hair-Tigger wasn’t sure if the building was small and quite nearby, or huge, but a long way off. So she altered her focus, and…

…the latter proved to be the case. Silly, but I like it.

The following picture has been used over and over – almost every time that I need to show the city of Scroton Prime. It was a semi-perminant set at my old ‘studio’ despite the fact that I constructed it in the main warehouse of the factory where I worked. Everyone knew what it was, so left it alone – even the management. I was blessed to work there…

But I often re-dressed it – either physically – or later (when it was history, and all I had were some pictures of it), electronically for different stories.  Here’s how it appeared the first time, in Plunging Into Peril...

It was then re-used a hideous number of times, culminating in (at present) the most recent tale – Haunted Mars...

Will there ever come a time when this shot doesn’t appear ad infinitum? Hope not.

Those cardboard inserts you find in, say, vacuum cleaner or microwave oven boxes are a God-send as well…

If used as interiors, they make excellent caves – as seen here in Stepladder to the Stars, where Sheriff (later Captain) Sinclair Brooch makes an astonishing discovery…

And as exteriors, all you need do is cut a couple of openings…

… and they make perfect mud villages…

…as seen here in The Grand Tour. All in all, a jolly useful commodity for a creative genius, like wot I is.

Of course there are many other cardboard items which are extremely useful for a Earplug Adventure shooter: but I’ll leave them for another time.

 

 

Spoiled Illusions 3: Potential Noticed

Are you one of those who, upon watching a DVD check out the extras, which often include a Making Of clip. I used to; but I don’t anymore: I don’t like to see the illusion spoiled. But just in case you are, here’s a little Earplug Adventures illusion spoiler.

Sometimes Earplug Adventure props/sets appear to me in a flash of…um…let’s call it artistic inspiration. Take, for example, this sheet of melamine-coated chip board. Clearly someone has used it as a base for spraying something – and it was the over-spray that caught my attention…

“Yeah,” thought I, “I can do something with that.” So I took a picture of it. So much easier than storing the original. Well, almost five years later, I did. It appeared in A Tale of Three Museums…

…as emergency habitations for the survivors of the ruined world that featured in that tale. And there’s this too…

Sometimes, when things were quiet at work, I would use a rotary saw to slice thin sections from blocks of artistically interesting timber. Here are a couple of examples that, for some reason, I chose to photograph. I remember turning the top one into a desert scene; but I’ve never had reason to use it. The other has sat quiescent for two-or-so years – until I required a scene to depict a newly-formed rift in a landscape. Thank you, slice of wood, for supplying the surface torrent in Haunted Mars...

To put it into perspective, here it is with two characters inserted…

And then there was my daughter’s cast off light shade. That came straight out of the bin, and into my old (and still lamented) ‘studio’…

Does anyone recall what it was used for? Well, more recently, it was what the false Supreme Being turned into after it’s underpants had been blown off in The Grand Tour…

And here he is, sans human appearance…

But previously it had appeared as a hot-air balloon. Here it is in Those Magnificent Earplugs…

But I think it looked better in Return to the Museum of Future Technology…

…complete with its Christmas bauble gondola.

For the final example, this time, regard this…

I wanted a port hole set for a story that took place aboard Ship Number 15. Remember that old bucket? Ship Number 15 was a miserable green – the only colour paint available to me at the time. So I did this to one of the office box files (don’t tell the boss. Oh, it’s okay: he retired a couple of years ago – and he probably knew anyway. He had eyes everywhere). But I digress. Here is that box file in action…

…where it played the role of the Scout Ship hangar in Worstworld. In the end the circular hole wasn’t used as a port hole, but instead played a very nice interior window…

…for Vanilla Redbush to look through, and a lovely shooting embrasure…

…which worked very well, I think…

Pity I destroyed Ship Number 15 during the Battle of The Museum of Future Technology in Liberation. How short-sighted of me.