Another year, another FruitCorso.
This year we went a bit smaller than usual. The cart has the name "Time Flies", it's in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the club.
We did a literal interpretation of "Time Flies" by having a pocket watch carried by butterflies and swallows.
The cart during the FruitCorso Parade.
I was asked to help out with the design of the birds. I had to do a drawing of one in several positions with the wing width of 1,5 meter.
I made 3 flying designs; 1 flying, 1 braking and one with its wings half folded (that last one was skipped). Next to that I also designed a sitting one.
Top view of my sketch.
From this I made a metal design together with the welder. Me and the designer decided it was easiest to do the wings out of carton with a simple metal framing inside; this makes the wing look thinner and the separate feathers are easier made.
Metal frame with a Styrofoam head.
The metal frame with a cardboard wing glued to it.
During the metal work I was trying to make 11 swallow heads. Birds aren't easy so there's a bit of difference between them. (There's one that looks more like a pigeon)
At home I used clay to improve the faces of the birds.
In all honesty I was skeptical about the size of the birds; they were the same size as the butterflies, but looked even smaller since their wings have less surface. None the less, no discussion, they were approved by the designer. The sitting ones were allowed to become a bit bigger.
After the metal work I could attach the wings. This took a lot of work so I was lucky there were some folks to help me out.
When that was done the feet/legs could be welded and attached. It was a bit unclear if we had to wait until the chain was done (making them fit better), but we got a go to just give them feet.
Now the paper team could finally add paper to them, to which we could add plaster (takes the metal framing edges away and makes sure the neck runs smoothly to it's back/chest)
"Birds falling down the rooftops..."
The bird finished with plaster.
After all the "paperwork" it was time to draw on them. I had miscalculated how much time would go into this. There were a lot...a lot of feathers! One of the designers stepped in and helped me out with this.
When everything was drawn and painted, people could finally start gluing on all the different kinds of seeds.
Painted bird.
The product design was also part of my "job", I made a 2:1 sketch to make it clear to other which and how the products were going to be glues on. (I made a copy which I colored and gave it a caption what it all meant). Unfortunately, time was our enemy, so we had to change the design and switch some products. All in all I'm quite happy how things turned out.
The sketch of the different types of seeds/fruits/vegetables that had to go on the bird.
Left = back, right = stomach. In the end we did some changes due to the time consuming design.
My bird, finished with the seed part.
The backside still needs a lot of work. Therefor it will go home with me.
It barely fitted in the car.
When everything was done, every seeds was glued on, every tomato was in place, every bird/ butterfly was welded where they needed to go it was finally time to go outside!
The cart during the FruitCorso Parade.
The end result of my bird.
And here some Bonus pictures from the build.
How the clock looked during the 50th anniversary party.
Backside of the cart when it was finished and almost ready to go outside.
The framing of one of the butterflies
Pretty red butterfly.
Side of the watch.
This is my favorite bird! It's a really chubby one.
As every year I've been part of the FruitCorso builders team.
Fruitcorso is a yearly event where we go around town in a parade with floats decorated with seeds, vegetables and, obviously, fruits.
The design for this year was: Haantjes gedrag (Translated: Rooster Behavior. Open interpretation: Cock Fight)
Final result, 2nd place
This year has been slightly different than other years. Some massive changes occurred in the club I was part of for my whole FruitCorso career. The club were 2 clubs combined. Back in the days my club didn't have enough members and the club from our neighbor village didn't have a space to build anymore. So we fused together. This year that contract was shredded and the club was divided.
The Designer that had designed for 3 years had been asked else where. After much debate and this strange debacle she decided to go to her home town to design and build the float. Together with her we went with a team of the old club.
That aside the basics hadn't changed. You start with an iron frame, add syrofoam, paper, paint, glue and end with products.
Iron frame with Styrofoam head and comb; Rooster 1.
Iron frame partly covered with phone guide paper; Rooster 2
As for other years I was put responsible to make the heads with the Styrofoam team. They helped with the basic shapes and I could do the ending details. Also the designer assigned me with the head of Rooster nr. 1 to design, choose products and finish it.
Plastered face, with clay on the right side
Rooster 1
Plaster on Styrofoam,
covered with a layer of white paper
Rooster 2
Painted face
Finished face with dentures
The only directions I got was that he had to become angry. And that is what he became.
Because it's really difficult to do teeth, I made dentures from clay which I could decorate outside the mouth and later on glue them in.
To give him a bit more of a fighter look I gave him some scars using upstanding pumpkin seeds.
Most of my decorating time went into the face but here are some pictures of parts made by others:
Beginning with the vegetables; Rooster 1
More progress on Rooster 1
Detailed shot of the inside of the wing from Rooster 2
We build in a shed/ hangar which means we're limited to the height of the door. Due to that we had to behead our rooster and use a crane to lift it and place it on the torso.
Assembling the roosters head
Flying head
Fitting it properly
These were pictures of the test, it went back inside to finish it and it was put back together in Tiel before the parade would start.
Like every year I join our building team in constructing a float for the FruitCorso parade.
Floats that are decorated with fruits, vegetables and seeds.
A Photoshop drawing I made from a print screen.
This year we got the design of "De Bockereyders" (The Billy-goat riders) which is an old folklore about a couple of bandits who would steal and rob from the rich people and divide it underneath the poor. At least this was the story we choose, since there are all kinds of different stories about them. Some say they are devil worshippers and they plundered churches and old farm houses while other stories tell the same kind of tale as the witch trials in Salem where innocent people were condemned for crimes they didn't do.
Anyway; as said: Our Bockenreyders are the good guys that acted like the Robin Hoods of their ages.
This year we had 2 designers; The one from last year + another builder. They came up with the idea to build 3 male goats, a captain with a mask and a hooded bandit
The model made by our designer.
We used the bars we already had from last year instead of welding a new low one. In the end this paid off quite well as it sorta disappeared inside the design.
I didn't do any welding this year. Instead I and 2 others were put into the Styrofoam cell to sculpt 2 human heads, 3 goat heads, 12 hooves, 4 hands, 2 boots, 4 horns (one set was made from iron) and 2 feet. This was quite a big task and we got some help from outside. A man who has helped several clubs with their sculptures. He showed up and in no time he finished a face and also did the jaw part of our Captain. Next to that he showed us what we had to change about the goat heads to really make them look like goats (we had a cow, aligator and some sort of rabbit).
From these rough shapes we had to make our finished faces/ heads.
I got the responsibility this year to do the final sculpting on the faces/ heads with plaster.
First I made pictures of what we had, then I used Photoshop to try to draw a better shaped face on it and tried to rebuild the face using plaster.
Before
After
After
Before
As you can see the end result is quite a change. But in a good way I might say.
One thing we did different this year were the eyes.
Normally we sculpt the eyes at the same time as the face and decorate them with seeds just like everything else, but I asked if I was allowed to make "real" eyes. I made a prototype from transparent globes, painted from the inside out. The designers really liked what I had created and got to make a set of brown and red eyes.
A transparant ball you can buy at most craft shops.
Finished brown eyes; 14 cm
Finished red eyes; 16 cm
Because we don't want everyone to be making these globes, I don't do an online step by step tutorial. But if you're really interested and want to make them f.e. Halloween, just send me a message and I'll send some of the pictures I made during the process.
They were covered up with plastic foil to prevent damage during the build. In the end that was cut off and the eyes were nice and shiney.
My next task was to design the faces. I worked together with the designers on this. And in the end they had enough faith in me to let me do the whole captains face the way I'd like to do it.
And so I did:
Painting
Adding seeds
Finishing the mask using: Blue Lupines,
Black pumpkin seeds, Black beans, Grass seeds,
Melon seeds and Tapioca.
Painted the lower half and added shade with brown beans.
Because our float was too big to fit through the door and viaducts, there had to be some break points inserted which could be lifted and lowered using hydraulics.
Raising the Captain's torso
Raising the front part of the billy goat.
Final part of the raising.
The end position of the billy goat and captain.
A close up of the loot.
A very nice picture of the other face that was made.
A print screen of a video that was shot during the parade.
Out float became 8th in ranking by the Jury judgement. But! We got 2nd of the public voting!
Here is a video of the whole parade of the FruitCorso 2013
