FruitCorso Magnolia Magnificus (2011)

As said before I entered the 2010 competition with a concept for a FruitCorso float. Unfortunately our club didn't have enough members to help me out to actually get it on the road. Half way we decided it was better to leave it be and continue for the competition next year.

That we did and we did our best to finish it on time. It was still a lot of work and some things of the first drafts were left out to save some time.

The float as it was driven (by my dad) at the FruitCorso Parade.

About the design:
The name of this float was Magnolia Magnificus. She was made up by me when I was working with Magnola seeds the year prior (2009).
Magnolia was a dryad (I found out later), half woman, half tree. She was the mother nature of ancient Greek times. I also made a story about her.

In short:
Magnolia Magnifucus was hired by Zeus to make a garden for Hera. She did her best and with her powers she created the most beautiful garden in the entire world. There was only 1 problem: Hera was sort of allergic to Magnolia. Hera's powers were drained as she got close to her. In her rage she destroyed the whole garden. She even threatened Magnolia she would be next. Zeus quickly stepped in and took Magnolia to safety. He thought of a new assignment to keep her save. That assignment was to protect an apple, but not just a regular one. No, this was the fruit of the Gods; Ambrosia, as she was told. For her own benefit Zeus kinda lied. That wasn't the real Ambrosia, but it would keep Magnolia far away from Hera.
Magnolia was allowed to pick her own temple for this task. They searched and searched but none of them seemed fit, until they passed an old ruin. Magnolia brightened at the sight. This...this pile of rubble and debris taken over by nature itself. This would be her temple. She was able to see it as the most gorgeous thing in the world even if no one would see the same. And there she would spent the rest of her days; Happy and safe.

On the first story she had her own guardians: A Minotaur and some flesh eating plants. The Minotaur got skipped from the first draft because it was too much and it didn't fit with the plant theme. This Minotaur how ever got to be our last minute design for last year.
The flesh eating plants were unfortunately skipped due too our time trouble.
Below you can see how the first idea transformed into something way better.

The 1st attempt maquette of 2010.

The renewed maquette of 2011.

A beautiful close up from the apple.

FYI: The maquette is made by paper mache, some wood, paper (flowers), and some clay to smoothen her face.

As every year there's a big presentation on stage of our local theater. We were allowed to also enter with a video, so I made an intro video:

Picture time:
To show the build up I'm gonna put some pictures down below.

This is about where we left her the prior year. It mainly is a steel framing,
a few pilars (huge pvc pipes) and feet made of Styrofoam.

And here is that same foot, but now it's finished. 

The skin tone is done with small seeds. We needed a bit of a tanned woman because she's Greek.

Next to that we used a lot of grapes, unions, hazelnuts and the green products are Brussels sprouts.

This is her face from the side. 

 Her face had some patterns. I have a book with several old templates and one of them had that swirly type of pattern so I used that on the side of her face. We glued Brussels spouts on it and some Romanesco (tower cauliflowers).
The hair was a lot of work. I had a lot of help from a regular designer (Bert van Erkom) to think of the right products and how to use them.
Every piece of fruit/ vegetable was put on a stick. Those sticks would then be pushed into the Styrofoam head. The main products were: Apples, potatoes, beetroots, rhubarb, bunch of grapes, decorational cabbage and red unions.

Front view of the whole float.

Backside. I'm sorry for the bad colors; we don't have sufficient light in the shed.
The pattern we saw earlier in her face returns on her back.

The evolution of Zeus

We had a lot of detail work; it's one of my traits, but not everyone is happy with that, since it will always be extra work.
On the left over walls of this ruin I wanted to have 3D paintings of both Hera and Zeus. These figures were made from Styrofoam and glued to the wall. Then some drapes were hung around it and stiffened with some paste. After that our natural routine of seeding started.
His beard is done with cauliflower.

We had one mega issue this year: We got over 4 meters. This meant we needed some kind of mechanics to lower her head.
A volunteer mechanic was able to get some hydraulics inside to make her head tilt. Every year we try hydraulics we fail. Normally it wasn't bad for the design an element wasn't lifted, but this time it would be bad if her head wouldn't get up anymore.

This video shows how our haudrolics did their work.

Magnolia laying down as she wouldn't fit through the doors of the shed.

This video was not made by me, but by someone in the crowd.

We had the luck the float stopped right in front of him.

There are so many things I could tell about this float since it has so many elements. But I think by now you have a fine idea about the how we made it. If not, feel free to ask.

If you're curious: We ended at the 10th place (out of 12). There was a lot of critique about the colors; orange wasn't right according to the judges. But in defense; old Greek vases were terracotta and black.
Also the expression of the woman wasn't right. She looked a bit frightening instead of happy. This was due to the face we hardly ever worked with Styrofoam before and the people who put the head up didn't lift it up far enough, therefor her eyes look more creepy down to the crowd.
1 Thing I'm still not happy about was her "bra". I wanted to have leaves on her left (viewers right) boob, but the regular designer said this was the better solution. I have listened a lot to him and most of the things he was right of, but this one...no, leaves would, in my opinion, be better.

None the less I'm proud of the end result.
It was quite an adventure, but it takes so much spare time and it's a lot of communicating, trying to make your plans clear and there are a lot of discussions, which made me decide to not do another design in the near future.
However I do help out the recent designer with ideas and solutions. This "assistant" job suits me way better.